Professor Rebecca Hoyle and Professor John Holloway 聽have been appointed jointly to the shared role of Associate Vice-President (Interdisciplinary Research). They will also take responsibility for research culture across the University.
John has just ended a term as Associate Dean Research in the Faculty of Medicine and Rebecca is Associate Dean Research for the Faculty of Social Sciences. They have each been appointed to 0.5 FTE of the Associate Vice-President (Interdisciplinary Research) role from 1 September 2021 and will retain academic duties, particularly teaching and research, in their current Schools.
John and Rebecca will be entering the role during a busy period, and one of significant change, with priorities including:
- Exploring the creation of an interdisciplinary Sustainability and Resilience Hub as part of our Environmental Sustainability Strategy.
- Ensuring that we respond positively to the recommendations from the reviews of our three University Strategic Interdisciplinary Research Institutes
- Developing plans to improve our research culture.
- Ensuring that the University remains well-positioned to respond to the changing external funding environment for interdisciplinary and mission-oriented research.
Mark Spearing, Vice-President (Enterprise and Research) said: 鈥淭he appointment panel and I were very excited by the opportunity to appoint Rebecca and John as a job share.聽 While this was not the intention entering into the process, it emerged as a very strong preference for the panel to address a particularly busy time for the interdisciplinary agenda, and a time of positive change in terms of research culture.鈥�
鈥淛ohn and Rebecca were the outstanding candidates for the role.聽 They offered very complementary skill sets and experience relevant to the role. They both have strong personal track records undertaking interdisciplinary research themselves, as well as providing leadership to encourage and support others to work in an interdisciplinary manner.鈥�
