Cranfield University is a British postgraduate and research-based public university specialising in science, engineering, technology and management. It contains two campuses; the main campus is at Cranfield, Bedfordshire, and the second is the Defence Academy of the United Kingdom at Shrivenham, southwest Oxfordshire. The main campus is unique in the United Kingdom for having a semi-operational airport on campus. The airport facilities are used by Cranfield University's own aircraft in the course of aerospace teaching and research.

Cranfield was founded as the College of Aeronautics in 1946, and became a university in its own right as the Cranfield Institute of Technology in 1969.