Today, Queen Mary has six campuses across East and Central London in Mile End, Whitechapel, Charterhouse Square, Ilford, Lincoln's Inn Fields and West Smithfield, as well as an international presence in China, France, Greece and Malta.

Queen Mary runs programmes at the University of London Institute in Paris, taking over the functions provided by Royal Holloway.

[10] The predecessor to Queen Mary College was founded in the mid-Victorian era as a People's Palace when growing awareness of conditions in London's East End led to drives to provide facilities for local inhabitants, popularised in the 1882 novel All Sorts of Conditions of Men – An Impossible Story by Walter Besant, which told of how a rich and clever couple from Mayfair went to the East End to build a ”Palace of Delight, with concert halls, reading rooms, picture galleries, art and designing schools.

After the war, the college grew, albeit constrained by the rest of the People's Palace to the west and a burial ground immediately to the east.

[citation needed] In April 1929 the College Council decided it would take the steps towards applying to the Privy Council for a Royal Charter, but on the advice of the Drapers' Company first devised a scheme for development and expansion, which recommended among other things to re-amalgamate the People's Palace and the college, with guaranteed provision of the Queen's Hall for recreational purposes, offering at least freedom of governance if not in space.

In the coming days discussions on reconstruction led to the proposal that the entire site be transferred to the college which would then apply for a charter alone.

The Charter was now pursued, but the Academic Board asked for a name change, feeling that "East London" carried unfortunate associations that would hinder the college and its graduates.

[citation needed] Limited accommodation resulted in the acquisition of further land in South Woodford (now directly connected to Mile End tube station by means of the Central line's eastward extension), upon which tower blocks were established.

The college also obtained the Co-operative Wholesale Society's clothing factory on the Mile End Road which was converted into a building for the Faculty of Laws (and some other teaching), as well as the former headquarters of Spratt's Patent Ltd[13] (operators of the "largest dog biscuit factory in the world" – see Spratt's Complex) at 41–47 Bow Road, which was converted into a building for the Faculty of Economics founded by Maurice Peston, Baron Peston.

The award-winning building was designed by Will Alsop, and is named after William Blizard, an English surgeon and founder of The London Hospital Medical College in 1785.

[20] Queen Mary became one of the few university-level institutions to implement a requirement of the A* grade at A-Level after its introduction in 2010 on some of their most popular courses, such as Engineering, Law, and Medicine.

[21][22] Following on from the 2010 UK student protests, Queen Mary set fees of £9,000 per year for September 2012 entry, while also offering bursaries and scholarships.

In 2006, "brightly coloured leather bound books" were restored and reinstated to the bookshelves, along with "busts of famous literati looking down from the beautiful high domed ceiling.

"[34] The People's Palace is home to the Grade II listed art deco style Great Hall; this has a seating capacity of over 700 and standing of 1,000.

[35] The night the votes were counted for the 1945 general election, the then local MP for Limehouse and Leader of the Labour Party, Clement Attlee, was present at The People's Palace, where he learned the final result and received confirmation that he had become Prime Minister.

On 26 April 2005, Harold Pinter, who was to win the Nobel Prize in Literature later that year, gave a public reading and was interviewed by his official authorised biographer, Michael Billington, in the studio named for Pinter and located as part of the Faculty of Arts (Department of Drama, School of English and Drama) in the Mile End campus,[39][40] to celebrate its refurbishment.

[4] Queen Mary offers several packages of bursaries and scholarships, many of which are aimed at supporting undergraduate students from low income households.

Other research highlights include an international team of scientists, led by astronomers at Queen Mary, discovering a planet orbiting Proxima Centauri, the closest star to the Solar System.

[57] In 2018, a project involving Queen Mary researchers reached its goal of sequencing 100,000 whole genomes from National Health Service patients.

[58] The Queen Mary University of London released the AMIGOS dataset, which contains neuro-physiological data of individuals and can be utilized for scientific reasons, to investigate human emotions.

[8] Queen Mary provides academic guidance for the Global Master of Business Administration degree offered by the University of London's distance learning.

[75] In the 2016–17 academic year, the university had a domicile breakdown of 68:10:22 of UK:EU:non-EU students respectively with a female to male ratio of 54:46.

Sporting fixtures include badminton, basketball, football, hockey, netball, rugby, squash, swimming, tennis and rowing.

A shop, laundrette, café bar, 200-seat restaurant and central reception (staffed 24 hours a day), and a communal area situated adjacent to the Regents canal, form part of the Village development.

[107] In 2008, in recognition of the institution's commitment to advancing gender equality and diversity, the university achieved an Athena SWAN bronze award.

In January 2020, a former lecturer who had brought the university to an employment tribunal for direct racial and gender discrimination and harassment as a continuing act had her case dismissed on the basis that the alleged incidents had occurred after statutory time limits had expired.

[114] The brutal and exploitative nature of Leopold's rule over the Congo Free State between 1885 and 1908, and his commemoration at Queen Mary, came under renewed scrutiny as of institutional links with colonial repression were re-evaluated in the wake of the global attention paid to the Rhodes Must Fall campaign.

[115] In June 2016, the university's Pan-African society launched a petition for the removal of the plaques that celebrated a “genocidal colonialist” and were offensive to students from ethnic minority backgrounds.

Several senior academics resigned from the university in response to this action, citing a lack of trust leading to unbearable working conditions.

Throughout this process, students and staff were sent very different messages in email updates by principal Colin Bailey, leading to increased division within the university.