Spring graduation celebrations

Graduation returns to campus

The sun shone, the champagne fizzed and the cameras clicked. After more than two years without graduation ceremonies, we have finally been able to welcome back our Classes of 2020 and 2021 to celebrate their achievements with their families and friends.

As you will know from your own time at Leeds, graduation is a joyous fixture on the University calendar – and this year's spring celebrations were extra special, as we congratulated our new graduates on all that they have achieved amid an extraordinary period of change.

You’ll have lots of memories of your own graduation day at Leeds. Enjoy the photos from our celebration events, and take a trip down memory lane by sharing your graduation memories.

Four trees in a row, each one getting exponentially bigger

Planting the seeds of the future

To celebrate their achievements, their courage in the face of exceptional circumstances, and their lifelong connection to Leeds, one thousand trees will be planted for our Class of 2020 and Class of 2021.

The trees will flourish in the Yorkshire Dales National Park as part of the Wild Ingleborough project to restore native woodland around Ingleborough mountain.

Discover how our Class of 2020 and 2021 trees will help sustain resilient rural communities for years to come.

Get involved

We'll keep you updated on the growth of the trees over time, and alumni will be able to visit the site in the future.

You can also volunteer to help plant trees at Wild Ingleborough. Complete our short form if you'd like us to keep you updated on upcoming volunteer days.

A close up of Parkinson Building tower, showing the clock. Blue sky in the background..

Lockdown Poem

For Class of 2020 and 2021 graduates

By Ruby Fatimilehin (English 2021)

When we fell, at first, to panic;
a gaggle of geese, serrated beaks, wings flapping
with uncertainty, flocking to bare shelves, nervous glances out
over the empty streets of Leeds, the great migration, students
trickling back to hometowns, tributaries of people countrywide
dispersing into little streams.

From parched ground springs
neighbourhood group chats, community relations,
the care and compassion which
water the wilted. We work through, against
looming deadlines, which swallow the skyline like tsunamis,
exams and essays expanding into endless horizon.

We all pitch in, tend to the ship,
nail planks of wood, sew sails, haul rope, hold up
a beacon to others
like us, who drift unanchored in little boats.

Propel ourselves forward,
countless hours of pushing through
the peaks and troughs of work and worry, our momentum
driving onward, the final push propels us
over waterfall edge, cascading down,
weightless in freefall.

Emerge on land to summer, blossom in bloom,
the sweet smell of hyssop and green fronds of ferns
which unfurl in the sun,
our bodies soak in the sunlight like geckoes, we did it,
we made it, well done.

University of Leeds campus, Sign for Art sculpture

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Spring graduation celebrations