In Falmer, East Sussex, England, the University of Sussex is a public research university with a campus that is primarily inside the limits of the cities of Brighton and Hove, with a small portion of it spilling into the Lewes District on its eastern boundary. The university's sprawling campus is bordered by the South Downs National Park and is about 5.5 kilometres (3.4 miles) from the centre of Brighton. After receiving its Royal Charter in August 1961, it became the first of the plate glass university generation. It was also a founder member of the research-intensive universities group, which was established in 1994.
Over a third of the university's students are enrolled in postgraduate programmes, and nearly a third of its faculty members are from countries other than the United Kingdom. Sussex boasts a varied population of around 20,000 students, with about one-third of them being international students, and over 1,000 professors who represent more than 140 different nationalities, making it a truly global university. The institution's yearly revenue for 2019–20 was £319.6 million, while its expenditure for the same period was £282 million.
5 Nobel laureates, 15 Fellows of the Royal Society, ten Fellows of the British Academy, twenty-four members of the Academy of Social Sciences, and a recipient of the Crafoord Prize are among the academic members of the University of Sussex. The Bancroft Prize, the Order of the British Empire, the Royal Society of Literature Prize, and other honours have been bestowed to several of the university's faculty members by the year 2011. Heads of state, diplomats, politicians, famous scientists, and activists are among those who have graduated from the programme.