Greg Walker FRSE is Regius Professor of Rhetoric and English Literature at the University of Edinburgh. He is a graduate of the University of Southampton. [1] [2] His specialist field is the history of literature and drama in the late-medieval period and the sixteenth century. Before taking up the Regius Chair he was the Masson Professor of English at Edinburgh. Before that he was Professor of Early-Modern Literature and Culture and Director of the Medieval Research Centre at the University of Leicester. Between 1986 and 1989 he was a British Academy Postdoctoral Research Fellow at Southampton and has also taught at the Universities of Queensland and Buckingham. He was the Head of Edinburgh's School of Literatures, Languages and Cultures between 2008 and 2011.
In 2022, he was elected a member of the Academia Europaea. [3]
Walker is a Fellow of the Royal Historical Society, the English Association, the Society of Antiquaries of London, the Agder Academy of Arts and Sciences (Norway), and the Royal Society of Edinburgh, and an elected member of Academia Europaea. He was a member of the AHRC Council and chaired its Advisory Board or ten years from 2010 to 2020.
He is a former Chair of the Council for College and University English (what is now University English) and a member of the RAE subpanel for 2008 and the ‘Impact’ pilot panel in 2010, and was Deputy Chair of the English Language and Literature sub-panel for REF 2014. He chaired the English Language and Literature sub-panel for REF 2021.
He is co-editor, with Elaine Treharne, of the Oxford Textual Perspectives monograph series (Oxford University Press), and he co-edited, with Martin Stannard, the series, Studies in European Cultural Transition (Ashgate).
Among his other roles are: Chair of the Judges for the James Tait Black Drama Prize; Dean of the Scottish Universities International Summer School; Member of the English Association Higher Education Committee and a Trustee of the English Association; Member of the Advisory Council of the Institute for English Studies, London; Member of the judging panel, The RHS Sir John Neale Essay Prize, 2015-2021.
Sir Donald Neil MacCormick was a Scottish legal philosopher and politician. He was Regius Professor of Public Law and the Law of Nature and Nations at the University of Edinburgh from 1972 until 2008. He was a Member of the European Parliament 1999–2004, member of the Convention on the Future of Europe, and officer of the Scottish National Party.
A Regius Professor is a university professor who has, or originally had, royal patronage or appointment. They are a unique feature of academia in the United Kingdom and Ireland. The first Regius Professorship was in the field of medicine, and founded by the Scottish King James IV at the University of Aberdeen in 1497. Regius chairs have since been instituted in various universities, in disciplines judged to be fundamental and for which there is a continuing and significant need. Each was established by an English, Scottish, or British monarch, and following proper advertisement and interview through the offices of the university and the national government, the current monarch still appoints the professor. This royal imprimatur, and the relative rarity of these professorships, means a Regius chair is prestigious and highly sought-after.
Diarmaid Ninian John MacCulloch is an English academic and historian, specialising in ecclesiastical history and the history of Christianity. Since 1995, he has been a fellow of St Cross College, Oxford; he was formerly the senior tutor. Since 1997, he has been Professor of the History of the Church at the University of Oxford.
Dame Wendy Hall is a British computer scientist. She is Regius Professor of Computer Science at the University of Southampton.
Jonathan Robert Spencer, is a British social anthropologist and academic. Since 2014, he has been the Regius Professor of South Asian Language, Culture and Society at the University of Edinburgh.
The Play of the Weather is an English interlude or morality play from the early Tudor period. The play was written by John Heywood, a courtier, musician and playwright during the reigns of Henry VIII, Edward VI and Mary I and published by his brother-in-law, William Rastell, in 1533 as The Play of the Wether, a new and mery interlude of all maner of Wethers. It represents the Roman deity Jupiter on earth asking mortals to make cases for their preferred weather following heavenly dissension among the gods. It is the first published play to nominate "The Vice" on its title page.
Claire Elaine Jowitt is an English academic who writes on race, cross-gender, piracy, identity, empire and performance. She is currently a Professor in English and History within the Schools of History and Literature, Drama and Creative Writing at the University of East Anglia. Previously, she held a personal chair in English at Southampton University (2012-2015), was Professor of Renaissance English Literature at Nottingham Trent University (2005–12) and Lecturer and Senior Lecturer at Aberystwyth University (1996–2005).
Milena Žic Fuchs is a Croatian linguist and full member of the Croatian Academy of Sciences and Arts. She formerly served as the Croatian Minister of Science and Technology in the cabinet of Zlatko Mateša from February 1999 to January 2000.
Heinz Schilling is a German historian.
Christoph Bode is a literary scholar. His fields are British and American literature, comparative literature, literary theory, poetics, and travel writing, but he is mainly known as a romanticist and a narratologist. He was full professor and chair of Modern English Literature in the Department of English and American Studies at Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität München until his retirement in March 2018.
Nigel James Leask is a Scottish academic publishing on Romantic, Scottish, and Anglo-Indian literature, with special interest on British Empire, Orientalism, and travel writing. He has been Regius Professor of English language and literature at the University of Glasgow, since 2004.
Murray G. H. Pittock MAE FRSE is a Scottish historian, Bradley Professor of Literature at the University of Glasgow and Pro Vice Principal at the University, where he has served in senior roles including Dean and Vice Principal since 2008. He led for the University on the University/City of Glasgow/National Library of Scotland Kelvin Hall development (kelvinhall.org.uk), and has chaired Glasgow's unique early career development programme, which has been highly influential in the sector, since 2016. He has also acted as lead or co-lead for a range of national and International partnerships, including with the Smithsonian Institution, and plays a leading role in the University's engagement with government and the cultural and creative industries (CCIs), organizing the 'Glasgow and Dublin: Creative Cities' summit in the British Embassy in Dublin in 2019, and working with the European network CIVIS on the creation of a European policy document on universities and civic engagement, on which he gave a masterclass for La Sapienza University He also produced a major report on the impact of Robert Burns on the Scottish Economy for the Scottish Government in 2020; a Parliamentary debate was held at Holyrood on the recommendations, which have been cited in policy debate many times since. In 2022, he was declared Scotland's Knowledge Exchange Champion of the year. Outside the University, he served on the Research Excellence Framework (REF) Institutional Environment Pilot Panel in 2018-22, and on the National Trust for Scotland Board (2019-27) and Investment Committee, as well as acting as Co-chair of the Scottish Arts and Humanities Alliance (SAHA) and chair of the Governance Board of the Scottish Council on Global Affairs. He also serves as Scottish History Adviser to the NTS and as an adviser to a wide range of other national heritage bodies and the Scottish Parliament; recently he has provided expert advice to both the Scottish and British parliaments on promoting Scotland abroad, and serves on the Scottish Government's Scottish Connections Advisory Panel on the diaspora. He is on the Advisory Board of NISE, the Europe-wide research group bringing together over 40 research centres working on national identities and was President of the Edinburgh Walter Scott Club in 2019-20 and 2021-22. He has given a number of major lectures, most recently the Magnusson, MacCormack and Caledonian lectures
Henrike Lähnemann is a German medievalist and holds the Chair of Medieval German, University of Oxford. She is a Fellow of St Edmund Hall, Oxford.
The Regius Chair of Rhetoric and English Literature at the University of Edinburgh was established in 1762. It is arguably the first professorship of English Literature established anywhere in the world. Its first holder was Professor Hugh Blair.
The Regius Chair of Engineering is a royal professorship in engineering, established since 1868 in the University of Edinburgh, Scotland. The chair is attached to the University's College of Science and Engineering, based in the King's Buildings in Edinburgh. Appointment to the Regius Chair is by Royal Warrant from the British monarch, on the recommendation of Scotland's First Minister.
Hugh Patrick McKenna CBE FRCN is a British academic. He is Dean of Medical School Development at Ulster University.