About the Department

Welcome to the Department of Physics at the University of York. Our Department is driven by excellence in both research and teaching. We have particular research expertise in the areas of Condensed Matter Physics, Plasma Physics and Fusion, and Nuclear Physics and Nuclear Astrophysics with all research strongly supported by our graduate student programmes.

The new York Plasma Institute represents a £5m investment by the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council and the University in our world-leading plasma physics and fusion activities, and a £100k investment in the Astrocampus is greatly enhancing the facilities available to students on our Physics with Astrophysics course. In addition, the York JEOL Nanocentre is a world-class research facility in the area of nanotechnology.

The Department is proud to have been awarded in 2011 the status of Juno Champion within the Institute of Physics' Project Juno scheme and in 2012 the Athena Swan Silver Award, both in recognising our actions to address the under-representation of women in physics.

We are delighted at the impressive score of 95% for overall satisfaction that our degree programmes received in the 2012 National Student Survey of graduating students, putting us in the top ten UK Physics departments. We are also delighted that our graduating students rated the intellectual stimulation on the course at 100%!

We hope you enjoy visiting our website; please contact us if you have any unanswered queries.

Professor Sarah Thompson
Head of Department

Interested in studying physics?

Please visit the Undergraduate study section for details of our MPhys and BSc degrees. We are proud of our strong reputation for teaching quality having achieved a perfect 24/24 score in the most recent Physics Subject Review and 95% in the 2012 National Student Survey for overall satisfaction (putting us, again, in the top ten UK Physics departments).

Considering a postgraduate degree?

You can visit our Postgraduate study section to learn about our PhD and MSc research degrees, or read our Research section to learn about the work of particular research groups. All of our groups are active internationally in their respective fields, and we believe that the Department provides an unusually friendly and supportive environment for research.