Trent University is a public university in Peterborough, Ontario, with a satellite campus in Oshawa, which serves the Regional Municipality of Durham. Trent is known for its Oxbridge college system and small class sizes.

The university was founded through the efforts of a citizens' committee interested in creating a university to serve the City of Peterborough and the surrounding counties, and was created by the Trent University Act, 1962-63. The committee recruited Dean Thomas H.B. Symons of the University of Toronto to serve as chair of the academic planning committee and Symons became the university's first president.

The Symons campus of Trent, named after founding president Thomas Symons is located on the banks of the Otonabee River just 90 minutes from downtown Toronto. It is divided into a series of colleges: Champlain, Lady Eaton, Catharine Parr Traill, Otonabee and Peter Gzowski. Each college has its own residence hall, dining room, and student government. The Symons campus plan and the original college buildings, including Champlain College, Lady Eaton College, Bata Library and the Faryon bridge which spans the Otonabee, were designed by Canadian architect Ron Thom.

Close to 7,800 undergraduate students and nearly 500 graduate students are enrolled at the Peterborough campus while Trent University Durham GTA serves over 1,200 full and part-time students at the campus on Thornton Road in Oshawa. The university is represented in Canadian Interuniversity Sport by the Trent Excalibur. Although Trent University is predominantly undergraduate, graduate programs are offered at the master's and doctoral level.

Trent University came about as a result of a community discussion in 1957 about the possibility of opening a post-secondary institution in the Trent Valley. The campaign for a post-secondary institution in Peterborough coincided with the Ontario government's policy of creating new universities and expanding existing institutions to respond to population pressure and the belief that higher education was a key to social justice and economic productivity for individuals and for society.

In 1963 Trent University was founded as a non-denominational, public institution in downtown Peterborough, Ontario, It was established as a provincial university under the Trent University Act of 1963. In fall 1964, the university welcomed its first students to the new campus, consisting of three refurbished older buildings in central Peterborough: Rubidge Hall, Catherine Parr Traill College for women, and Peter Robinson College for men. The governor general, Georges Vanier officially opened Trent University in 1964. That year there were about 100 students attending the university.

Trent's Durham GTA campus in the Regional Municipality of Durham has been offering courses for over 40 years, initially in classrooms rented from Eastwood Collegiate and Vocational Institute. Later, Trent took space at Durham College and steadily expanded the range of courses available before acquiring a former elementary school on Thornton Road. Trent renovated the building, added an addition and officially opened its new Oshawa campus on Monday, 18 October 2010 and was inaugurated for the 2010–2011 academic year. Over 800 students attend Trent University Durham, who can study full- or part-time for degrees in Anthropology, Business Administration, Communications and Critical Thinking, English Literature, History, Media Studies, Psychology, Social Work, Sociology, and the Teacher Education Stream. In addition to the above, there are several course offerings (some with the possibility of a minor) at Trent's Durham campus that students can take and later major in at the Peterborough campus, including: Biology, Computer Information Systems, Cultural Studies, Economics, Environmental & Resource Studies, Geography, Modern Languages, Philosophy, Political Studies, and Women's Studies.