The Department currently has 27 academic teaching staff (including 6 professors), 13 support staff, 3 Royal Society Research Fellows and 32 other Postdoctoral Research Fellows. Each year the Department attracts more than 20 academic visitors from overseas who carry out collaborative research with members of staff; the EU Large Scale Geochemical Facility additionally draws up to 50 scientists from Europe annually.

In recognition of the revolutionary changes which have occurred in Geology in recent years, the Department has expanded by making many of its appointments in relatively new areas such as geomicrobiology, environmental geochemistry, mineral physics, isotope geochemistry, geological fluid mechanics, seismology and computing.

The Department currently provides eight single honours undergraduate degree programmes: BSc and MSci in Geology and in Environmental Geoscience, together with an MSci with a year's study in Continental Europe or North America in either Geology or Environmental Geoscience. There are also two joint honours programmes (Geology/Biology and Archaeology/Geology), and one taught MSc, in Palaeobiology. The intake quota for Single Honours undergraduates for the coming year is 63, and around 12 Joint Honours students also enter each year. There are 59 postgraduate students reading for PhDs and 26 students taking the MSc in Palaeobiology. Recent staff appointments have reflected the need to introduce information technology, quantitative skills, and environmental science into undergraduate teaching and to restructure courses to take account of changing patterns of employment of geologists.

The Department achieved Grade 5* status in the Funding Councils' 2001 Research Assessment Exercise, up from grade 5 in the previous (1992, 1996) rounds. The 5* status confirms we are one of only three such Earth science departments in the country, and it is external recognition of the high international reputation of our research work in volcanology, experimental geochemistry, palaeobiology, geomicrobiology, and isotope geochemistry. There are excellent research and analytical facilities, and the department accommodates the European Union facility for Analytical Geochemistry, and the University Research Centres in Biogeochemistry, and Environmental and Geophysical Flows. There are strong links with the School of Chemistry, particularly the Organic Geochemistry Unit, and the Department of Mathematics."