Changes to our academic structures: everything you need to know
You might notice some changes to how we’re talking about our academic departments, so here’s a quick explainer to keep you in the loop.
Previously, our 25 academic departments were grouped into six Schools. This year (2025/26), we’re starting to move to a new structure with three Faculties instead.
Faculties bring together similar subjects to help our teams work more closely and support each other. It’s part of a bigger plan to make things simpler across the whole university, which we hope will improve your experience.
Introducing our new Faculties
The Faculties and Departments within each one are:
Faculty of Arts, Humanities & Social Sciences
Faculty of Business & Law
Faculty of Science
The decisions have been made after lots of conversations with staff in these subject areas. We’re confident we’re bringing the right expertise together to harness our collective knowledge across different disciplines while also making best use of our resources to provide you with an engaging and supportive learning environment.
You can see in some cases we’ve joined smaller departments into one. We know how important it is that smaller subject areas keep their identity and voice – and that’s something we’re committed to protecting. In these Departments, there will be a new “Section Head” role to provide discipline-specific leadership and make sure we continue to nurture our subject communities.
What changes for you
This year (2025/26), you shouldn’t notice much difference at all this. Your course, your lecturers, and your Department all continue as usual – you’ll just hear us occasionally referring to the new Faculties.
If you’re continuing to study here next year (2026/27), you’ll see the new Faculty and Department structure come to life. These behind-the-scenes structural changes won’t affect who you’re taught by or how you’re taught, but our improved organisation in the background should mean your day-to-day experience here is even more supportive.
We’re currently working through some changes to School Helpdesks. You’ll still be able to access support from the same great people, but the way these are organised and named will change so it matches our new Faculty structure. We’re speaking to colleagues in these teams at the moment to hear what they think will work best and we’ll let you know when we can share more.
Join the conversation
We’re running an information session on Thursday 28 May with our Students’ Union. You’ll be able to find out more about these changes and share your thoughts. Look out for your invite soon.
Questions?
We’ve answered lots of frequently asked questions below but if there’s something missing, please contact us at internal.communications@rhul.ac.uk.
Frequently asked questions
It's true that from 2026/27 we will no longer have six Schools, but this is just about changing our structures and what we call different areas.
This year (2025/26), we’re in a transition phase. To help the change go smoothly, we’re operating “shadow Schools” this year while we get our three new Faculties set up and ready for September 2026.
For the moment, no, but it’s possible that you’ll see some changes from September 2026. We’re bringing some smaller departments together to combine resources. That means these subjects will be organised a little differently in the future.
Our Royal Holloway Business School is part of the Faculty of Business and Law. Following a review earlier this year, we decided to keep the Business School name as it’s widely recognisable externally.
Academic representation is really important to make sure all students have a voice, and this will continue in our new Faculty structure. Our Students’ Union is working on a full democracy review right now, which means there will be some changes to our rep system from September 2026. But the fundamentals – making sure you can have your say about your modules and course – will stay as it is now.