At Council on Wednesday 16 July, the following academic promotions were approved:

Personal Chair

A total of 32 recommendations for promotion to Professor, with effect from 1 August 2014, were approved for:

Faculty of Business & Law

Mr Filippo Lorenzon

Dr Jussi Parikka

Dr John Coggon

Faculty of Engineering & the Environment

Dr Patrick James

Dr Suleiman Sharkh

Dr Anna Barney

Dr Atul Bhaskar

Dr John Shrimpton

Dr Malcolm Smith

Faculty of Humanities

Dr Laurie Stras

Dr Graeme Earl

Dr Barry Sloan

Dr Andrea Reiter

Faculty of Medicine

Dr Michael Moore

Mr Colin Johnson

Dr Sarah Ennis

Dr Jon Strefford

Faculty of Natural & Environmental Sciences

Dr Karen Lillycrop

Dr Robert Marsh

Dr Lisa McNeill

Dr Martin Solan

Dr Graeme Day

Dr Marcel Utz

Dr J Malcolm East

Faculty of Physical Sciences & Engineering

Dr Mark French

Dr Alexander Belyaev

Dr Hendrick Ulbricht   

Dr Otto Muskens

Faculty of Social & Human Sciences

Dr Marcus Grace

Dr Christopher Howls

Dr Traute Meyer

Dr Will Jennings

Professorial Fellow

3 recommendations for promotion to Professorial Fellow, with effect from 1 August 2014 were approved for:

Mr Philip Hoare (Humanities)

Dr Nicholas Sheron (Medicine)

Dr Gilberto Brambilla (Physical Sciences and Engineering)

University Director of Education

1 recommendation for promotion to Director of Education, with effect from 1 August 2014 was approved for:

Dr Edgar Meyer (Business and Law)

University Director of Enterprise

2 recommendations for promotion to Director of Enterprise, with effect from 1 August 2014 were approved for:

Dr Malcolm Smith (Business and Law)

Dr Phillip Warwick (Natural and Environmental Sciences)

Honorary Chair

2 recommendations for promotion to Honorary Professor, with effect from 1 August 2014, were approved for:

Dr Richard Sanders (Natural and Environmental Sciences)

Dr Margaret Thompson (Social and Human Sciences)

It has been announced that Jesus College, Oxford has resolved to elect Professor Sir Nigel Shadbolt as its next Principal. He will be formally elected to the post in October 2014.

Sir Nigel is presently Professor of Artificial Intelligence and heads the University’s Web and Internet Science Group.

Sir Nigel has been an advisor to the UK Government across a range of data related topics since 2009. In 2012, with Sir Tim Berners-Lee, Sir Nigel founded the Open Data Institute. He was knighted in the Queen’s Birthday Honours in 2013 for services to science and engineering.

In addition to his role at Jesus College, Sir Nigel will continue his scientific research, taking up a professorship at the University of Oxford Department of Computer Science. On his appointment at Oxford, Sir Nigel will remain as Chairman of the Open Data Institute and continue his advisory role to the UK Government.

Sir Nigel will also continue to lead the SOCIAM project involving researchers from Southampton, Oxford and Edinburgh and he will remain closely involved in both the Web Science Institute and Web Science Trust amongst other initiatives. “We are all thrilled for Nigel – this is an exciting new opportunity for him. But we are also very pleased that he will stay very much engaged with the Web Science and Open Data activities that he has contributed so much to, both here at Southampton and globally, as well as the fact that we will continue to work together on these and other collaborative projects,” said Professor Dame Wendy Hall, Dean of Physical Sciences and Engineering.

He will succeed the current Jesus College Principal, Lord Krebs, in August 2015.

One of the hallmarks of a top class Business School is a triple accreditation comprising AMBA, The Association of MBAs (based in London), EQUIS, the European Quality Improvement System (based in Brussels) and AACSB – The Association to Advance Collegiate Schools of Business (based in Tampa, Florida, with an Asia office in Singapore).
 
The Management School already has AMBA accreditation and we have now taken a significant step forward on our journey toward becoming a world class Business School, having successfully submitted our AACSB pre-validation documents.
 
Head of School, Jean Chen said, “This is an excellent demonstration of the commitment of our people to make our future better and our determination to develop our Management School into a world-class Business School.  This was a great team effort and I would like to thank the whole team involved in pulling together our submission.  It involved working to very tight deadlines, including weekends and late nights.”
 
Adam Wheeler, Deputy VC, also recognised the effort involved, saying, “I would like to add my thanks to all those involved in this important piece of work, under pressure and on a short time scale.”
 
The process of AACSB accreditation will take some years to achieve, but our submission represents a major milestone on our journey.

Last month, the University officially unveiled the historic Rothenstein Mural that hangs in the Senate Room. The vibrantly coloured mural by Sir William Rothenstein, former Principal of the Royal College of Art, was created in 1916 as a memorial to members of British universities serving in the Great War. 

The mural was first displayed at the 11th Exhibition of the Arts and Crafts Exhibition Society at the Royal Academy in the autumn of 1916. It depicts an academic procession and the conferring of a degree on an ‘unknown soldier’ undergraduate by the then Chancellor of Cambridge University. 

Presented to the University of Southampton in 1959, by the artist’s son, Sir John Rothenstein, the work represents a unique piece of art history. It features many key academics from the era of the Great War, including Vice-Chancellors and Chancellors, and the Poet Laureate Robert Bridges. 

Do have a look at the mural in the Senate room in B37.

Lijia Xu, a sailing gold medalist at the London 2012 Olympics, will be joining the Southampton Business School.   Lijia has a bachelor degree from Shanghai Jiaotong University, a strategic partner of the University, and will study for an MSc in International Management after her Pre-Master programme which starts in September.

Jean Chen, Head of School, explained, “It is quite unusual for athletes to study abroad whilst still actively representing their country, however I think it is fair to say that Xu saw that we could offer both high quality education and, because of our location, a suitable environment for her to continue training for the next Olympic Games.  We are looking forward to welcoming her to the Southampton Business School.”