New Pro-Vice-Chancellor Takes Up Post to Work for the Humanities

Professor Hugh Mellor has been appointed Pro-Vice-Chancellor until 31 December 2001. His chief responsibilities will be academic co-ordination of the University's submissions for the Research Assessment Exercise (RAE) and advising the Vice-Chancellor on support for the humanities.

Professor Mellor takes over as Pro-Vice-Chancellor from Professor Quentin Skinner.

Professor Mellor was Professor of Philosophy at the University, holding the same chair as Wittgenstein, until taking early retirement last year. He came to philosophy relatively late, having studied Natural Sciences and Chemical Engineering at Cambridge and, as a Harkness Fellow, in the United States. He also worked for a year for ICI, before deciding to return to Cambridge to take a Ph.D. in Philosophy. Professor Mellor commented, "I think this mixed arts and sciences background may have made me an attractive candidate for this post."

As Pro-Vice-Chancellor, Professor Mellor's priority is to increase support for the arts, humanities and social sciences within the University. He has represented the School of Arts and Humanities on the General Board, and is currently over-seeing a £7 million building project at the Raised Faculty Building on the Sidgwick Site, which houses the Modern and Medieval Languages and Philosophy Faculties and the English Faculty library. The renovations will increase the working area available by a quarter, will permit disabled access and will create two graduate study centres. The project will be completed this summer.

Professor Mellor said, "The University has done a marvellous job of attracting external research funding for the sciences; I would like to see us starting to match that for non-science subjects. We need to see more support at all levels, including better working facilities and funding for graduate students, post-doctoral researchers and visiting scholars. We need equivalents in other subjects of the laboratory and other communal research facilities that scientists take for granted, of which graduate study centres, such as those we are creating in the Raised Faculty Building, provide a good example."