Speaker biographies

Professor Peter Coaldrake, AO
Vice-Chancellor of Queensland University of Technology, Chair of Universities Australia and Chair of OECD-IMHE

Professor Peter Coaldrake is Vice-Chancellor of Queensland University of Technology (QUT), a position he took up in April 2003. Earlier in his career he served for four years as Chair (CEO) of Queensland’s Public Sector Management Commission, the body established by the Goss government to overhaul Queensland’s public sector.

Professor Coaldrake is Chair of the Board of Universities Australia. In this role he has, among other things, led crucial university-government consultations on key changes to the higher education sector including the development of the new Tertiary Education Quality and Standards Agency; and instigated National Policy Forums on broad issues including climate change and open access to government, science and research. He devotes time and energy to advancing Australia's higher education endeavours, nationally and internationally.

In January 2011, he became Chair of the Board of the Organisation for Economic Development – Institutional Management in Higher Education (OECD-IMHE).

A dual Fulbright Scholar, Peter Coaldrake chaired Queensland's 150th anniversary celebrations in 2009 and chairs a number of prominent cultural organisations. He is the author or editor of a number of books and monographs, including Working the System, Government in Queensland (University of Queensland Press, 1989), and co-author (with Lawrence Stedman) of On the Brink. Australia’s Universities Confronting their Future (University of Queensland Press, 1998), and Academic Work in the Twenty-First Century (DETYA, Occasional Paper Series 99-4).

Dora Meredith, President, University of Birmingham Guild of Students

Dora Meredith, who recently graduated with a BA in History and Politics, was elected President of the University of Birmingham Guild of Students in March 2010 and is a member of the University Council for the 2010-11 session. She has been elected to sit on the National Union of Students' Higher Education Committee this year.

Dora's manifesto for election covered issues such as increasing employability, lowering crime in Selly Oak and ensuring students receive value for money. Since being elected, she has also emphasised her hopes of furthering engagement of students in the Guild, particularly postgraduate and international students.

Prior to being elected Dora was Chair of Birmingham University Labour Students, was a Guild Councillor for three years and wrote for the features section of the student newspaper, Redbrick. Her interests include music, politics, literature and sport.

As President, Dora represents the University in the Aldwych Group, the student unions of the Russell Group. She serves on the Strategy, Planning and Resources Committee.

Tom Thompson, President, Birmingham City University Students' Union

As well as being President of the Students’ Union at Birmingham City University, Tom Thompson is a student governor at the university. He was previously President of the Students’ Union at Havering College of Further and Higher Education from 1998-2000.

Before beginning his BSc course in Television Technology and Production at Birmingham City University’s Millennium Point campus, Tom spent three years working as a team leader for the Prince’s Trust Team Programme, based in East London.

Professor Janet Beer, Vice-Chancellor, Oxford Brookes University

Professor Janet Beer took up her post as Vice Chancellor of Oxford Brookes University in 2007. She is a graduate of Reading and Warwick Universities and also held a fellowship at Yale University. She worked for the Inner London Education Authority between 1983 and 1989 and has fulfilled academic and leadership roles at Warwick, Roehampton and Manchester Metropolitan.

Professor Beer holds a number of national positions and is the current chair of the steering group for the National Student Survey (HEFCE). She sits on the Advisory Board of the Higher Education Policy Institute, is a Board member of the Equality Challenge Unit, a Board member of Universities UK, a member of the Financial Sustainability Strategy Group (HEFCE), a member of the Advisory Group: Matched funding scheme for voluntary giving (HEFCE), a member of the Editorial Board of the Journal of American Studies and, in August 2009, became the Chair of the University Alliance.

Professor Beer has an established record of research in late nineteenth and early twentieth century American literature and culture, and contemporary Canadian women's writing. She has published widely in these fields and is currently completing a study of the late writing of Edith Wharton.

Anthony McClaran, Chief Executive, QAA

Anthony McClaran took up post as Chief Executive of QAA on 1 October 2009, after nearly six years as Chief Executive at UCAS, where he had worked in senior management roles since 1995.

A graduate in English and American Literature from the University of Kent, Anthony began his career at the University of Warwick where, among other posts, he was Admissions Officer.

In 1992 he moved to the University of Hull to take up the post of Academic Registrar, with responsibility for an office which included recruitment, admissions, student records, international affairs and the internal allocation of resources. He was later appointed Acting Registrar and Secretary.

Anthony sat on the Council of the University of Gloucestershire from 1997 until 2005 and in September 2007 was appointed Chair of Council, a post he relinquished on taking up his QAA role. He served on Professor Schwartz’s Admissions to HE Steering Group, the HE Group for the Tomlinson Review of 14-19 Qualifications, the SHA Commission on Post-qualification Application (PQA) and Sir Alan Wilson’s Consultation Group on Improving the HE Applications Process.

He is a director of the Inspiring Futures Foundation, and a school governor. Anthony also chairs Gloucestershire First's Employment and Skills Advisory Panel. He is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Arts and the Chartered Management Institute, a Freeman of the Company of Educators and a member of the Honourable Company of Gloucestershire.

Professor Jonathan Bate CBE, Professor of Shakespeare and Renaissance Literature, Warwick University

Professor Jonathan Bate is well known as a biographer, critic, broadcaster and Shakespeare scholar. He has wide-ranging research interests in Shakespeare and Renaissance Literature, Romanticism, biography and life-writing, ecocriticism, contemporary poetry and theatre history. He is a Fellow of both the British Academy and the Royal Society of Literature, as well as an Honorary Fellow of St Catharine’s College, Cambridge. Before moving to Warwick in 2003 he had been a Fellow of Trinity Hall, Cambridge, and then King Alfred Professor of English Literature at the University of Liverpool (1990-2003).

Professor Bate is on the Board of the Royal Shakespeare Company and the Council of the Arts and Humanities Research Council, broadcasts regularly for the BBC, writes for the Guardian, Times, Times Literary Supplement and Sunday Telegraph, and has held visiting posts at Harvard, Yale and UCLA. In 2006 he was awarded a CBE in the Queen’s 80th Birthday Honours for his services to higher education.

Jonathan's most recent book is Soul of the Age, parts of which were dramatised as The Man from Stratford, a one-man play for Simon Callow, a commission of the Ambassador Theatre Group, which toured regional theatres in the summer of 2010 prior to an official opening at the Edinburgh Festival in August. A world tour is planned for this year.

Professor Brian Cox OBE, Professor of Particle Physics, University of Manchester

Professor Brian Cox began his career not as a physicist but as a pop star, first with the band Dare from 1986 until 1992, then with D’Ream, whose song 'Things Can Only Get Better' was used by Tony Blair as the Labour Party election song in 1997. During the D'Ream years Professor Cox obtained a first class honours degree in physics from the University of Manchester and a PhD in High Energy Particle Physics at the DESY laboratory in Hamburg.

In 2005, Brian Cox was granted a Royal Society University Research Fellowship and in 2009 became Professor of Particle Physics at the University of Manchester. He works on the ATLAS experiment at the Large Hadron Collider at CERN in Geneva.

Professor Cox has received numerous awards for his work in publicising science and in October 2010 received an OBE for his work in science.

With his ability to present science in an engaging manner, Brian Cox has inspired many audiences around the globe, with talks at the Australian Science Festival, the World Economic Forum (China 2008 & Davos 2009), and the Canadian Nuclear Association among many others. He writes a regular science column for the Sun newspaper, has published three books, and is a popular television and radio broadcaster.

Professor Julia King CBE, Vice Chancellor, Aston University

After an academic career at Cambridge University, Julia King joined Rolls-Royce plc in 1994, where she held a number of senior business and engineering posts. She returned to higher education in 2004 as Principal of the Engineering Faculty at Imperial College, London, and became Vice-Chancellor of Aston University in December 2006.

Professor King advises Government as a member of the Management Board of the Department for Business, Innovation and Skills, and the Committee on Climate Change, and through the King Review, published in 2008. She was also a member of the Independent Review of Higher Education Funding and Student Finance which reported in October 2010. Julia is the UK's Low Carbon Business Ambassador, and a member of the World Economic Forum Automotive Industry Agenda Council and the Governing Board of the European Institute of Innovation and Technology. Her work has been recognised by the Grunfeld, Bengough, Kelvin and John Collier medals. Professor King is a Fellow of the Royal Academy of Engineering and was awarded a CBE in July 1999.