FOI_26-239 Academic partnerships with arms trade companies

Date of response: 13 October 2026

We have now considered your request of 20 September 2026 for the following information:

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:

BAE Systems

Babcock

QinetiQ

Rolls-Royce

Serco

Cobham

Raytheon (RTX)

Airbus

General Dynamics

Leonardo MW

Lockheed Martin

Thales

MBDA

Elbit Systems

Northrop Grumman

L3 Harris Technologies

General Electric

AVIC

GKN Aerospace

Boeing

Ministry of Defence (MoD)

Defence Science and Technology Laboratory (Dstl) 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 time frame for this request should cover 1 September 2025 to 1 September 2026. 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.

Our response:

Please see accompanying document, our ref: FOI_26-239 Appendix A, for all instances where those listed companies who had advertised jobs and apprenticeships within our online careers portal for students.

Additional to this, the Ministry of Defence (British Army) also funded the following apprenticeships.

September 2023 – 2 apprentices, Pharmacy technician apprenticeship, approx. 2-year course

September 2024 – 4 apprentices, Pharmacy technician apprenticeship, approx. 2-year course

September 2025 – 3 apprentices, Pharmacy technician apprenticeship, approx. 2-year course

September 2026 – 2 apprentices, Pharmacy technician apprenticeship, approx. 2-year course

Value of contract in all cases is £8,000 per apprentice. Course taught within School of Chemistry, Pharmacy and Pharmacology.

None of the noted companies attended any careers fairs, or funded any other academic partnership as noted within your request.