Head of World 100 Mark Sudbury discusses some of the trends in global higher education reputation emerging from discussions at recent conferences, helping to set the scene for our conference in October

This week saw the long-awaited publication of the Research Excellence Framework (REF) 2021 results, more than seven years since the last exercise (REF 2014). Undertaken by representative higher education funding bodies of the four nations of the UK, it the most comprehensive evaluation of the research impact of UK universities.