Pears Foundation and UCL
Building a Diverse and Impactful Partnership Since 2008
A note of appreciation to Pears Foundation from Dr Michael Spence, UCL's President & Provost
UCL is incredibly fortunate to have found such a dedicated partner as Pears Foundation. Their generosity leaves no doubt in their commitment to our shared hope for a better future. Our relationship represents what true philanthropy should be, a partnership and a collaboration between two institutions with shared values and goals.
Pears Foundation has been generously supporting our work since 2008. As of 2026, their cumulative support of over £17 million has advanced research and impact across a wide range of UCL projects. Our partnership has a broad focus and reaches across UCL faculties, ranging from Education to Social and Historical Sciences to Medical Sciences. Although varied, a common thread is that each project contributes to meaningful societal change through research excellence and commitment to dissemination and community engagement. Whether the project has been launched in a lab, a classroom or a research centre, all of our ideas translate into actions that travel beyond our London base.
The Centre for Holocaust Education is an example of the diverse and substantial support the foundation offers. Established in 2008, the Centre has been a hub for research, public outreach and training the next generation of educators. With continued investment, Pears Foundation has helped make a fundamental change in how students are taught about the Holocaust nationally and worldwide, tackling entrenched misconceptions and startling gaps in knowledge.
Here at UCL, we nurture inclusive communities. Pears Foundation has proven a worthy ally in this cause. With their help, several projects are interrupting school children's contact with dangerous conspiracy theories about our past and present; the Impartial Chairs Programme is facilitating dynamic student debates; and the UCL Policy Lab is involving disengaged communities in research to make real change. These projects get to the root of the social breaking points that face our communities today.
The impact of Pears Foundation's generosity was highlighted in our 2025 Impact of Philanthropy report, which shines further light on the vibrant philanthropic landscape at UCL, shaped over generations by our committed supporters.
Pears Foundation, thank you. Your long-standing generosity to UCL, the higher education sector and our partner communities is inspirational.
Pears Foundation's Impact at UCL
Tools for teaching about the Holocaust
The Centre for Holocaust Education is a world leader for research-informed teacher and student education. Our high-impact programmes deepen knowledge and understanding of the genocide and powerfully explore its contemporary significance.
We inspire thousands of teachers every year, who go back into their classrooms empowered and informed about Holocaust education. Teachers can access resources, CPD courses and research papers. Schools can also apply to become a "Beacon School" and act as a hub to teaching and learning about the Holocaust.
Tackling conspiracy theories
A recent survey revealed that 62% of secondary teachers had encountered conspiracy theories from students. Wider research suggests that young people are more inclined to believe in conspiracies than any other segment of the UK population.
A new project has developed a research-informed and sustained Continuing Professional Development (CPD) offer for teachers to respond to the worrying trends of misinformation, disinformation and conspiracy theories. The project runs from April 2025 to September 2029.
Working in consultation with autistic people
The Centre for Research in Autism and Education (CRAE) was established in 2009 to help enhance the lives of autistic people and their families. Pears Foundation has been incredibly generous to the Centre since its inception.
The Centre conducts ground-breaking scientific research to increase our knowledge about support, education and outcomes for autistic people, their families and those who support them. This research aims to be collaborative in nature; doing research with autistic people, rather than about them.
Leading by example in our debates
Launched in 2023, the Impartial Chairs programme is a sector leading skills development programme run by Students’ Union UCL to create resilient and reflective student leaders.
The aim of the programme is to equip the next generation of leaders with the confidence and resilience to debate and discuss a range of topics in a respectful and sensitive way at UCL and beyond. This programme forms part of, whilst also being distinct from, UCL’s Disagreeing Well campaign.
Backing social cohesion in Britain
This Place Matters: reimagining social cohesion in Britain aims to understand how we can successfully live together as a country despite the fault lines of belief and experience that threaten to divide us.
Following the 2024 riots in the wake of the Southport attacks, we could see that more needed to be done to bring communities together. This Place Matters engaged the UCL Policy Lab, which operates both as a hub where project participants can meet to discuss the research being conducted and as a generator of new academic ideas to respond to the issues as they emerge.
Empire, belonging and migration
A portrait of the teaching of the British Empire, migration and belonging in English secondary schools aims to support teaching and learning about the history of the British Empire and its complex – often contested – legacies within British culture, politics and society today.
The project provides a robust and nuanced research evidence-base that can reliably guide future programmes of professional development able to respond directly to the actual needs and experiences of learners, be they teachers or the young people in their classrooms.
Investigating Nazi perpetrator voices
Compromised Identities? explores how perpetration and complicity are represented and understood both at the time and later. It considers ways in which individuals and others tell their stories about being involved in state-sponsored violence, and how the stories change over time.
Using UCL’s copy of Final Account: Third Reich Testimonies as a springboard to engage with broader questions, this project is designed to explore the opportunities and challenges of working with ‘perpetrator voices’ in research, education, and public history.
Unlocking immunity and transplantation
The Pears Building provides UCL immunologists with state-of-the-art laboratories next to the Royal Free Hospital. This enables patient-focused research to take place. The building also provides convenient accommodation to patients participating in clinical trials and treatment at the Royal Free.
Scientists at the Pears Building study diseases such as cancer, diabetes, HIV, and hepatitis, as well as new therapies to stop the rejection of transplants. We translate this knowledge into new medicines and therapies that are tested in clinical trials performed at the adjacent Royal Free Hospital.
"We are privileged to have worked with Pears Foundation since they provided a founding grant for the Centre for Holocaust Education in 2008. Importantly, Pears have never been ‘just’ a funder. Their investment extends beyond the financial to include championing our evidence-based approach; supporting our educational principles; and offering wise counsel and sage advice. Thanks to this partnership, we have transformed how the Holocaust is taught and learnt about in England. We are proud that tens of thousands of teachers and a generation of schoolchildren have benefited from the vision, the trust, and the belief Pears’ have placed and continue to place in us and our partnership."
- Andy Pearce, Senior Lecturer, Institute of Education, UCL
"Teaching established truths is no longer enough, social media is flooded with disinformation, and we need to equip young people with the skills to navigate this rapidly changing landscape. The amazing work of the Commission for Countering Online Conspiracy in Schools has already moved the dial significantly. It has been a personal privilege to travel the country and work with teachers at ‘chalk face’. The feedback has been fantastic and in the words of one PGCE tutor “it is going to have a massive impact on their practice.” None of this would have been possible without the support of Pears Foundation. Their belief in the importance of this work has enabled us to respond to a critical and urgent need, and we are deeply grateful for their partnership."
- Jeremy Hayward, Associate Professor (Teaching), Institute of Education, UCL
"Pears Foundation makes us who we are. Thanks to their support, we are no longer a collection of disparate research projects, but a coherent centre, working to effect positive changes in the lives of autistic people and their allies. Via initiatives funded by Pears Foundation, we are able offer a programme of engagement activities that transcends individual research questions, and highlights cutting-edge developments within the autism field. Pears Foundation has enabled us to find our voice on both national and international stages. We are privileged to use this visibility to promote an agenda of collaboration, co-production and meaningful participatory research."
- Anna Remmington, Professor of Autism Research, Institute of Education, UCL
Sir Trevor Pears CMG, Executive Chair, Pears Foundation
Our partnership with UCL is one of Pears Foundation's longest-standing and most wide-ranging. For nearly two decades, we have supported, and learned from, some of the UK's finest minds. Whatever challenge we explore, UCL brings curiosity, insight, rigorous evidence, and thoughtful challenge. From classrooms and science labs to policy-making, the work we support bridges the gap between academic research and the wider world. We are proud to work alongside people who share our commitment to making a real difference.
Photography by: Jørn Tomter.
Photography by: Jørn Tomter.
Pears Foundation is a family foundation driven by a desire to demonstrate the good that philanthropy can achieve in the world. Pears Foundation fund across a broad range of organisations and causes, building long-term partnerships based on trust, learning and flexibility.
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