Members of the Leverhulme Trust Board are delighted to announce that Professor Gordon Marshall FBA, currently Vice-Chancellor at the University of Reading, is to become Director of the Leverhulme Trust with effect from 1st October 2011. He will succeed the present Director, Professor Sir Richard Brook who, after ten years at the Trust, will be retiring at the close of September 2011.
Professor Marshall has achieved distinction in many capacities. His own research interests have involved themes in the social sciences with emphasis on social exclusion, equality of opportunity, distributive justice and the culture of economic enterprise. He has taught at the Universities of Essex and of Bath and at the London School of Economics, prior to becoming Official Fellow in Sociology at Nuffield College, Oxford.
His association with research funding agencies has involved a span of three years as Chief Executive at the UK Economic and Social Research Council (2000-2002). His most recent activity, as Vice-Chancellor at the University of Reading (since 2003), has seen the introduction of major changes at the university in terms of teaching and research profile (climate change, health and food security), of organisational structure (the merger with the Henley Management College), and the expansion of the university’s facilities (the Minghella Centre for performing arts, the Enterprise Centre, and further residential and academic buildings).
Professor Marshall’s range of work in research, teaching and administration has given him wide experience in the sectors covered by the interests of the Trust. The Board is confident that the valued place of the Leverhulme Trust in the world of research, both in the UK and internationally, will be preserved and strengthened by Professor Marshall’s appointment.
March 2011