De Montfort University has approximately 27,000 full and part-time students, 3,240 staff and an annual turnover in the region of £168 million.

[3] The university is organised into four faculties: Art, Design, and Humanities (ADH); Business and Law (BAL); Health and Life Sciences (H&LS); and Computing, Engineering and Media (CEM).

It is a Sustainable Development Hub, focusing on Peace, Justice and Strong Institutions, an initiative by the United Nations launched in 2018.

The school expanded in response to the changing needs of late 19th-century industry; leading to the introduction of subjects such as engineering, building and machine drawing.

The Duchess of Atholl laid the foundation stone of Hawthorn's new west wing in 1927; by which time the establishment was known under by the joint name of The Leicester Colleges of Art and Technology.

In 1934, the University of London recognised the college as suitable for preparing students for the External Degree in Engineering, and so the courses on offer developed apace.

[6] More space was needed to meet the academic demand, and so in 1948, F. Bray, Under Secretary of the Ministry of Education, opened the converted Downings Warehouse.

[5] Leicester Polytechnic became De Montfort University in accordance with the Further and Higher Education Act in 1992, establishing it as a degree-awarding body in its own right.

The institution divested itself of its last outlying site, Charles Frears (on London Road in Leicester), in 2011, when the nursing school moved to the city centre campus.

[3] Its campus comprises ten halls of residence offering around 3,000 university sourced rooms, and is approximately a ten-minute walk from Leicester city centre.

The proceeds from the campus sales have been ploughed back into the Leicester City Campus, which has consequently seen a large amount of development, including the construction of two new buildings and the extensive refurbishment of a third, the Edith Murphy building (formerly Bosworth House) to house the students and staff of the School of Nursing and Midwifery, previously based at Charles Frears.

[14] The university's new £8 million sports facility, named the Queen Elizabeth II Diamond Jubilee Leisure Centre, was opened on campus on 30 July 2012 by Vice-Chancellor Dominic Shellard.

In 2019 Vice-Chancellor Shellard resigned in advance of an Office for Students report which found serious and systematic failures in governance under his leadership.

[19] The Hawthorn Building contains the ruins of the 1353 Church of the Annunciation of Our Lady of the Newarke, where the body of King Richard III is said, according to early sources,[20] to have been displayed before his burial at Greyfriars.

The building is named after Dr Vijay Patel, who, alongside his wife, made the single largest donation by individuals in the university's history.

It was constructed on the site of the old Stibbe building, at a cost of £8.5 million and is central to the university's 'Masterplan', which seeks to regenerate the Leicester campus environment.

Many Library functions are also available off campus at any time, including electronic resources such as academic databases, and online account management facilities such as book renewal.

The ground floor Learning Zone was opened as part of the 2007 refurbishment and provides space for group and individual work.

The Clephan Building plays host to the Cultural Exchanges event, which features guests and speakers from the arts, media, literature, politics and film.

Course patrons have included Joseph S. Blatter, Lord Coe, Sir Bobby Charlton and Sergey Bubka.

[36] It comprises more than 4000 students and 150 academic staff, making it one of the larger providers of business and management education in the UK.

The building's namesake, Hugh Aston, died in November 1558 and was a leading figure of his generation; serving at different times as Coroner, Mayor, and Member of Parliament for the borough of Leicester, as well as being one of the foremost early Tudor composers.

The Faculty is based in the Hawthorn Building, which was previously an Arts College; boasting an art-deco turnstile and stage area which now functions as a lecture theatre.

[citation needed] There are ancient archways visible on the lower ground floor; supposedly remnants from a monastery which occupied the site prior to the building's construction.