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Professor Bob Allison |
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Professor Paul Layzell |
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Professor Joanne Wright |
Following an open recruitment process the University has appointed three new Pro-Vice-Chancellors (PVCs), who will provide strong new senior academic leadership at Sussex, working with the Vice-Chancellor and colleagues in the Executive Group.
Professor Paul Layzell will be appointed PVC (Resources) and Deputy Vice-Chancellor. He will provide leadership on business planning and resource allocation, and will be appointed as DVC following on from Professor Tony Moore when he steps down this summer.
Professor Layzell is currently Vice-President for University Development at the University of Manchester. He managed the project to bring together UMIST (University of Manchester Institute of Science and Technology) and the University of Manchester to form a new, single institution in 2004. Prior to that he was a Pro-Vice-Chancellor at UMIST with responsibility for finance and estate, head of the Computation department and a professor of software management.
Professor Bob Allison will be appointed PVC (Research), taking responsibility for the research agenda at Sussex. Professor Allison is currently Dean of the Faculty of Social Sciences and Health at Durham University. A physical geographer, he was previously head of Durham's geography department.
Professor Joanne Wright will be appointed as PVC (Education) with responsibility for teaching and learning and the student experience. Professor Wright has been Dean of the Faculty of History and Social Sciences at Royal Holloway, University of London since 2002 and is a professor of international relations.
In addition to their other PVC responsibilities, Professors Allison and Wright will provide senior management support and advice to individual Deans.
Reporting the appointments, the Vice-Chancellor, Professor Alasdair Smith, said: "This open recruitment process has brought forward some exceptional candidates and has created a very strong academic leadership team that is well equipped to take forward the University's agenda, and to make a step change in the performance of the whole institution."
Professor Allison will start at Sussex on 1 September, and all three are expected to take up their posts by the start of the new academic year. Specific start dates will be announced once they have been agreed.
The full set of roles and responsibilities for the new PVCs will be published in the autumn.
The composition of the Vice-Chancellor's Executive Group is Vice-Chancellor, Deputy Vice-Chancellor, PVC (Research), PVC (Education), Registrar & Secretary, Director of Finance and Director of Human Resources.