Dublin City University

Describing itself as a "future-ready university," Dublin City University (DCU) has been broadening the horizons of students on its lively campus since it opened in 1980.

The university is based on three academic campuses in the Glasnevin-Drumcondra region of north Dublin. It has more than 19,000 students from 124 countries enrolled across five faculties – science and health, DCU Business School, computing and engineering, humanities and social sciences and DCU Institute of Education.

It was the first university in Ireland to integrate workplace internships (INTRA) into its undergraduate courses with more than 80 per cent of programmes offering work-based learning opportunities.

The university has a number of research and enterprise hubs that facilitate research partnerships between academics and external organisations. The research centres cover areas such as educational assessment and evaluation, bullying prevention, human rights, cellular biotechnology, neurotherapeutics, sensors, plasma technology, biomedical diagnostics, machine translation, cloud computing, and data analytics, to name but a few.

It also comprises the John and Aileen O'Reilly library, with 400 workstations, 1,200 seats and 18 collaborative rooms. It bills itself as the first university library to put digital records on the same footing as books and journals, granting access to some 250,000 volumes, a number that is growing as technology improves.

Its campus also includes restaurants, a theatre and conference centre, a crèche and a university sports complex.

DCU is home to the National Institute for Digital Learning (NIDL) which focuses on learning innovation.

The university separately runs a series of summer schools as part of a 'DCU in the Community' programme. These involve public talks in the nearby area of Ballymun, on topics recently including social psychology, public speaking and mental health.
In 2012, the university was the first to globally to adopt the Age Friendly University principles. In 2017, DCU was the first university in Ireland to be designated as a University of Sanctuary, in recognition of the range of supports established to aid the refugee and immigrant community in Ireland, and in 2018, DCU was the first university globally designated as an Autism Friendly University.