Professor John Taylor traces the journey from the Yorkshire College of Science to the University of Leeds, exploring the origins of higher education in Leeds.

This lecture will examine the background to the opening of the Yorkshire College of Science in 1874 and its formal inauguration in 1875. In particular, it will highlight both national movements in higher education and local priorities. The lecture will continue by tracking the development of the Yorkshire College (no longer “of Science”) in the establishment of the Victoria University and, from 1887, as a constituent college of that University. The lecture will conclude by considering the breakup of the Victoria University, resulting in the creation of the University of Leeds in 1904.

Professor John Taylor
Visiting Professor, Educational Research, School of Social Sciences, Lancaster University

John is a historian by background, with a first degree and doctorate from the University of Southampton. He initially pursued a career in university management, first at the University of Leeds where his affection for the University and the city was first nurtured. His management career ended with a highly successful period as Director of Strategy and Planning at the University of Southampton. He then embarked upon a second career in higher education, as an academic teaching and researching the management of universities, leading to professorial appointments in the Universities of Southampton, Liverpool and Lancaster. Finally, he returned to his roots as a historian, this time as a historian of higher education. His interests lie especially in the development of universities in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, including highly praised work on the impact of the First World War and on the Victoria University.

A Leeds 400 event from the Thoresby Society