Exeter academic to head research council

The announcement was made by the Secretary of State for Business, Innovation and Skills, Lord Mandelson. He said: “I’d like to welcome Professor Rylance as the new chief executive of the AHRC. His first rate academic and research background will be a great asset to the Council.”

Professor Rylance, who is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Arts, a Founding Fellow of the English Association and a member of the Higher Education Committee of the English Association and the Executive of the Council of Deans of Arts, Social Sciences and Humanities has been appointed for four years and will take up the post on 1 September 2009 as the successor to Professor Philip Esler.

Professor Rylance has been at the helm of School of Arts, Languages and Literatures, confirming Exeter's reputation as one of the country's leading institutions for the arts, languages and literatures. Drama, English and Russian were all ranked in the UK's top 5, with French, German and Italian in the top 10 according to The Times Good University Guide 2010. The rankings were based on performance in key areas such as research quality, graduate prospects, student satisfaction and entry requirements.

Prior to moving to Exeter in 2003 he was at the then Anglia Polytechnic University in Cambridge which he left as Dean of Arts and Letters. His own research is in English, focusing on nineteenth and twentieth century literature and the intellectual and literary history of those periods. Professor Rylance has delivered hundreds of papers, given numerous key note addresses and guest lectured throughout the UK and in America. He was Chair of the English Sub-panel of the RAE 2008 and a member of Main Panel M (Languages and Literature). He served for three years as Chair of the Council for College and University English (CCUE).

Professor Rick Rylance, of the University of Exeter, comments: “I’m delighted at this opportunity. We’re in challenging times and challenges need strong responses. I look forward to working with the government and the arts and humanities community over the next few years to make our case and to develop the infrastructure for our research. We have genuinely world-leading arts and humanities research in the UK and with it our future is better and brighter.”

In his new role as Chief Executive, Professor Rylance will be managing the AHRC which provides approximately £104 million of Government funds to support research and postgraduate study in the arts and humanities, from languages and law, archaeology and English literature to design and the creative and performing arts. Arts and humanities researchers constitute over a quarter of all research-active staff in higher education sector.

The Chair of the AHRC Sir Alan Wilson said: “I am really pleased that Rick Rylance has agreed to join AHRC. He brings a wealth of experience and comes at a time for the Council when we have excellent foundations and there are tremendous opportunities for Rick to help to lead us into an exciting future.”