Our Role

The role of the Communications Office is to work in partnership with staff and student colleagues to raise the University's profile and engage a vast cross-section of audiences in the markets in which we operate, from prospective undergraduate and postgraduate students and those who influence them, to the global academic community, funding councils and policy makers. We are also passionate about managing the University's reputation by disseminating good news and engaging the media, policy groups and the general public to manage and mitigate reputational risk.

We work in partnership with other professional services units to support our academic colleagues, colleges and other units, prioritising our resources to help promote the University's brand and in particular to reflect its commitment to excellence in Education and Research - as highlighted in the Durham University 2010-2020 strategy.

We provide professional planning, training and guidance in addition to our project-management support in the areas of strategic marketing, media and corporate affairs and we advocate best practice in all internal communications within the University community.

The Communications Network

In addition to the Communications Office staff, we have initiated a Communications Network of more than 100 colleagues across the University who are engaged in communications and marketing projects and processes, which aims to engender a culture of partnership working and evidence-based marketing, coherent planning and use of resource to ensure best practice and value for money, and to facilitate the professional development and agility of staff in the network. We also provide toolkits of templates, guidance notes and policies to empower staff to work with us and to maximise - and coordinate - communications and marketing across the University. 

We're here to help. Contact the team or come and meet us when we're out and about and under the skin of the University.