Britain's University of Cambridge plans to investigate its links to the trans-Atlantic slave trade with a two-year study that will recommend ways to acknowledge and address the impact of the university's involvement.

The university says Tuesday the study will look at financial support it may have received from those linked to slavery, as well as how the work of its scholars helped underpin attitudes to slavery.

Professor Martin Millett, who will oversee the work, says "it is reasonable to assume that, like many large British institutions during the colonial era, the university will have benefited directly or indirectly from, and contributed to, the practices of the time."

Cambridge says the study is part of a "wider reflection" on the links between slavery and universities in Britain and the United States.