The University of Southampton’s outstanding business and public engagement has been recognised again with the release of the second Knowledge Exchange Framework (KEF2).

The University’s strengths in public engagement, business partnerships, IP commercialisation and entrepreneurial activities – including graduate start-ups – have been recognised as amongst the best in England.

Southampton achieved a top rating (‘very high engagement’) in four of seven areas of assessment: ​‘Working with business’, ​‘Working with the public and third sector’, ​‘Intellectual Property and commercialisation’ and ​‘Public and community engagement’.

Southampton achieved the second highest rating (‘high engagement’) in the other three areas: ​‘Research partnerships’, ​‘Local growth and regeneration’ and ​‘CPD and graduate start-ups’.

These results place Southampton at or above the average in all perspectives amongst the cluster of 17 very large, research-intensive and broad-discipline English universities.

Southampton’s results echo those of the first KEF in 2021, when the University scored similarly highly.

The full results are presented online as interactive KEF2 dashboards. Read more