The University of Sheffield is a public research university in Sheffield, South Yorkshire, England. It received its royal charter in 1905 as successor to the University College of Sheffield, which was established in 1897 by the merger of Sheffield Medical School , Firth College and Sheffield Technical School .

Sheffield is a multi-campus university predominantly over two campus areas: the Western Bank and the St George's. The university is organised into five academic faculties composed of multiple departments. It had 18,975 undergraduate and 8,220 postgraduate students in 2014/15 and its total and research income came to £635.7 million and £168.5 million in 2015/16 respectively, both of which were among the top 10 in UK universities.

The university is widely recognised as a leading institution in the UK and across the globe. The results of the 2014 Research Excellence Framework put Sheffield in the top 10 per cent of all UK universities. The quality, breadth and volume of the University’s research activity are demonstrated by the fact that 86 per cent of the research submitted by the academic staff has been rigorously judged as world leading or internationally excellent. Sheffield was placed 80th worldwide by The QS World University Rankings 2015-16 and it has been firmly cited as a world top-100 university since 2004. In 2011, Sheffield was named 'University of the Year' in the Times Higher Education awards. The Times Higher Education Student Experience Survey 2014 ranked the University of Sheffield 1st for student experience, social life, university facilities and accommodation, among other categories.

It is one of the original red brick universities, a member of the Russell Group of research-intensive universities, the Worldwide Universities Network, the N8 Group of the eight most research intensive universities in Northern England and the White Rose University Consortium. There are seven Nobel Prize laureates amongst Sheffield academics, six of which are its alumni or former staff.