University of Bradford celebrates appointment of 50th Anniversary Chairs

The new Chairs, all outstanding academics who have achieved distinction in their fields, will be responsible for advancing their subjects nationally and internationally and contributing to driving forward the University as an international centre of excellence.

The University received its Royal Charter in 1966 and is proud to be one of the world’s leading technology universities. The new Chairs’ role will be to lead the delivery of the University’s strategy of being a world leader in cutting-edge research, knowledge transfer to enhance economic development and, through outstanding teaching, producing graduates who will make a difference to people and society.

In particular, the University, with its elite academics, will bring its strengths to bear on its three key themes, namely advanced healthcare, innovative engineering and manufacturing, and supporting sustainable societies, helping to solve three of the major issues facing the world.

Professor Brian Cantor, Vice-Chancellor of the University, said: “Our 50^th anniversary will be a significant milestone in the history and progress of the University. Over the last 50 years we have established a worldwide reputation as a great technology university committed to cutting-edge research that impacts directly on society and people’s lives, and we are looking forward to maintaining and enhancing our contribution to society over the next 50 years.

“We are absolutely delighted to welcome our new Chairs and look forward tremendously to working with them. The University addresses the major issues of the 21^st Century including sustainable development and climate change, poverty, ill-health and disease, production and manufacturing, and terrorism and security. Our new Anniversary Chairs will enable us to make an even greater contribution in these fields.”

The new Anniversary Chairs are:

• Allan Kellehear, Professor of End of Life Care
• Ann Cunliffe, Professor of Organizational Studies
• Francesco Menotti, Professor of Archaeology
• Jackie Ford, Professor of Leadership
• Marian Gheorghe, Professor of Software Engineering and Computational Models
• Martin Priest, Professor of Tribology
• Mohamed El-Tanani, Professor of Molecular Oncology and Cancer Therapeutics
• Richard Morgan, Professor of Molecular Oncology
• Vince Gaffney, Professor of Landscape Archaeology
• Yakun Guo, Professor of Civil and Environmental Engineering

Biographies of Chairs

Professor Allan Kellehear

Allan Kellehear is currently Professor of Community Health at Middlesex University. He was formerly Professor of Palliative Care at LaTrobe University in Australia, Professor of Sociology at the University of Bath and Professor in the Department of Community Health & Epidemiology at Dalhousie University in Nova Scotia, Canada.

Professor Kellehear has published 22 books and over 100 scholarly articles. His books include A Social History of Dying and The Study of Dying: From Autonomy to Transformation, which brings together research from several disciplines on what we know about dying, and shows how cultural influences, social circumstances and personal choice shape the experience.

Professor Ann Cunliffe

Currently Professor of Organization Studies at the University of Leeds, Ann Cunliffe spent 20 years working with institutions in the USA, holding positions at the University of New Mexico, California State University, and the University of New Hampshire, before returning to the UK. She also holds a Visiting Professorship at Escola de Administraçâo da Fundaçâo Getulio Vargas, Brazil and is a hugely sought after speaker, presenting seminars and keynotes in Europe, Australasia and North America.

Her recent publications include the books A Very Short, Fairly Interesting and Reasonably Cheap Book about Management and Key Concepts in Organization Theory, co-authored with John Luhman. Professor Cunliffe is also Co-Editor in Chief of the journal Management Learning, and organises the International Qualitative Research in Management conference.

Professor Francesco Menotti

Francesco Menotti is currently SNF Professor of Archaeology at Basel University.

His main area of research is later European prehistory, with a special emphasis placed upon wetland archaeology and lake-dwelling studies in the Circum-Alpine region (from the Late Neolithic to the early Iron Age). More specifically, he is interested in the archaeology of semi-complex societies, settlement analyses, the operation of socio-economic systems and their impact on settlement patterns, landscape studies, cultural change and population displacement due to climatic variation, regional and inter-regional interaction, migration, acculturation and ancient networks of trade and exchange between the Mediterranean and northern Europe.

Professor Jackie Ford

Jackie Ford is Professor of Leadership and Organization and Founding Director of the Leeds University Centre for Leadership Studies. Before joining the University of Leeds, she worked as Professor of Leadership and Organization Studies at Bradford University School of Management. Prior to this, she held senior academic appointments at the former Nuffield Institute at Leeds University. She has 20 years’ experience of working in higher education, having spent the previous ten years in a range of managerial roles in the National Health Service, culminating in a post as Board-level Director of Human Resources in a large NHS organisation.

Jackie’s portfolio of activities involves her in teaching, research, executive education and consultancy across organisations in both private and public services sectors. She has co-authored a monograph entitled Leadership as Identity: Constructions and Deconstructions, co-edited Making Public Services Management Critical, and has published in a range of journals including The British Journal of Management, Human Relations, and The Journal of Management Studies.

Professor Marian Gheorghe

Currently Reader in the Department of Computer Science at the University of Sheffield, Marian Gheorghe has also held positions at the University of Pitesti and the University of Bucharest.

Professor Gheorghe’s research spreads across a broad spectrum of topics including computational models, natural and unconventional computing, applications, software engineering, agent-based systems and synthetic biology. He has published more than 100 papers, of which 42 journal papers and 56 conference papers are featured by DBLP, the key computer science bibliography database. Professor Gheorghe has edited two monographs on unconventional models of computation and applications of membrane computing in systems and synthetic biology, and has been invited by Springer to write a research monograph on real-life applications of membrane computing.

Professor Martin Priest

Currently Professor of Engineering Tribology at the University of Leeds, Martin Priest has been involved in the education of undergraduate and Master’s engineering students as a faculty member since 1996, holding several leadership roles including Director of Learning and Teaching for Mechanical Engineering. He had been responsible for undergraduate and postgraduate modules and projects in tribology (friction, lubrication and wear of surfaces) and thermofluids.

He is also Associate Editor of Tribology Transactions, Editor of the Proceedings of the Leeds-Lyon Symposium on Tribology, Editorial Board member for the Journal of Engineering Tribology, Tribology International, Tribology - Materials, Surfaces & Interfaces, and Industrial Lubrication and Tribology.

Professor Mohamed El-Tanani

Mohamed El-Tanani is currently Professor of Molecular Oncology and Cancer Therapeutics at Queen’s University Belfast. He has also held appointments at the University of Liverpool, Alexandria University Hospital, Egypt and King Khalid Hospital, Saudi Arabia.

His research has focused on cancer metastasis, the spread of cancer from the original tumour to distant organs and in particular, through better understanding, the potential to improve cancer patient survival and quality of life. He has published many peer-reviewed papers and has made many presentations to national and international conferences.

Professor Richard Morgan

Currently Senior Lecturer in Molecular Oncology at the University of Surrey, Richard Morgan was previously a research scientist at St George’s Hospital Medical School, London, the Hubrecht Laboratory for Developmental Biology, Utrecht, and the National Institute for Medical Research, London.

Professor Morgan is studying the potential of transcription factors as targets and biomarkers in cancer, particularly the HOX / Engrailed family of homeodomain containing transcription factors. This work has given rise to a series of reagents that block HOX function and have proved to be potent, first in class, anti-cancer molecules.

Professor Vince Gaffney

Vince Gaffney received his undergraduate and research degrees from the University of Reading and began his career as Co-Director of the Maddle Farm Project – a landscape survey of the Berkshire Downs. Following a period in museums, he undertook research in Croatia and Slovenia and pioneered the application of geographical information systems (GIS) in archaeology. His work on the Adriatic Islands provided the first substantial use of GIS in Europe and this was followed by the Wroxeter Hinterland Project, which received the prestigious Queen’s Award for Higher Education for its use of novel technology.

More recently his work has included the major GIS and virtual reality digital study of the Stonehenge Landscape and the world’s largest marine survey project Palaeolandscapes of the Southern North Sea. Professor Gaffney was previously Director of the University of Birmingham’s multidisciplinary Visual and Spatial Technology Centre.

Professor Yakun Guo

Yakun Guo is currently a Reader and a member of the Environmental Hydraulics Research Group at Aberdeen University.

He has research interests in fluid flow and in coastal and estuary hydrodynamics, sediment transport and water quality. His recent research interests are marine renewable energy systems and their influence on the marine environment. He holds grants from the EPSRC, and the China National Natural Science Foundation. He has developed extensive research collaborations with colleagues at home and abroad. In particular, he has extensive research links with several Chinese universities and universities in North America and Austria. He has served as scientific committee member for a number of major international conferences in the field and reviewer for research councils of several countries.