Skip to main content Skip to navigation

Professor Stuart Croft announced as next University of Warwick Vice-Chancellor and President

Professor Stuart CroftThe University of Warwick is pleased to announce the appointment of Professor Stuart Croft as its next Vice-Chancellor and President to succeed Professor Sir Nigel Thrift in February 2016.

Sir George Cox, Pro-Chancellor and Chair of Council and chair of the joint selection committee of the Senate and Council, said he was delighted that Professor Croft had accepted the role:

One of the many successes of Professor Sir Nigel Thrift’s outstanding period of service has been the fulfilment of a vision to establish Warwick as a globally-connected University. This has been reflected in the process to find his successor, which has seen a world-wide search which attracted top-level candidates from North America, Australasia and continental Europe, as well as from the UK’s leading universities. The result has been an outstanding short-list from which Professor Croft was chosen as the best equipped to build on what Warwick has achieved so far. I am confident he will implement and extend a strategy which will further strengthen Warwick’s position amongst the world’s leading universities.

Professor Croft said:

It is an incredible honour to have been appointed Vice-Chancellor of a University as amazing as Warwick. When I applied to study here as a student, 35 years ago, the University was around a fifth the size it is now, having been in existence only 15 years. Now it is a University of 24,000 students, with an international reputation for its research quality and links between academia and industry. In the coming years, we will build on this to put ourselves at the global forefront of new insights into the practices of learning.

What is strongest about Warwick is our community – our ability to pull together but also to challenge ourselves, to always be looking for the next development. Warwick’s community – our staff and students, but also alumni and friends in Coventry, Warwickshire, the Midlands and beyond – is the heart of what has made Warwick so strong, and is what makes the prospect of being Vice-Chancellor here so exciting.

Professor Croft is currently Provost at Warwick. As Provost, he leads on the academic development of the University, including academic resourcing strategy and implementation, working with the Vice-Chancellor, Pro-Vice-Chancellors and with Chairs of Faculty in developing and supporting academic departments.

Professor Croft joined Warwick in January 2007 as Professor of International Security in the Department of Politics and International Studies (PaIS) and was appointed as Warwick’s Pro-Vice-Chancellor for Research (Arts and Social Sciences) in 2011. Prior to that he was Professor of International Relations and Head of the School of Social Sciences at the University of Birmingham.

His research focuses on the political and societal impact of security policy and he has published and edited a number of key publications and journals in that field. He also directed the Science and Security Programme for the Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC).

In 2006 he was elected as an Academician in the Academy of Social Sciences and in the same year, as a Fellow of the Royal Society of Arts. From January 2009 he was the Chair of the British International Studies Association, becoming President of the Association in 2011. He was appointed to the Council of the ESRC in 2011 and, in 2013, was the Ngee Ann Kongsi Professor of International Relations at the S.Rajaratnam School of International Studies, at NTU in Singapore.

Professor Croft will be Warwick’s sixth Vice-Chancellor and the first to be appointed from within Warwick’s academic leadership team. He is also the third senior Warwick academic in the past four years to be appointed as the head of a leading UK University. The person specification for the next Vice-Chancellor and President was produced after extensive consultation within the University - involving students, academic and administrative staff, and Council members. In line with the University’s statutes and ordinances, the Council decision was made on Monday 29 June 2015, following consultation with the University Senate, endorsing a recommendation by a Joint Committee of the Senate and the Council.


For further information please contact:

Peter Dunn, Director of Press and Policy, University of Warwick Tel UK: 024 76523708 office 07767 655860 mobile Tel Overseas: +44 (0)24 76523708 office +44 (0)7767 655860 mobile/cell Email: p.j.dunn@warwick.ac.uk

PR 137 PJD 29th June 2015