David Willetts, Minister for Universities & Science, has announced the appointment of four new independent academic members to the governing body, the Council, of the Arts and Humanities Research Council (AHRC). Council members are appointed by the Minister for Universities and Science and are responsible for the overall strategic direction of the AHRC including its key objectives and targets, and key decisions about the research direction of the AHRC.

Sir Alan Wilson, Chair of the AHRC, has confirmed that David Willetts, the Minister for Universities and Science, has appointed Professor John Butt, Professor Ewan McKendrick, Professor Andrew Thompson and Professor Sarah Worthington to the AHRC Council for four years with effect from 1 September 2010.

Sir Alan says: "It is with great pleasure that we welcome our new Council members. Sarah, John, Ewan and Andrew all have an impressive background in academia combined with extensive leadership experience."

The appointment of the Council members has been made in accordance with the OCPA Code of Practice.

Media Contact: Jake Gilmore, AHRC Communications Manager; T: 0797 099 4586,
E: j.gilmore@ahrc.ac.uk

Notes to Editors:

The AHRC Council is the governing body responsible for determining the strategy and policy of the AHRC. Members receive an honoraria of £6,850 per annum. Appointments are made in accordance with OCPA Code of Practice. These appointments have been made on the basis of merit. In accordance with Nolan recommendations there is a requirement for appointees' political activity to be made public. The appointees have not been involved in any relevant political activity in the last five years and do not hold any other ministerial appointments.

Arts & Humanities Research Council (AHRC): Each year the AHRC provides approximately £112 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. 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.

Biographical Summary:

Professor John Butt, University of Glasgow, Professor of Music
John Butt is Gardiner Professor of Music at the University of Glasgow and musical director of Edinburgh's Dunedin Consort. As an undergraduate at Cambridge University, he held the office of organ scholar at King's College. Continuing as a graduate student working on the music of Bach he received his PhD in 1987. He was subsequently a lecturer at the University of Aberdeen and a Fellow of Magdalene College Cambridge, joining the faculty at UC Berkeley in 1989 as University Organist and Professor of Music. In Autumn 1997 he returned to Cambridge as a University Lecturer and Fellow of King's College, and in October 2001 he took up his current post at Glasgow.

His books include Bach Interpretation (1990), a handbook on Bach’s Mass in B Minor (1991), Music Education and the Art of Performance in the German Baroque (1994). Playing with History (2002) marked a new tack, examining the broad culture of historically informed performance and attempting to explain and justify it as a contemporary phenomenon. He is also editor or joint editor of both the Cambridge and Oxford Companions to Bach and of the Cambridge History of Seventeenth Century Music (2005). His book on Bach’s Passions, Bach’s Dialogue with Modernity, was published in 2010, and explores the ways in which Bach's passion settings relate to some of the broader concepts of modernity, such as subjectivity and time consciousness.

John Butt’s conducting engagements with the Dunedin Consort (2003-) have included major Baroque repertory and several new commissions. His recording of Messiah in its first performed version (Dublin, 1742) was released by Linn Records in 2006 and received the ClassicFM/Gramophone award in the Baroque Vocal Category in 2007 and the MIDEM award for Baroque Music in 2008.  Linn released his recording of Bach's Matthew Passion in March 2008 (which was ClassicFM Magazine’s Recording of the Month), and Handel’s Acis and Galatea in November 2008 (which was Gramophone’s Editor’s Choice and Recording of the Month). His recording of Bach’s Mass in B Minor was released in May 2010 and was also Editor’s Choice in Gramophone. He has been guest conductor with the Philharmonia Baroque Orchestra, the Göttingen Handel Festspiele, the Berkeley Festival, the RSAMD Chamber Orchestra and Chorus and the Irish Baroque Orchestra. He conducts Bach's Christmas Oratorio with the Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment in December 2010. John Butt also continues to be active as a solo organist and harpsichordist. Eleven recordings on organ, harpsichord and clavichord have been released by Harmonia Mundi. As conductor or organist he has performed throughout the world, including recent trips to Germany, France, Poland, Israel and Korea.

In 2003 John Butt was elected to Fellowship of the Royal Society of Edinburgh and received the Dent Medal of the Royal Musical Association. That year his book, Playing with History, was shortlisted for the British Academy's annual Book Prize. In 2006 he was elected Fellow of the British Academy and began a two-year Leverhulme Major Research Fellowship for his research on Bach's Passions. In January 2011 he will become the fifth recipient of the Royal Academy of Music/Kohn Foundation's Bach Prize, for his work in the performance and scholarship of Bach.

Professor Ewan McKendrick, University of Oxford, Pro-Vice-Chancellor and Professor of Law
Professor McKendrick is Pro-Vice-Chancellor (Education, Academic Services and University Collections) and Herbert Smith Professor of English Private Law. He is a Fellow of Lady Margaret Hall and a Delegate of Oxford University Press. He gained his LLB Hons from Edinburgh University and his BCL from Oxford. His main areas of research are contract law, commercial law and tort law and he has published widely in those fields. He was called to the Bar in 1998 and is a barrister at 3 Verulam Buildings and a Master of the Bench at Gray’s Inn.  Prior to his appointment as a Pro-Vice-Chancellor he was Head of the Law Faculty. As PVC, Professor McKendrick is responsible for the University’s strategy and policies for teaching, learning, student support and admissions, as well having the oversight of Oxford’s libraries, museums and collections and its computing and language teaching services. In July 2010 he was appointed Registrar of the University of Oxford and he will take up this post on 1 January 2011.

Professor Andrew Thompson, University of Leeds, Pro-Vice Chancellor and Professor of History
Andrew Thompson is Professor of Imperial and Global History at the University of Leeds. He studied for his D.Phil at Nuffield College in Oxford under the supervision of John Darwin, and was later a fixed-term Tutorial Fellow in Modern History at Corpus Christi College. The major strand of his research interests have focused on the effects of empire on British private and public life during the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, including Imperial Britain (2000) and The Empire Strikes Back (2005). He has also written on Anglo-Argentine relations, colonial South Africa, empire migration and migrant remittances, and public memories of empire. A project on Asian Britishness, undertaken with the Institute of Public Policy Research and Tameside Metropolitan Borough Council, led to an invitation to address the Prime Minister's Strategy Unit of the subject in 2005. His recent book is Empire and Globalisation. Networks of People, Goods and Capital in the British World, 1850-1914 co-authored with Professor Gary Magee (Cambrdige, 2010), and he is currently editing a volume for the Oxford History of the British Empire series entitled Britain's Experience of Empire during the Twentieth Century. He co-founded Leeds University's Institute of Colonial and Postcolonial Studies, and was also Chair of the Executive of its Applied Centre for Interdisciplinary Ethics. In 2009 he took up the post of Pro-Vice Chancellor for Research at Leeds, having previously been Dean of the Faculty of Arts.

Professor Sarah Worthington, LSE, Professor of Law
Sarah Worthington is a Professor of Law at the London School of Economics and Political Science, and an Academic Member of 3/4 South Square, Gray’s Inn. She is now concluding her five-year term as the LSE’s Pro Director for Research and External Relations, with responsibility for research and academic innovation, the promotion and development of the LSE’s public engagement activities and its strategic alliances, and the fostering of its alternative income streams. 

She was an advisor on the review panel for the recent BIS Postgraduate Review, and is a member of the LSE’s Court of Governors and Council.

She has degrees in science and law from Australia, and a doctorate from the University of Cambridge. Before joining the LSE, she taught at Birkbeck College, London, and the University of Melbourne, Australia. She holds visiting appointments in Australia, Hong Kong and Belgium. She was elected to a Francqui Chair in 2009, elected a Fellow of the British Academy in 2009, appointed QC (honoris causa) in 2010, and elected Bencher of the Middle Temple in 2010.

She is a specialist in commercial equity, especially personal property and secured financing, and in company law. She has been President of the Society of Legal Scholars, a member of the Judicial Appointments Committee Diversity Forum, a member of the Advisory Council for the Study Group for a European Civil Code, a consultant to the UK Law Commission, and has participated as a member of working groups of the Bank of England Financial Markets Law Committee and the UK Company Law Review.