Professor Sir Chris Husbands

Professor Sir Chris Husbands has been Vice-Chancellor of Sheffield Hallam University since January 2016.

He has held senior leadership posts in universities for over fifteen years, as Head of the Institute of Education at Warwick University (2000-3), as Dean of Education and Lifelong Learning at the University of East Anglia (2003-7), as Dean of Faculty and then Director at the Institute of Education (2007-15) and as Vice-Provost at University College London (2014-15). In 2018, Sir Chris was awarded a knighthood in the Queen’s Birthday Honours for services to higher education.

His academic expertise lies in education policy and practice; his work has been developed in fifteen books and over four hundred papers and presentations.  He has advised local and national governments in the UK and internationally, across four continents.

Sir Chris graduated with a double starred First in History from the University of Cambridge, where he went on to complete a doctorate in Geography.  He was a teacher and senior manager in urban secondary comprehensive schools before becoming a university lecturer.

Roles on external bodies:

• 2016- Member, Universities UK (UUK)
• 2016- Member, UUK Teacher Education Advisory Group (TEAG)
• 2016- Member, UUK Student Policy Network (SPN)
• 2016- Member, ESRC/HEFCE Centre for Global Higher Education (CGHE) Advisory Board
• 2016- Member, University Alliance
• 2013 Member, International Council of Confucius Institutes, Beijing

Professional memberships and honours:

• Fellow of the Academy of Social Sciences (since 2012)
• Honorary Fellow of Emmanuel College, Cambridge

Publications:

Sir Chris’ publications include work on education policy, teaching, teacher quality and history education, and have been translated into Chinese, Spanish and Greek.

He has co-authored Policy Transfer and Educational Change, published in 2016 by Sage.