Edinburgh Futures Institute

Opened in 2022, the EFI links arts, humanities, and social sciences with other disciplines in the research and teaching of complex, multi-stakeholder societal challenges and data-driven solutions.

The institute offers undergraduate and postgraduate degrees in interdisciplinary subjects such as Data and Artificial Intelligence Ethics; Future Governance; and Planetary Health.

In 1998, a joint project between private finance, local authorities, and the university moved the hospital to a modern medical campus in the Little France area.

[1] Parts of the vacated Royal Infirmary grounds and the buildings which had housed the medical and gynaecology wards, were sold in 2001, and later developed into the Quartermile residential and commercial site.

[4] One of the five 'innovation hubs' the initiative sought to create was a proposed Edinburgh Futures Institute intended to "tackle the world's major problems" and housed in the Royal Infirmary.

[5] The university submitted large-scale renovation and extension plans by architectural firm Bennetts Associates[6] for the site to the City of Edinburgh Council, which were approved in December 2017.