Belfast is the capital city and principal port of Northern Ireland, standing on the banks of the River Lagan and connected to the open sea through Belfast Lough and the North Channel. It is second to Dublin as the largest city on the island of Ireland with a population in 2021 of 345,418 and a metro area population of 671,559.
The ancient universities are British and Irish medieval universities and early modern universities founded before the year 1600. Four of these are located in Scotland, two in England, and one in Ireland. The ancient universities in Britain and Ireland are amongst the oldest extant universities in the world. The ancient universities in Britain are part of twenty-seven culturally significant institutions recognised by the British monarchy as privileged bodies of the United Kingdom.
Sir Kenneth Charles Branagh is a British actor and filmmaker. Born in Belfast and raised primarily in Reading, Berkshire, Branagh trained at RADA in London and served as its president from 2015 to 2024. His accolades include an Academy Award, four BAFTAs, two Emmy Awards, a Golden Globe Award, a Screen Actors Guild Award, and an Olivier Award. He was appointed a Knight Bachelor in the 2012 Birthday Honours, and was given Freedom of the City in his native Belfast in 2018. In 2020, he was ranked in 20th place on The Irish Times' list of Ireland's greatest film actors.
Stephen Rea is an Irish actor of stage and screen. Born in Belfast, Northern Ireland, he began his career as a member of Dublin’s Focus Theatre, and came to the attention of film audiences as one of the close collaborators of director Neil Jordan. He is an Academy Award, Golden Globe Award and Tony Award nominee, a two-time BAFTA Award winner, and a three-time Irish Film and Television (IFTA) Award winner.
John David Taylor, Baron Kilclooney, PC (NI) is a Northern Irish unionist politician, serving as a Crossbench life peer in the House of Lords since 2001. He previously served as the Ulster Unionist Party (UUP) Member of Parliament (MP) for Strangford from 1983 to 2001. He was deputy leader of the UUP from 1995 to 2001, and a Member of the Northern Ireland Assembly (MLA) for Strangford from 1998 to 2007.
William David Trimble, Baron Trimble, was a Northern Irish politician who was the inaugural First Minister of Northern Ireland from 1998 to 2002, and leader of the Ulster Unionist Party (UUP) from 1995 to 2005. He was also Member of Parliament (MP) for Upper Bann from 1990 to 2005 and Member of the Legislative Assembly (MLA) for Upper Bann from 1998 to 2007.
The Queen's University of Belfast, commonly known as Queen's University Belfast, is a public research university in Belfast, Northern Ireland, United Kingdom. The university received its charter in 1845 as "Queen's College, Belfast", and opened four years later.
Sir William Tyrone Guthrie was an English theatrical director instrumental in the founding of the Stratford Festival of Canada, the Guthrie Theater in Minneapolis, Minnesota, and the Tyrone Guthrie Centre at his family's ancestral home, Annaghmakerrig, near Newbliss in County Monaghan, Ireland. He is famous for his original approach to Shakespearean and modern drama.
Belfast City Hall is the civic building of Belfast City Council located in Donegall Square, Belfast, Northern Ireland. It faces North and effectively divides the commercial and business areas of the city centre. It is a Grade A listed building.
The Royal Victoria Hospital commonly known as "the Royal", the "RVH" or "the Royal Belfast", is a hospital in Belfast, Northern Ireland. It is managed by the Belfast Health and Social Care Trust. The hospital has a Regional Virus Centre, which is one of the four laboratories in the United Kingdom on the World Health Organization (WHO) list of laboratories able to perform PCR for rapid diagnosis of influenza A (H1N1) virus infection in humans.
The Ulster Senior Cup is a knock-out competition for senior rugby union teams in the province of Ulster. It is administered by Ulster Rugby.
The Dr McKenna Cup is an annual Gaelic football competition played between counties and universities in the province of Ulster. It is the secondary Gaelic football competition based in Ulster behind the Ulster Senior Football Championship, and the fourth most important inter-county competition in which Ulster counties take part, behind the All-Ireland Senior Football Championship, the Ulster Championship and the National Football League.
Kamalesh Sharma is an Indian diplomat. He was the fifth Secretary General of the Commonwealth of Nations from 2008 to 2016, having previously served as the High Commissioner for India in London. He has served as the Chancellor Emeritus of Queen's University Belfast.
Colin Cooper is a British psychologist and was a senior lecturer in the School of Psychology at Queen's University Belfast until 2012, when he took early retirement and moved to Picton, and latterly London Ontario, Canada. Cooper also devised the multiple-choice IQ tests for the BBC television programme Test the Nation. Among the questions, Cooper said that he had managed to "sneak in a few things that interested me", including questions "exploring the link between intelligence and genetics, height and the number of accidents they have had."
The Literary and Scientific Society of the Queen's University of Belfast is the university's debating society. The purposes of the Society, as per its Laws are to "encourage debating, oratory and rhetoric throughout the student body of the University and beyond".
Sir Francis Gerard McCormac, FRSE, FSA, FRSA, FHEA is the Principal and Vice-Chancellor of the University of Stirling. He is a physicist whose specialist fields are space physics and carbon dating. He is a member of the advisory board of the International College for Liberal Arts at Yamanashi Gakuin University in Japan. Previous roles include Professor and Pro Vice-Chancellor at Queen's University Belfast and Vice-Chairman of Invest Northern Ireland. He chaired a review of teacher employment for the Scottish Government in 2011.
Sir Peter Froggatt was a Northern Irish epidemiologist and academic. He served as Vice-Chancellor of the Queen's University, Belfast between 1976 and 1986.
Professor Sir Ian Andrew Greer is a Scottish medical doctor who is the 13th President and Vice-Chancellor of Queen's University Belfast and formerly Vice-President of the University of Manchester and Dean of the Faculty of Medical and Human Sciences. He was Regius Professor of Obstetrics and Gynaecology at the University of Glasgow 2001−2007, Dean at Hull York Medical School 2007–2010, then Pro-Vice-Chancellor of the Faculty of Health and Life Sciences at the University of Liverpool 2010−2015.
