Your Union

We’re here to make student life better, but what exactly does that mean? Find out how we’ll represent you throughout your university journey, fight for your rights, and work tirelessly to ensure your voice is always heard.

As your Students’ Union we’ll have your back throughout your university experience, whether that’s offering helpful advice on that niggling academic issue, campaigning for the changes you want to see on campus, or laying on great events and extracurricular opportunities through our student groups to give you a break from your studies.

Read on to find out more about what you can expect from us this year and how you can get involved.

Download our welcome guide

Looking for some more information about who we are? Let us introduce you to our Welcome Guide – it’s packed full of important information about the Students’ Union and everything we can do to support you during your time at Royal Holloway.

Give it a read

Your officers

Each year the student body elects four sabbatical officers to work full-time in the Students' Union – they’ll represent your views and opinions, run campaigns, and work alongside Union and College staff to implement policy changes that will have a positive impact on student life at Royal Holloway.

They’re passionate about making your university experience the best it possibly can be, so make sure you get to know them and reach out if you have any questions or ideas!

Meet the Officers

Representing your academic interests

It’d be very easy to think the Students’ Union was here to purely focus on the social side of campus life, but that’s only half of the story. At the end of the day, you’re here to get a degree and one of our core goals is making sure that this happens.

Representing your academic interests is hugely important to us, which is why we run our academic rep system, empowering 400+ elected reps who represent you and your course. It’s not the sexiest subject, but they really can be the difference between you obtaining a first or second class degree.

Course reps work on ensuring your degree programme is everything you expected it to be, department reps look at department-wide changes, school reps work across several departments to instigate change, while the Vice President Education works across the wider College.

As a new student, you can volunteer to be the course rep for your chosen degree programme when nominations open on Monday 20 September, giving you the chance to directly influence what happens on your course and give a voice to your peers.

Learn more about academic representation

Student collectives

Making sure that you’re valued and represented during your time here is one of our top priorities, so we’ve established eight Student Collectives to give underrepresented groups a platform to have their voices heard.

As well as organising activities, events and campaigns, Collectives work with the SU to secure the general interests and rights of students. Joining any of our Collectives is completely free and even if you don’t define into the group you can register as a supporter to take part in their activities.

Check out the Collectives

SU Elections

The Students' Union is here to represent your views so that your time studying at Royal Holloway is a positive and enjoyable experience. By being the collective voice of students we are able to tackle pressing issues, lobby for social change and campaign on your behalf - using your views and opinions as guidance.

In Term Two, nominations open for the SU Elections where you can run to be one of our four full-time paid sabbatical officers for the 2022/23 academic year. Even if you’re not interested in running to be an officer, it’s really important that you use your voice when the voting period comes around in March.

Give me a slice of that juicy democracy goodness