People

• Professor Hugh Brady, Vice-Chancellor and President

  Professor Brady trained in general medicine and nephrology at University College Dublin (UCD), and was awarded PhD and MD degrees for research in renal physiology and molecular medicine. His academic career as a physician-scientist included positions at Harvard medical School, the University of Toronto and UCD.

  Professor Brady served as president of UCD from 2004-2013. He has held a number of other leadership roles, including membership of Ireland’s Higher Education Authority, Chairman of the Irish Universities Association and Chairman of the Universitas 21 Network of global research universities. He was awarded an Honorary Doctorate of Science from the Queen’s University Belfast, an Honorary Fellowship from the Royal College of Anaesthetists in Ireland and the Robert Menzies Medal from the University of Melbourne.

  Since coming to Bristol, Professor Brady has led an institution-wide strategic planning process which yielded a new Vision and Strategy for the University.

• Dr Erik Lithander, Pro Vice-Chancellor and Vice-President

  Prior to joining Bristol, Dr Lithander spent three years as Pro Vice-Chancellor (International and Outreach) at the Australian National University in Canberra, and six years as Director of International Affairs at University College Dublin, Ireland’s largest university. HE has also held the role of Associate Director (International Relations) at the University of Auckland in New Zealand.

  Originally from Sweden, Dr Lithander holds a Candidature in Political Science from Universite Libre de Bruxelles in Belgium, a BSc (Econ) from the London School of Economics and an Mphil and PhD from the University of Cambridge, where his focus was contemporary Latin American literature.

  His portfolio at the University of Bristol is focused on matters relating to internationalisation, student mobility, public affairs, communications, home and international recruitment, admissions, alumni relations and development.

• Tim Gallagher, Dean of Faculty of Science

  Professor Tim Gallagher is a Professor of Organic Chemistry. His specialist areas are synthetic, heterocyclic and carbohydrate chemistry and his work has been recognised by a number of international awards. He has published over 200 papers and patents and has worked closely and collaboratively with the pharmaceutical sector.

  The Faculty of Science, which has one of the strongest research profile within the UK, and includes the School of Chemistry, has many undergraduate and postgraduate students from China. Professor Gallagher will be using his time in China to visit his students and their families in Shanghai and to renew contacts that he has made through his international work.

• Paddy Ireland, Dean of Faculty of Social Sciences and Law

  Professor Paddy Ireland joined the University of Bristol in August 2013 having previously taught at the Universities of Kent, Hull and Osgoode Hall Law School, part of York University Toronto. A graduate of the University of Kent, Paddy is a leading, heterodox scholar of the history of company law, corporate theory and corporate governance.

  Recently Paddy has been working with a colleague from the University of Glasgow on a research project looking at property rights and the Chinese Household Responsibility System. This has been an area of special interest to Chinese researchers and the first publication from the project has been published in the UK journal ‘Economy and Society’.

  Paddy is looking forward to forging more links with China for further research as it is an important country for social scientists to examine growing social and economic change. He visited Beijing in 2017 and enjoyed meeting many of the graduating students whom he had taught.

• Andy Nix, Dean of Faculty of Engineering

  As Head of the Communication Systems & Networks Group, Professor Nix’s research interests are focused around the challenges associated with ubiquitous, mass market, low cost mobile telecommunication systems. His current work on 5G technologies and waveforms is pivotal to ongoing developments in the global telecommunications market, in which China plays a major role.

  Bristol’s connections with industrial and educational partners in China are central to Andrew’s research, with companies such as Huawei and China Mobile recruiting Bristol research students.

  During his trip Andrew will visit six Chinese universities to discuss future partnerships in education and research. He is also interested in exploring how academia and industry can work together to co-develop the technical standards that will underpin the creation of Smart Cities and Autonomous Vehicles. While in China, Andrew is looking forward to catching up with research colleagues and former students.

• Professor Sarah Purdy, Head of School, Bristol Medical School

  Professor Sarah Purdy is Head of the Bristol Medical School, the largest school in the University with around 2000 students and over 900 staff.

  Sarah leads a research programme exploring predictors of, and interventions for, unscheduled care use and avoidable hospital admissions – one of the biggest challenges facing the UK National Health Service today. She is also a member of a number of national research funding and related committees and an advisor to several national bodies.

  The School has many links with China, through research, postgraduate and undergraduate students. Its researchers have also featured as co-authors of academic papers alongside colleagues from the Chinese Academy of Sciences, Sun Yat-sen University, the Harbin Institute of Technology, Peking University, Shanghai Jiao Tong University and Zhejiang University.

  Sarah hopes to build further opportunities for collaboration through meeting colleagues during the visit.

• Professor Stuart Cooper, Head of Department, Accounting and Finance

  Professor Stuart Cooper is Head of the Accounting and Finance Department and is published in international journals on the research around environmental sustainability and social justice.

  He has taught and supervised many students from China on Bristol’s MSc programme in Accounting, Finance and Management. This is his first trip to China and he would like to find out more about the growing interest in social and environmental accountability as well as experiencing the culture of Shanghai and Beijing.

  
  
• Professor Charl Faul, Professor of Materials Chemistry

  Prof Faul has research links Professor ZHANG Xi with Tsinghua University, where he also holds an adjunct professorship. He is associated with the Xuetang programme for selected students, where he was one of the first external international academics to join the programme. Prof ZHANG visited Bristol in May 2017, when he was the named lecturer at the School of Chemistry’s flagship materials chemistry symposium, the Timms Symposium.

  Prof Faul also takes a group of students from the Bristol Centre for Functional Nanomaterials (a centre for doctoral training), every other year for joint symposia at Tsinghua and Jilin. He also has a number of former postdocs who hold faculty positions at Chinese Academy of Sciences institutes and universities.

  He and his partner Jacqueline Conradie-Faul keep in touch with many students who were part of the Bristol International Student Centre family in Bristol, and who have now returned to China. They meet on a regular basis during their visits.

  
  
• Dr Fiona Holmes, Teaching Fellow

  Dr Fiona Holmes is a Teaching Fellow within the Bristol Medical School. She is involved with several of the postgraduate programmes delivered by the Faculty of Health Sciences and Bristol Medical School. She works with an MRes Health Sciences Research student (focusing on Translational Cardiovascular Medicine) who is applying for funding through the China Scholarship Council – University of Bristol joint Scholarship PhD programme. She is particularly excited about the several excellent Chinese students studying across the University’s postgraduate programmes.

  Her focus on her visit to China is to develop these partnerships that support recruitment to all postgraduate programmes. Dr. Holmes will be visiting Central South University, the Huazhong University of Science and Technology, Zhejiang University, and UCAS. She will also attend the offer holder and alumni events in Shanghai and Beijing.

  
  
• Professor Agnes Nairn, Professor in Marketing

  Professor Nairn is interested to discuss with Chinese colleagues the advertising industry in general and the impact of advertising on children, on obesity and on consumerism. In particular, she would like to meet with representatives of the marketing industry and also advertising regulators. She hopes to explore the Chinese position on advertising regulation – particularly as it applies to high salt, sugar and fat foods and to children. Digital marketing is at the core of both the new Marketing programmes at Bristol (MSc and BSc). Professor Nairn is hopeful about potential exchange of knowledge, and of an educational collaboration with, Chinese institutions or businesses such as Alibaba and Tencent.

  Professor Nairn has spent significant time working and studying in China with her family in earlier years. She has enjoyed exploring China’s varied culture (including eating snake!), and is looking forward to returning and seeing how much China has changed since she last visited in 2002.

  
  
• Ms Christina Pantazis, Reader, School for Policy Studies

  Christina Pantazis is based in the School for Policy Studies, which runs a student exchange programme with the Department of Public Policy at the City University of Hong Kong.

  Since joining the University of Bristol in 1993, Christina’s research has focused on issues of social harm, criminalisation, poverty, social exclusion and inequality, with a particular focus on gender. Together with Dr Maggie Lau from Lingnan University, Christina is involved in the Poverty and Social Exclusion in Hong Kong (PSEHK) project, examining how deprivation is measured and drawing on public opinion to set minimum standards of living.

  While in China, Christina is looking forward to reconnecting with former students while also meeting others who have been offered a place on Bristol’s MSc Public Policy, and MSc Physical Activity Nutrition and Health Promotion. This being Christina’s first visit to China, she is particularly looking forward to seeing the country.

  
  
• Dr Benjamin Pohl, Lecturer

  Dr Benjamin Pohl is a Lecturer in Medieval History for the period 1000-1400 in the School of Historical Studies. He is widely published for his work on medieval Europe, particularly Normandy and England, and received his PhD from the University of Bamberg.

  Benjamin will be promoting the Faculty of Arts and its study programmes, including the BA Liberal Arts, the MA History and the new MA in Medieval Studies. He hopes to forge important links with the Chinese research community and enthuse Chinese colleagues and students about the Bristol Centre for Medieval Studies while discussing future collaborations with scholars working in the field of Eastern monasticism and religious culture.

  During the visit he is very interested in visiting historical sites, including monasteries and temples.

• Professor Fabrizio Scarpa, Senior Lecturer

  Professor Fabrizio Scarpa is a senior lecturer in the Department of Aerospace Engineering. He gained his Meng in Aeronautical Engineering and a PhD in Machine Design at the Politecnico of Torino, Italy.

  He joined the University of Bristol in 2005 to continue his research activities in the fields of auxetics smart multifunctional and cellular solids, viscoelasticity, nanomaterials and structural-acoustic coupling.

  Fabrizio has a Visiting Professorship with Zhejiang University and several PhD students with Harbin Institute of Technology, Beihang University. He also collaborates with academic colleagues at the University of Electronic Science and Technology of China (Chengdu).

  His work has been used by several working groups on composites and mechanical metamaterials, some of which has been reported in Chinese websites. Fabrizio is looking forward to meeting up with colleagues and friends who are both fellow academics and ex-PhD students.

  
  
• Dr Leah Tether, Graduate Dean

  Dr Leah Tether is a scholar of medieval French literature, Arthurian romance, book history and publishing studies. She joined the University of Bristol in 2015 and is the Graduate Dean for the Faculty of Arts and Co-Director of the Centre for Medieval Studies.

  During her career she has taught many students from China and is now keen to explore postgraduate research opportunities, such as cotutelles and doctoral schemes such as that offered by the China Scholarship Council. Leah is keen to meet with alumni and to think about ways that they can enrich the lives of current students (and vice versa) through initiatives such as mentoring schemes.

  Leah has never visited China before and as a medieval specialist she has been impressed with the development at Chinese universities of viewing and reading technologies, as well as specialist programming, for interacting with fragile artefacts.

  
  
• Professor Jemma Wadham, Professor in Glaciology

  Since completing her PhD at the University of Bristol in 1998, Professor Jemma Wadham has occupied several notable positions and led numerous research initiatives as part of the School of Geographic Sciences, where she is currently leading on the development of partnerships in degree and masters level teaching with Sun Yat Sen University.

  In the summer of 2018, Jemma takes over as Director of the Cabot Institute, Bristol’s first flagship University Research Institute which focusses upon inter-disciplinary solutions to environmental issues and uncertainty. She is keen to expand on Cabot’s international partnerships in both research and education.

  From her own research, Jemma has historic links with the Polar Research Institute of China. She also plans on connecting with glacier experts in China as part of her investigations into how the melting of glaciers across the entire W-E Himalayan mountain belt is impacting on ecosystem productivity and diversity.

  
  
• Dr Liz Washbrook, Senior Lecturer

  Dr Liz Washbrook is a Senior Lecturer in The School of Education, which has a long and deep connection with Chinese students and academics. Many of the postgraduate students Liz supervises examine the differences between Eastern and Western approaches to teaching and learning. The department is also linked through work with PhD students looking at language assessment and second language learning and through Centre for Assessment and Evaluation Research in Education (CAERe) directed by Dr Guoxing Yu and the School of Continuing and Professional Education (SCOPE) at the City University of Hong Kong.

  During the visit Liz will meet with colleagues from East China Normal University and Beijing Normal University to learn more about their research in education and discuss ways to forge deeper links between staff and students.

  
  
• Dr Xiaochun Zhang, Lecturer in Translation Studies, School of Modern Languages

  Dr Zhang is Programme Director for Bristol’s MA in Chinese-English Translation, which has a staff and student exchange arrangement with Nankai University.

  Xiaochun’s research focuses on translation related issues in China, contributing to scholarly discussions and the training of future translators, which she believes is important in enabling people to meet the opportunities and challenges of a globalised world. She is currently editing a special issue for an academic journal hosted by Beijing Foreign Studies University and is involved in a collaborative project with a colleague from Shanghai Jiaotong University.

  While Xiaochun regularly visits China to attend academic conferences and visit friends and family, she hopes this trip will provide additional opportunities to establish further research collaborations. Her trip includes visits to Shangdong University, Shanghai Jiaotong University, the Communication University of China and Nankai University.

• Joanna Sochacka, Volunteers Manager, Development and Alumni Relations

  Joanna is responsible for managing the University’s network of almost 1,000 volunteers who, having graduated, continue to maintain their links with Bristol by running events and activities aimed at supporting the professional development of students and graduates.

  In Beijing and Shanghai, Joanna is focused on ensuring that Bristol alumni have opportunities to stay in touch, share their expertise and success stories with the University and with each other. In collaboration with volunteers, who coordinate many such opportunities, this includes exclusive receptions, careers and industry focused events and social media groups for the 8,000+ strong China alumni network.

  Joanna is looking forward to reconnecting with the University’s network of alumni in China. She is especially looking forward to celebrating a great team effort with the 40 volunteers who are on the ground at the graduation celebration, helping to make sure it runs smoothly on the day.