This week sees the arrival of Professor Rick Rylance as the new Chief Executive and Deputy Chair of the Arts and Humanities Research Council (AHRC).
 
Before taking up the post of AHRC Chief Executive, Rick Rylance was Head of the School of Arts, Languages and Literatures at the University of Exeter.  Prior to moving to Exeter in 2003 he had been at the then Anglia Polytechnic University in Cambridge which he left as Dean of Arts and Letters. He was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society of Arts (FRSA) in 1998 and a Founding Fellow of the English Association in 1999. He chaired the Sub-Panel for English in RAE2008 and was a member of HEFCE’S Advisory Group on the development of the REF. His personal research interests are in nineteenth and twentieth-century literature and the literary, intellectual and scientific history of those periods.
 
In his first few weeks in post Professor Rylance will be meeting with colleagues from the US Library of Congress and the US National Science Foundation. These meetings will help to build on the relationships we already have with both organisations that allow UK academics access to their resources for the benefit of both countries.
 
Professor Rick Rylance said:
“Over the next few years I am looking forward tremendously to working with colleagues in the arts and humanities community and with Government to develop our world-class research achievements and demonstrate their importance culturally, academically, socially and economically at home and abroad. I’d like to thank the terrific work already done by my new colleagues at AHRC, and my predecessors in this role, which give such a strong basis on which to do this.”
 
The appointment is for four years in the first instance.
 

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Notes to the editor
AHRC Media contact Jake Gilmore, Communications Manager, 0117 9876 773

About the Arts and Humanities Research Council- Each year the AHRC provides approximately £102 million from the Government to support research and postgraduate study in the arts and humanities, from languages and law, archaeology and English literature to design and creative and performing arts. In any one year, the AHRC makes approximately 700 research awards and around 1,350 postgraduate awards. Awards are made after a rigorous peer review process, to ensure that only applications of the highest quality are funded. Arts and humanities researchers constitute over a quarter of all research-active staff in the higher education sector. The quality and range of research supported by this investment of public funds not only provides social and cultural benefits but also contributes to the economic success of the UK