The Universities of East Anglia, Essex and Kent have established a new research consortium in a move that brings together three of the UK’s leading universities.

The Eastern Academic Research Consortium (ARC) will build on the universities’ existing research and partnership activities to become a significant new force in research, and research training.

As part of the agreement, the three universities will strengthen their current collaboration in the natural and environmental sciences and the arts and humanities and develop new cross-disciplinary research. The consortium has already signalled its commitment to the agreement by funding six Eastern ARC Fellows and 18 Eastern ARC PhD studentships over a five-year period.

East Anglia, Essex and Kent are among the universities established in the UK in the 1960s and which today make a major contribution to the UK’s university sector. Together they have over 50,000 students, 2,000 academic staff and more than 20 academic departments in the top 10 for research, according to the government’s most recent Research Assessment Exercise. They have a total combined annual turnover of £540 million.

University of Essex Vice-Chancellor Professor Anthony Forster said: “This is more than a just a regional collaboration. It is long-term agreement based on the synergies between our world-class research portfolios. As we celebrate our 50th anniversaries, it is clear that combining our considerable research expertise will enable us to respond better to the challenges of the research funding environment, and to make an even greater contribution to global wellbeing over the next 50 years.”

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