Birkbeck, University of London (formerly Birkbeck College, informally BBK), is a public research university located in London, United Kingdom, which specialises in evening higher education, and a constituent college of the federal University of London. It offers many Master's and Bachelor's degree programmes that can be studied either part-time or full-time, though nearly all teaching is in the evening. It also admits full-time (as well as part-time) students for PhDs. Its staff members have excellent research reputations in subjects such as English, Economics, Statistics, History, History of Art, Philosophy, Psychology, Spanish and Science. It also offers many continuing education courses leading to certificates and diplomas, foundation degrees as well as other short courses. Birkbeck counts four Nobel Prize winners and a British Prime Minister among its former students and faculty. History Founding In 1823, George Birkbeck, a physician and graduate of the University of Edinburgh Medical School and an early pioneer of adult education, founded the then "London Mechanics' Institute" at a meeting at the Crown and Anchor Tavern on the Strand. Over two thousand people attended. However the idea was not universally popular and some accused Birkbeck of "scattering the seeds of evil." Two years later, the institute moved to the Southampton Buildings on Chancery Lane. In 1830, the first female students were admitted. In 1858, changes to the University of London's structure resulting in an opening up of access to the examinations for its degree. The Institute became the main provider of part-time university education. The Institute changed its name to the "Birkbeck Literary and Scientific Institution" in 1866 and in 1885 it moved to the Breams Building, on Fetter Lane, where it would remain for the next sixty-seven years. Birkbeck College The early twentieth century saw further developments, with Birkbeck Students' Union being established in 1904, and in 1907 the institute's name changed once more, to "Birkbeck College". In 1913, a review of the University of London (which had been restructured in 1900) successfully recommended that Birkbeck become a constituent college, although the outbreak of the First World War delayed this until 1920. The Royal Charter for the college was granted in 1926. The college's first female professor, Dame Helen Gwynne-Vaughan began teaching botany in 1921. Among the other distinguished faculty in the of the inter-war years were Nikolaus Pevsner, J. D. Bernal and Cyril Joad. During the Second World War, Birkbeck was the only central University of London college not to relocate out of the capital. In 1941, the library suffered a direct hit during The Blitz but teaching continued. During the war the College organised lunch time extra-mural lectures for the public given by, among others, Joad, Pevsner and Harold Nicolson. In 1952, the college moved to its present location in Malet Street. Current status In 2002, the college was renamed, becoming simply Birkbeck, University of London; the term Birkbeck College is still in use, and survives on the façade of the main building itself. The following year, a major redevelopment of the Malet Street building was opened. It was announced in 2006 that Birkbeck had been granted £5 million by the Higher Education Funding Council for England to expand its provision into east London, working with the University of East London. The partnership was formally launched on November 21, 2006 and is called Birkbeck Stratford. It is the largest College of the University of London not to award its own degrees, though it has Degree Awarding Powers, Birkbeck has chosen to hold these in reserve whilst it can award University of London degrees. The School of Continuing Education The School of Continuing Education (aka the Faculty of Lifelong Learning), which specialised in extramural studies did not become an integral part of Birkbeck until 1988 but has a long separate history. It has now been integrated into the main College. In 1876, the London Society for the Extension of University Education was founded, boosting the aims of encouraging working people to undertake higher education. In 1988, the Department of Extra-Mural Studies of the University of London was incorporated into Birkbeck, becoming at first the Centre for Extramural Studies. In 1903, it became the Department of Extra-Mural Studies of the University of London and it was integrated into Birkbeck in 1988. In 2009, the Faculty of Lifelong Learning was incorporated into the main College structure. Campus and location Birkbeck's main building is located between Malet Street and Woburn Square in Bloomsbury, with a number of buildings on nearby streets. The School of Arts, including the Department of English & Humanities, is housed in Virginia Woolf's former Gordon Square residence in Bloomsbury. Other notable former residents of this house include Vanessa Bell, John Maynard Keynes and Lydia Lopokova. Many Birkbeck classes are taught at other locations across the Bloomsbury area, due to a combination of Birkbeck's widening participation strategy to make higher education accessible and also because nearly all classes on one day are taught at the same time, resulting in heavy competition for limited space. In 2006, it was announced that Birkbeck will be expanding into east London, in conjunction with the University of East London. Initially space will be rented as well as utilising the University of East London Stratford Campus, but the aim is to construct a dedicated facility in Stratford. The project is known as Birkbeck Stratford. Research and teaching While part-time undergraduate teaching remains the focus and mandate of Birkbeck, the college has recently begun to focus on research in the arts and humanities. The Birkbeck Institute for the Humanities was established in 2004, with the renowned but controversial Slovenian philosopher Slavoj Žižek appointed as International Director. According to its website, the Institute aims to, among other things, "engage with important public issues of our time through a series of open debates, lectures, seminars and conferences" and "foster and promote a climate of interdisciplinary research and collaboration among academics and researchers". The launch of the Institute wasn't without controversy, provoking an article in The Observer newspaper titled "What have intellectuals ever done for the world?" which criticised the ostensible irrelevance and elitism of contemporary public intellectuals. 2004 also saw Birkbeck enter into a research and teaching collaboration with the Institute of Education, jointly founding the London Knowledge Lab. This interdisciplinary research institute brings together social scientists and computer scientists to address research questions about technology and learning. Meanwhile, the London Consortium graduate school — a collaboration between Birkbeck, the Tate Galleries, the Institute of Contemporary Arts, the Architectural Association, and, until 1999, the British Film Institute – has been running since the mid-1990s, offering masters and doctoral degrees in the interdisciplinary humanities and cultural studies, resourced and jointly taught by all the participating institutions. Its permanent and adjunct faculty includes figures such as Tom McCarthy, Colin MacCabe, Laura Mulvey, Steven Connor, Marina Warner, Juliet Mitchell, Stuart Hall, Roger Scruton, Salman Rushdie, Tilda Swinton as well as Slavoj Žižek. Its current chair is Anthony Julius. Science research at Birkbeck has a notable tradition. Physicist David Bohm who made notable contributions to the theory of Quantum mechanics was professor of Theoretical Physics from 1961–87 and Nobel Laureates Aaron Klug and Derek Barton both worked in the faculty of crystallography. Birkbeck is part of the Institute of Structural Molecular Biology, which includes the Bloomsbury Centre for Structural biology, established in 1998. This is a collaborative venture between Birkbeck College and University College London and is a leading academic centre for translating gene sequences and determining protein structure and function. It also includes the Bloomsbury Centre for Bioinformatics, a collaborative venture also between Birkbeck College and University College London for research into Bioinformatics, Genomics, Systems Biology, GRID computing and Text mining.