Welcome to the School of Ocean and Earth Science

School of Ocean and Earth Science Welcome to the web site for the School of Ocean and Earth Science at the University of Southampton. We offer undergraduate and postgraduate training across the full range of ocean and Earth sciences, with the highest possible score for teaching quality in the 2008 Quality Assurance Agency institutional audit and among the highest scores in the UK for student satisfaction. Our ranking for research in the 2008 Research Assessment Exercise puts us among the top institutions in the UK in the Earth and Environmental Sciences, with a high proportion of world-leading and internationally excellent academic staff. This means that students will be taught directly by academic staff who are personally pushing back the frontiers of scientific knowledge


The School of Ocean and Earth Science (SOES) was formed in 1998 through merger of the former Departments of Oceanography and Geology. The School is located in a purpose-built waterfront campus with docking facilities at the National Oceanography Centre, Southampton (NOCS).

The NOCS environment is unique within UK higher education on a number of counts: the juxtaposition of basic, strategic and applied research backed by a strong ocean engineering and technology group; the provision of facilities ranging from state-of-the-art laboratories to the National Oceanographic Library; and the disciplinary combination of oceanographers, geologists and geophysicists.

The National Oceanography Centre, Southampton (NOCS), has been ranked in the top ten of the world’s research institutions in geoscience, and first among those with a specific remit in oceanography (Times Higher Education Supplement, November 2009).