Press Office
Contact
Get in touch with our press office
We are here to help with any media enquiries about The University of Chichester's world-leading research, latest student news and corporate issues. We can also put you in touch with our academic experts to arrange interviews.
All media enquiries should be emailed to the university's press office which is press@chi.ac.uk.
Outside office hours, urgent media enquiries can be made to 07876 885 601.
The university runs a small press office and reserves the right to prioritise responses at busy times. Journalists are asked to clearly state the publication they write for (or where they will pitch the story if freelance) and their deadline.
Claire Andrews
Press and Public Engagement Manager
Rachael Page
Press Officer
- Email: press@chi.ac.uk
- Telephone: 01243 816495
- Office hours: Monday to Thursday (9am to 5:30pm), Friday (9am to 4:30pm)
Request to join our press list to receive our press releases via email.
Media experts
Find one of our expert staff to speak on their specialist areas
Browse our experts
Professor Kish Bhatti-Sinclair
Professor of Social Policy and Social Work
Known for her work on combating racism in social work, Kish’s research has helped to shape the profession’s approaches to race. Her other research investigates the disproportionate attention paid to immigrants and terrorists in government policy.
Areas of expertise include:
- Race and racism affecting young people in the UK.
- Immigration and the impact of strict border controls on children.
- Child abuse by minority ethnic communities.
Dr Nicola Clark
Senior Lecturer in Early Modern History
Dr Clark’s research focuses on queenship, court roles and religions change – and specifically on the Tudors. She has previously featured on BBC documentary Boleyns: A Scandalous Family.
Areas of expertise include:
- Medieval and early modern history.
- Women’s roles in history.
- Religion in history.
Key facts about the University of Chichester
What you need to know
- We have campuses in cathedral city Chichester and by the sea in Bognor Regis.
- Our key disciplines are in sport, education, creative and digital technologies, and engineering.
- We’re recognised as a green university – achieving platinum tier in the Uswitch Green Universities 2023 rankings – one of only six universities to do so.
- Our teacher training programmes are rated outstanding by Ofsted.
- We have been awarded the highest overall rating of ‘Gold’ in the Teaching Excellence Framework (TEF) 2023.
- We rank 1st out of 110 universities for law in the National Student Survey (NSS) 2024.
- We are ranked 7th in the south east, according to The Times and Sunday Times Good University Guide 2024.
- We have been rated as a top-30 UK university out of 122 institutions (Guardian University Guide 2025).
- We also provide a total of 1,228 jobs in Chichester and 576 jobs in the Arun area, where the Bognor Regis campus is located.
- More than half of the University’s student population are the first in their family to attend university, while a third originate from low-income homes earning less than £25,000 a year.
- The £50m Tech Park at Bognor Regis, which houses all our STEM courses, was opened by The Duke and Duchess of Sussex in 2018.
- Alumni include gold-winning Olympic sailor Saskia Clark and gold-winning Paralympian Emma Wiggs.
Our students
2023/24 figures
- Total number of students 6,826
- Number of undergraduate students 4,964
- Number of postgraduate full-time students 1,754
- UK students (incl. Channel Islands & Isle of Man) 96%
- Other EU students 1%
- Non-EU/International students 3%
- Full time undergraduates in receipt of Disabled Students' Allowance 4%
- First in family to attend university 47%
- Mature students 40%
Our History
- The University of Chichester can trace its origins back to 1839 and was first opened as a college for training schoolmasters called Bishop Otter College.
- Florence Nightingale had a hand in the formation of Bishop Otter College after writing a letter of support to the government in 1876.
- In 1873 the College became a training college for women as a result of the campaign by Louisa Hubbard to encourage the acceptance of women as teachers. Male students were not introduced until 1957.
- Chichester played a crucial part in the D-Day landings of 1944, where one of the lecture rooms on the Bishop Otter campus became the Operations Room of RAF Tangmere, the nerve centre controlling squadrons of fighter planes involved in the D-Day landing.
- The West Sussex Institute of Higher Education was formed in 1977 as a result of the merger between Bishop Otter College and the Bognor Regis College of Education, becoming a single institution of higher education.
- The title 'University of Chichester' was approved by the Privy Council on 12 October 2005.
