Warwick announces next Vice-Chancellor and President
THE University of Warwick is to appoint Professor Stuart Croft as its next Vice-Chancellor and President. He will succeed Professor Sir Nigel Thrift in February 2016.
Sir George Cox, Pro-Chancellor and Chair of Council and chair of the joint selection committee of the Senate and Council, said he was delighted that Prof Croft had accepted the role.
“One of the many successes of Prof Sir Nigel Thrift’s outstanding period of service has been the fulfilment of a vision to establish Warwick as a globally-connected university. This has been reflected in the process to find his successor, which has seen a world-wide search which attracted top-level candidates from North America, Australasia and continental Europe, as well as from the UK’s leading universities,” he said.
“The result has been an outstanding short-list from which Prof Croft was chosen as the best equipped to build on what Warwick has achieved so far. I am confident he will implement and extend a strategy which will further strengthen Warwick’s position amongst the world’s leading universities.”
Prof Croft is currently Provost at Warwick. As Provost, he leads on the academic development of the university, including academic resourcing strategy and implementation, working with the Vice-Chancellor, Pro-Vice-Chancellors and with Chairs of Faculty in developing and supporting academic departments.
He joined Warwick in January 2007 as Professor of International Security in the Department of Politics and International Studies (PaIS) and was appointed as Warwick’s Pro-Vice-Chancellor for Research (Arts and Social Sciences) in 2011. Prior to that he was Professor of International Relations and Head of the School of Social Sciences at the University of Birmingham.
Prof Croft said: “It is an incredible honour to have been appointed Vice-Chancellor of a university as amazing as Warwick. When I applied to study here as a student, 35 years ago, the university was around a fifth the size it is now, having been in existence only 15 years. Now it is a university of 24,000 students, with an international reputation for its research quality and links between academia and industry. In the coming years, we will build on this to put ourselves at the global forefront of new insights into the practices of learning.
“What is strongest about Warwick is our community – our ability to pull together but also to challenge ourselves, to always be looking for the next development. Warwick’s community – our staff and students, but also alumni and friends in Coventry, Warwickshire, the Midlands and beyond – is the heart of what has made Warwick so strong, and is what makes the prospect of being Vice-Chancellor here so exciting.”
Prof Croft will be Warwick’s sixth Vice-Chancellor and the first to be appointed from within Warwick’s academic leadership team. He is also the third senior Warwick academic in the past four years to be appointed as the head of a leading UK university.
