Our next President and Vice-Chancellor: Listening to views

02 Mar 2023

A message from Philippa Hird, Chair of our University's Board of Governors

On 1 March we announced that we are beginning the search for Professor Dame Nancy Rothwell’s successor when her term as President and Vice-Chancellor concludes in summer 2024. Our first step in this process is to listen to a wide range of views from across our University community on the role of the President and Vice-Chancellor and on what kind of person we should be looking for.

To do this, the Appointment Panel, which is created by the Nominations Committee of the Board to oversee the President and Vice-Chancellor recruitment process, will be running a series of one-hour workshops. These will take place through March, April and the first week in May 2023 for each academic School, PS staff including frontline and office staff, our student community and our Alumni.

We are looking for each workshop to be attended by a representative group of up to 30 volunteers from each of these areas. We will also be consulting with Trade Union representatives, our General Assembly, Senate, Board of Governors and Senior Leadership Team. 

To help shape the context for a discussion on the role and requirements for a new President and Vice-Chancellor, the sessions will be a chance to look back over our 200-year history and to look forward and think about the foundations that we are laying for the next 100 years.

Ultimately, your viewpoints and thoughts will feed into the development of a new job description for a future President and Vice-Chancellor and shape thinking across a global search process which will take at least the remainder of this calendar year to complete. By the end of this year, the Appointment Panel will aim to recommend a candidate for Board approval.

Arrangements for the workshops will be made over the coming days to suit the needs of each stakeholder group.

Best wishes

Philippa Hird

Chair of Board of Governors