FOI_25-233 Research funding from defence companies

Date of response: 01 September 2025

We have now considered your request of 06 August 2025 for the following information:

Thank you for your response and advice on how to narrow my request, our ref: FOI_25-220.

Can you please proceed to "provide the information for our Research and Innovation Division, and our Academic Partnership departments alone."

ORIGINAL REQUEST – FOI-25-220

In the below request, the phrase ‘arms trade companies' relates to any company on the SIPRI Top 100 arms-producing companies and Defence News Top 100 lists.

This includes, and if necessary, to fit within the time/cost limitations, can be limited to:

1. BAE Systems

2. Babcock

3. QinetiQ

4. Rolls-Royce

5. Serco

6. Cobham

7. Raytheon (RTX)

8. Airbus

9. General Dynamics

10. Leonardo MW

11. Lockheed Martin

12. Thales

13. MBDA

14. Elbit Systems

15. Northrop Grumman

16. L3 Harris Technologies

17. General Electric

18. AVIC

19. GKN Aerospace

20. Boeing

21. Ministry of Defence (MoD)

22. Defence Science and Technology Laboratory (Dstl)

23. Atomic Weapons Establishment (AWE)

‘Academic partnerships’ refers to arms company involvement (funder or partner) in any of the following:

• Apprenticeships and graduate schemes

• Job advertisements and career fair appearances

• Sponsorships (events, workshops, trainings)

• Studentships, sponsored PhDs, scholarships and professorships

• Department funding and relationships (e.g. knowledge transfer relationships)

• Consultancy and executive roles

Can the university please provide any relevant information or evidence of arms companies' involvement in any of the capacities mentioned above over the past eight years?

Please may this be broken down by:

• Academic year and with the start/end date (DD-MM-YY) where applicable

• The name of the arms company involved and the nature of the partnership (partnership, collaboration, consultancy, funding)

• The financial value of the relationship in pounds sterling

• The name(s) of the academic department(s) involved

• The name and description of the degree and/or research being conducted in the studentship

*Notes to FOI Officer:

The timeframe for this request should cover 1 January 2017 to 5 April 2025, or the University’s reporting period (1 August 2017 to 31 July 2025), up to the most recent completed year.

Should the above request exceed the time/cost limitations outlined in Section 12 of the FOIA, please consider the list of 23 entities as a complete list. If necessary, limit the timeframe to 5 financial years and restrict the scope to data held centrally by the university.

Please indicate in the response whether the full scope was considered or the narrowed criteria (23 entities only, and if a limited time frame).

Our response:

For the requested period, our Research and Innovation Division and our Academic Partnership department have found records of three partnerships which meet the scope of your request: