The first president was the geographer Sir Halford John Mackinder, and the college's first home was the old hospitium building behind Reading Town Hall.

[9][13][14] In October 2006, the Senior Management Board proposed[15] the closure of its Physics Department to future undergraduate application.

This was ascribed to financial reasons and lack of alternative ideas and caused considerable controversy, not least a debate in Parliament[16] over the closure which prompted heated discussion of higher education issues in general.

[23] In late 2009 it was announced that the London Road Campus was to undergo a £30 million renovation, preparatory to becoming the new home of the university's Institute of Education.

The main university library, in the middle of the campus, holds nearly a million books and subscribes to around 4,000 periodicals.

The URS building, designed by Howell, Killick, Partridge & Amis in concrete brutalist style in the 1970s is Grade II listed.

The London Road site is home to The Institute of Education – a major provider of teacher training in the UK.

[24] The London Road site also plays host to the university graduation ceremonies twice a year, in the Great Hall.

Once the home of William Henry Smith, son of the founder of WH Smith, and latterly the site of the Henley Management College, this campus became part of the university on 1 August 2008, with the merger of that college with the university's Business School to form the Henley Business School.

[39] It offers a range of professional programmes at foundation, undergraduate and postgraduate levels including the Henley Business School MBA.

[41][42] Professor Wing Lam took over as Provost in May 2018 after the retirement of Tony Downes[43] and restructured the campus to enable it to focus on core professional disciplines that were aligned with the region's need for talent.

It had previously moved all teaching and research at Bulmershe either to Whiteknights or to London Road, and closed the student accommodation.

The university also owns 8.5 square kilometres (2,100 acres) of farmland in the nearby villages of Arborfield, Sonning and Shinfield.

The secondary site library at the university's Bulmershe campus closed in 2011 and its operative collections were transferred.

[53] The senior management board reports to the university's Senate, the main academic administrative body.

The senate has around 100 members and meets at least four times a year and advises on areas such as student entry, assessment and awards.

Membership includes deans, heads and elected representatives of schools, as well as professional staff and students.

The Senate in turn reports to the Council, which is the supreme governing body of the university, setting strategic direction, ensuring compliance with statutory requirements and approving constitutional changes.

The Council meets four times a year and comprises a broad representation of lay members drawn from commercial, community and professional organisations.

[60] Departments in the university have been awarded the biannual Queen's Anniversary Prize for Higher and Further Education five times: in 1998, in the Humanities, Social Sciences and Law category, for work on Shakespeare; in 2005, in the Environment category; in 2008, again in Humanities, Social Sciences and Law; in 2011, for "teaching and design applications in typography, through print and new technologies" in Typography & Graphic Communication; and in 2021, again in the category of Environment And Conservation, for "connecting communities with climate change" through "new modelling work on the interaction between the Earth’s climate and local weather systems, enabling the development of risk assessment, community preparedness and action to tackle climate change.

[70] Its School of Agriculture Policy and Development was ranked top in the UK and 11th in the world, according to the QS classification of universities by subject.

[78] In 2015 this was expanded to form the NUIST Reading Academy which currently offers six degree programs and enrolls nearly 400 students annually.

It broadcasts locally from the Whiteknights campus in university retail outlets and over an internet live stream on a full-time basis.

[81] The Students' Union building on Whiteknights Campus contains a 2500 capacity venue called 3sixty (recently renovated in 2018), with seven bars, and a number of retail outlets.

[84] St. George's Hall and the Reading Student Village (renamed Benyon) are leased back to the university from UPP.

Reading hosts a number of private sector businesses on its campuses, either occupying dedicated buildings or in managed space at the Science & Technology Centre or Enterprise Hub.

The University of Reading Science & Technology Centre is situated on the eastern side of Whiteknights Campus.

[91] The hub was originally situated in World War II-era temporary office buildings on the university's Whiteknights campus.