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Sir David Stephen Eastwood, DL , FRHistS (born 5 January 1959), is a British academic and long serving university leader who was Vice-Chancellor of the University of Birmingham between 13 April 2009 and December 2021. [1] [2]
Eastwood was born on 5 January 1959 in Oldham, Lancashire, [3] and educated at Sandbach School. In 1980, he graduated from St Peter's College, Oxford, with a First Class Bachelor of Arts (BA) degree in Modern History, and was promoted to Master of Arts (MA) in 1985. He completed his Doctor of Philosophy (DPhil) in 1985, also from the University of Oxford. [4]
Eastwood has held the posts of Chief Executive of the Arts and Humanities Research Board and Pro-Vice-Chancellor of Swansea University. [5] His academic specialism is modern history, and he was fellow and senior tutor of Pembroke College, Oxford. [6]
He was Chief Executive of the Higher Education Funding Council for England (HEFCE), a post he had held since September 2006. [7] His former posts also include Vice-Chancellor of the University of East Anglia and Chief Executive of the Arts and Humanities Research Board.
On 13 April 2009, he succeeded Michael Sterling as Vice-Chancellor of the University of Birmingham. [8] In March 2011, Eastwood announced plans to raise the undergraduate tuition fees at the University of Birmingham to the maximum of £9000 (subject to OFFA approval) for courses commencing 2012/13. [9] Eastwood retired from the position in December 2021 and was succeeded by Adam Tickell. [2]
Eastwood is a former chair of the QAA Steering Group for Benchmarking and a former member of the QAA Board. He has contributed numerous times to several newspapers, among them The Guardian , The Sunday Telegraph and The Times . His specialist subject is 19th- and 18th-century British and American politics. [10] [ citation needed ]
He has been a member of the board of the Universities Superannuation Scheme since 2007. [11]
Eastwood was elected a Fellow of the Royal Historical Society (FRHistS) [12] in 1991. [3] On 25 January 2012, he was appointed a Deputy Lieutenant of the West Midlands. [13] He was knighted in the 2014 Birthday Honours for services to higher education. [14] [15]
The University of Bath is a public research university in Bath, England. It received its royal charter in 1966, along with a number of other institutions following the Robbins Report. Like the University of Bristol and University of the West of England, Bath can trace its roots to the Merchant Venturers' Technical College, established in Bristol as a school in 1595 by the Society of Merchant Venturers. The university's main campus is located on Claverton Down, a site overlooking the UNESCO World Heritage city of Bath, and was purpose-built, constructed from 1964 in the modernist style of the time.
The University of Buckingham (UB) is a non-profit private university in Buckingham, England and the oldest of the country's six private universities. It was founded as the University College at Buckingham (UCB) in 1973, admitting its first students in 1976. It was granted university status by royal charter in 1983.
The Higher Education Funding Council for England (HEFCE) was a non-departmental public body in the United Kingdom, which was responsible for the distribution of funding for higher education to universities and further education colleges in England since 1992. It ceased to exist as of 1 April 2018, when its duties were divided between the newly created Office for Students and Research England.
Sir David Nicholas Cannadine is a British author and historian who specialises in modern history, Britain and the history of business and philanthropy. He is currently the Dodge Professor of History at Princeton University, a visiting professor of history at Oxford University, and the editor of the Oxford Dictionary of National Biography. He was president of the British Academy between 2017 and 2021, the UK's national academy for the humanities and social sciences. He also serves as the chairman of the trustees of the National Portrait Gallery in London and vice-chair of the editorial board of Past & Present.
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