New Chief Executive arrives at the Arts and Humanities Research Council

This week sees the arrival of Professor Rick Rylance as the new Chief Executive and Deputy Chair of the Arts and Humanities Research Council (AHRC).

Before taking up the post of AHRC Chief Executive, Rick Rylance was Head of the School of Arts, Languages and Literatures at the University of Exeter. Prior to moving to Exeter in 2003 he had been at the then Anglia Polytechnic University in Cambridge which he left as Dean of Arts and Letters. He was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society of Arts (FRSA) in 1998 and a Founding Fellow of the English Association in 1999. He chaired the Sub-Panel for English in RAE2008 and was a member of HEFCE’S Advisory Group on the development of the REF. His personal research interests are in nineteenth and twentieth-century literature and the literary, intellectual and scientific history of those periods.

Professor Rick Rylance said:
“Over the next few years I am looking forward tremendously to working with colleagues in the arts and humanities community and with Government to develop our world-class research achievements and demonstrate their importance culturally, academically, socially and economically at home and abroad. I’d like to thank the terrific work already done by my new colleagues at AHRC, and my predecessors in this role, which give such a strong basis on which to do this.”


source: AHRC website
http://www.ahrc.ac.uk/News/Latest/Pages/NewChiefExecutivearrives.aspx

JISC Advance brings together eight JISC services

As stated on the JISC site. A new organisation called JISC Advance launches this week. It will bring together eight established JISC services as part of JISC’s ongoing strategy to deliver world-class support to colleges and universities.

The organisation will be led by new managing director Guy Lambert and will co-ordinate JISC Digital Media, JISC infoNet, JISC Legal, JISCMail, JISC Netskills, JISC Procureweb, JISC TechDis and the JISC Regional Support Centre UK by centralising funding and business development opportunties.

Managing director Guy Lambert said: “All of these services are extremely well-respected within the education sector and receive good feedback from their users. JISC Advance will allow the services to reach new audiences, and will help our users to understand what we can collectively deliver for them.”

Guy Lambert joined JISC in January 2009, having previously worked in commercial and managerial roles at UK board level within the IT industry, in both the public and private sectors. His roles with Honeywell, Bull, Steria and the Foreign and Commonwealth Office have all involved managing operational improvement and cultural change, with a service focus.

JISC Advance will launch at the Association for Learning Technology conference (ALT-C) at the University of Manchester on 9 September 2009.

http://www.jisc.ac.uk/news/stories/2009/09/jiscadvance.aspx