Contributors

 
Professor Margaret Atack, Pro Vice Chancellor for Research, University of Leeds

Margaret Atack graduated from University College London with First Class Honours in French. After holding temporary lectureships in French at University College London, University of Southampton, University College Cardiff and University of Leeds, she was appointed to a permanent lectureship at Leeds in 1981. Margaret moved to Sunderland Polytechnic in 1989 to take up the post of Head of the School of Humanities. In 1992 she became Director of the School of Social and International Studies and Professor of Modern French Studies at the then University of Sunderland. She was appointed to the Chair of French and Headship of the French Department at the University of Leeds in 1993. Margaret was Arts Faculty Research Dean in 2002-3, Dean of the Faculty of Arts 2003-6, and is currently Pro-Vice-Chancellor for Research.

Margaret's current research is centred upon a major three-year AHRC-funded research project, awarded in June 2006: ‘Narratives of the Second World War and the Occupation in France since 1939: Cultural Production and National Identity'. Involving collaboration with Professor Christopher Lloyd of Durham University and colleagues at the Leeds Electronic Text Centre, the project will employ a full-time postdoctoral research assistant and also fund two PhD studentships. Based in the Leeds Humanities Research Institute, it will undertake a systematic investigation of current critical and historiographical understanding of the evolution of postwar representations of this crucial period in French history and its aftermath.

Margaret is the Chair of the French sub-panel in the 2008 Research Assessment Exercise.

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Professor Sir Richard Brook, Director, The Leverhulme Trust

Professor Brook graduated from the University of Leeds in 1962 with a degree in Ceramics prior to undertaking doctoral studies at MIT. He then went to the University of Southern California in Los Angeles as Assistant Professor of Materials Science before returning in 1970 to the UK Atomic Energy Research Establishment at Harwell. In 1974 Professor Brook became Professor and Head of the Department of Ceramics at the University of Leeds.

In 1988, Professor Brook moved to Germany to become a scientific member of the Max-Planck-Society and Director at the Institute of Metals Research in Stuttgart.  He is Honorary Professor at the University of Stuttgart.

In 1991, he returned to the UK as Professor and later Head of the Department of Materials Science at the University of Oxford.  Since 1994, he has taken leave of absence from the University of Oxford to hold first the position of Chief Executive at the UK Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (1994-2001) and subsequently that of Director at the Leverhulme Trust, the largest all-subject research support agency in the UK.

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Professor Jean Chambaz, Université Pierre et Marie Curie

Jean Chambaz, MD, received a doctorate es sciences. He is currently professor of cell biology at the Faculty of Medicine Pierre and Marie Curie and heads the department of clinical biochemistry at the hospital Pitié-Salpêtrière at Paris. He created an INSERM-UPMC research unit in the field of metabolism and intestinal differentiation in 1999, which merged in 2007 into the Research Center of Cordeliers, of which he is vice-director. After heading the doctoral school in physiology and pathophysiology from 2001 to 2005, he became director of the Institute of Doctoral Training at UPMC which enrolls about 3500 doctoral candidates in sciences and medicine from mathematics to public health. He has been elected at the scientific council and serves as vice-president for research of UPMC. He chairs the steering committee of the Council on Doctoral Education of the European University Association launched in 2008.

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Dr Andrew Dearing, Secretary General, European Industrial Research Management Association

As EIRMA's Secretary-General, Andrew is responsible for providing member companies with the opportunity to explore trends in effective R&D management and benchmark the quality of their activities.  He also works closely with the European Commission, the OECD and universities and public research organisations to identify the policies required to make R&D most effective.

Previously, Andrew spent 25 years as a researcher and research manager working in both public and private sectors.

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Jeffrey Defries, Chief Executive, CRAC: The Career Development Organisation

Jeffrey Defries took up position as Chief Executive of CRAC in April 2006. After early appointments in university administration, Jeffrey joined the Institute of Cancer Research in 1977, first as Deputy Secretary and then as Secretary. He was Assistant Director of the Science Museum between 1988 and 1998 before moving to London Business School where he held the post of Deputy Dean and Secretary from 1998 to 2001. He was Secretary and Group Director of Corporate Services of NHSU from 2002 - 2005.

CPFA qualified, Jeffrey has held a number of not-for-profit and charity board positions in the UK, Europe and the US and was, for a number of years, a visiting lecturer at the Civil Service College. Until June 2008 he maintained a role as Senior Advisor to EFMD (European Foundation for Management Development) and is currently a director of NICEC (National Institute for Careers Education and Counselling).


 
Professor Philip Esler, Chief Executive, Arts and Humanities Research Council

Philip Esler became Chief Executive of the AHRC in September 2005. Before becoming an academic, Professor Esler worked for 10 years as a litigation solicitor and then a barrister in Australia. In October 1992 he moved, with his family, to St Andrews, where he took up a position as Reader in New Testament. He was promoted to Professor of Biblical Criticism in St Andrews University in September 1995 and more recently served as its Vice-Principal for Research. He sat on the Board of Scottish Enterprise Fife in a personal capacity from 1999 to 2003. In 1984 he was awarded a D Phil from the University of Oxford (Magdalen College). His thesis was in the New Testament area and applied social-scientific ideas to Luke's Gospel and the Acts of the Apostles. He has published very extensively, particularly in the social-scientific analysis of New Testament and other biblical and apocryphal texts, and in New Testament theology.  He also has a recent monograph in the area of the Bible and the visual arts co-authored with a British artist.


 
Dr Patrick Hadoke, Research Fellow, Queens Medical Research Institute, University of Edinburgh

Dr Patrick Hadoke, Research Fellow, Queens Medical Research Institute, University of Edinburgh.  Patrick studied for a degree in Applied Chemistry at the Polytechnic of Newcastle-upon-Tyne followed by a PhD at Strathclyde University. His interests centre on the structure and function of the vascular wall in health and disease. He subsequently spent four years at the Royal Infirmary in Edinburgh.

In 1998 Patrick joined the Endocrinology Unit at the Western General Hospital. In 2006 he attained the tenure-tracked post of Senior Academic Fellow in Pharmacology. The central theme of Patrick's work is augmented by important collaborative research addressing the underlying mechanisms of vascular remodelling, the pathophysiology of aneurysm development and the role of environmental pollution in atherothrombosis. This includes development of state-of-the-art imaging techniques to allow improved investigation of vascular remodelling in vivo and in vitro. Patrick has established collaborations across the three Centres in the Queen's Medical Research Institute and with scientists in other Universities.

Patrick has also played a key role in the emerging research staff societies at the University of Edinburgh. These societies are run exclusively for and by research staff, and are already having a direct impact on researchers and on the support they receive at the University.

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Dr Janet Metcalfe, Chair and Head, Vitae
 
Janet Metcalfe is an independent educational consultant specialising in the personal, professional and career development of researchers. She is Chair and Head of Vitae, the successor to the UK GRAD Programme, and responsible for the strategic direction of the programme.

As part of her work with Vitae, Janet is involved with several working groups engaged with developing researchers. She is a founder member of the Rugby Team, a sector-led group tasked with measuring the effectiveness of skills development of researchers. She is an external advisor to the University of Oxford's Centre for Excellence in Preparing for Academic Practice (CETL). She also sits on the PRES (postgraduate survey) and CROS (research staff) steering groups. She was a member of the European Charter and Code (C&C) working group, which mapped existing UK legislation and practice against the C&C and the Concordat working group, which developed the new Concordat for the career development of researchers. 

Janet is currently chair of a European University Association working group reviewing existing practice on the systematic collection of data on doctoral candidates' career paths. This is part of the EC-funded DOC-CAREERS project to examine the relationship between doctoral training in Europe and the employability of doctoral graduates.

Her publications include the ‘What Do PhDs Do?' series of publications, based on the HESA DHLE first destinations survey of doctoral graduates. She is co-author of the HE Academy ESECT pamphlet ‘Employability and Doctoral Research Postgraduates' and a systematic review of literature relating to the post graduate researcher experience with the Institute of Education, University of London.

 
Martin Owen, Director, Medrus Learning

Martin Owen is currently an independent researcher and developer of innovative learning products and processes. He has been Director of Learning at Futurelab - an organisation founded by NESTA to explore innovation in learning with technology. He worked in HE for 20 years and has had periods with as many as 10 research assistants from a variety of disciplines in his laboratory. Many of these research assistants have since founded successful companies or have gone on to lead research teams themselves.

In the 1990's much of his work was on computer supported collaborative work and learning which supported communities of researchers across Europe and beyond. More recently he has been developing and researching the use of games for learning, mobile learning, intergenerational learning, and the use of social media. A continuing theme is the ways in which social technologies pay a part in the formation of identity of individuals and groups.
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He has been a schoolteacher and an Apple Distinguished Educator.

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Ellen Pearce, Director, Vitae

Ellen Pearce is Director of Vitae (which incorporates the work of the UK GRAD Programme and UKHERD) and of Researcher Development at CRAC. She is responsible for the work and activities of Vitae.

Working in the area of personal, professional and career development for researchers since 2002, Ellen has been involved in several key initiatives in the last few years. In 2006, she led the scoping study, funded by RCUK, for a national research career mapping tool, along with a project to explore the coordination of postgraduate researcher and research staff development in the UK. She has worked on the What do PhDs do? publication series and as a founding member of the UKHERD Taskforce, Ellen has worked closely with UKHERD to build activities for research staff into the vision and operations of the new Vitae programme.

Ellen has catalysed collaborative activities to support the development of enterprise skills for researchers, including co-authoring a recent report ‘Enterprise at work: exploring intrapreneurship in researcher development' published in 2008.

Ellen is passionate about people and career development and is a Myers Briggs practitioner.

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Professor Ella Ritchie, Pro-Vice-Chancellor Teaching and Learning, University of Newcastle

Ella Ritchie has been Pro-Vice-Chancellor (Teaching & Learning) at Newcastle University since July 2004, and was previously Postgraduate Dean in the Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences.  She has been actively involved nationally in the development of Research Masters and Doctoral programmes, and was a member of the Postgraduate Training Board of the Economic & Social Research Council (ESRC) from 2000-2004.  She also played a key role in the development of the doctoral cycle of the Bologna process and was co-ordinator of the Quality Network of the European University's Association Doctoral Programme Project.  She is currently involved with a number of national and regional initiatives; these include membership of the QAA Framework for Higher Education Qualifications Advisory Group, the Burgess Implementation Steering Group and a number of regional skills groups.  She has a particular interest in Europeanisation and internationalisation of the curriculum.  Her background is in political science and her interests include policy transfer and policy learning in the EU, and the relationship between States and the EU.



 
Professor Mary Ritter, Pro-Rector for Postgraduate and International Affairs, Imperial College London

Mary read Zoology for her BSc in Oxford and although she enjoyed this very much, she developed an interest in basic science at the interface with medicine. She became converted to immunology during a Master's course, and followed this with a PhD studying the development of the immune system - the focus of her research career ever since. Mary always enjoyed teaching too, which started when she was a PhD student, giving tutorials to undergraduates. Since then she has set up new BSc and MSc courses, and taught on these and many others. Her first postgraduate academic management role was as vice dean (education) at the Royal Postgraduate Medical School (now the Hammersmith campus of Imperial). Mary then established the first graduate school at Imperial (the graduate school of life sciences and medicine or GSLSM) and was delighted when the sister school for engineering and physical sciences (GSEPS) was set up two years later using the same model.

Mary Ritter was appointed pro-rector for postgraduate affairs in 2004, adding international affairs to her responsibilities in 2006. Her remit includes both to work to respond to and influence national and international postgraduate policy, and to work internally to coordinate the training activities of the two graduate schools. Mary is vice-chair and a founding member of the European Universities Association Council for Doctoral Education (EUA-CDE). She is committed to creating and facilitating a vibrant interdisciplinary environment and providing PhD students and postdocs with the best possible skills training and opportunities for the future.

Richard Reeves, Director, DEMOS

Richard Reeves has recently been appointed Director of DEMOS.  Richard is a former director of futures at The Work Foundation and has worked as an economics and social affairs journalist for both the Guardian and The Observer.  His latest book is John Stuart Mill - Victorian Firebrand, an intellectual biography of the liberal philosopher.