In addition to Linguistics taking a top ten spot, Lancaster University also ranks in the top 50 for English Language and Literature (40th) and top 100 for Art and Design (51-100), Modern Languages (joint 85th), Environmental Sciences (joint 93rd), Accounting and Finance (joint 65th), Business and Management Studies (joint 70th), Sociology (joint 83rd) and Statistics and Operational Research (51-100).

From making a difference to people with dyslexia to helping prevent crime, Lancaster’s world-leading Department of Linguistics and English Language examines how language works in cognition, communication and, in particular, at the heart of society. Lancaster’s research makes a real difference, improving health communication, transforming how we test for language proficiency, protecting people from online abuse, and more. The Department was awarded The Queen’s Anniversary Prize for Further and Higher Education for its work in corpus linguistics. It is home to the ESRC Centre of Corpus Approaches to the Social Science, which provides insights into a host of areas of pressing concern, including cyber security, climate change and education.

The QS World University Rankings by Subject includes more than 1,500 institutions across 54 different subjects, grouped into 5 faculty (broad subject) areas around the world.

The rankings base their findings on a range of quality indicators from academic reputation (based on votes from over 151,000 academics around the world) to employer reputation, research paper citations and other measures of research quality such as impact and research collaboration stability.

In addition to a number of high performing individual subjects Lancaster’s Arts and Humanities as a whole moved into the top 75 (72nd).

Lancaster also saw an improvement in ranking for all five broad subject areas.

Lancaster University Vice-Chancellor Professor Andy Schofield said: “Whether we are exploring great works of Literature or the Amazon, analysing business practices or social care, Lancaster University is home to research that seeks to engage with and change the world for the better. To have many of our areas of excellence recognised in this global ranking is something for us all to be rightly proud of.”