Vincent Challacombe Watts OBE (born 11 August 1940) is a British academic and businessman. [1]
He was educated at Sidcot School, Peterhouse, Cambridge (MA, Molecular Biology), [2] and at the University of Birmingham (MSc). He served as vice-chancellor of the University of East Anglia [3] from 1997 to 2002, leaving to focus full-time on his role as Chairman of the East of England Development Agency. [4] Prior to joining the University of East Anglia he was at Andersen Consulting. [2]
Cambridge is a city and non-metropolitan district in the county of Cambridgeshire, England. It is the county town of Cambridgeshire and is located on the River Cam, 55 miles (89 km) north of London. As of the 2021 United Kingdom census, the population of the City of Cambridge was 145,700; the population of the wider built-up area was 181,137. Cambridge became an important trading centre during the Roman and Viking ages, and there is archaeological evidence of settlement in the area as early as the Bronze Age. The first town charters were granted in the 12th century, although modern city status was not officially conferred until 1951.
East Anglia is an area in the East of England. It comprises the counties of Norfolk and Suffolk and Cambridgeshire, with Essex also included in some definitions. The name derives from the Anglo-Saxon kingdom of the East Angles.
The East of England is one of the nine official regions of England in the United Kingdom. This region was created in 1994 and was adopted for statistics purposes from 1999. It includes the ceremonial counties of Bedfordshire, Cambridgeshire, Essex, Hertfordshire, Norfolk and Suffolk. Essex has the highest population in the region.
Anglia Ruskin University (ARU) is a public university in East Anglia, United Kingdom. Its origins are in the Cambridge School of Art (CSA), founded by William John Beamont, a Fellow of Trinity College at University of Cambridge, in 1858. It became a university in 1992, and was renamed after John Ruskin, the Oxford University professor and author, in 2005. Ruskin gave the inauguration speech of the Cambridge School of Art in 1858. It is one of the "post-1992 universities". The motto of the university is in Latin Excellentia per societatem, in English Excellence through partnership.
Norwich is a cathedral city and district of the county of Norfolk, England of which it is the county town. Norwich is by the River Wensum, about 100 mi (160 km) north-east of London, 40 mi (64 km) north of Ipswich and 65 mi (105 km) east of Peterborough. The population of the Norwich City Council local authority area was estimated to be 144,000 in 2021, which was an increase from 143,135 in 2019. The wider built-up area had a population of 213,166 in 2019.
Anglia Railways was a train operating company in England, owned by GB Railways and later FirstGroup, that operated the Anglia franchise from January 1997 until March 2004.
The University of East Anglia (UEA) is a public research university in Norwich, England. Established in 1963 on a 320-acre (130-hectare) campus west of the city centre, the university has four faculties and twenty-six schools of study. It is one of five BBSRC funded research campuses with forty businesses, four independent research institutes and a teaching hospital on site.
Sir Andrew Motion is an English poet, novelist, and biographer, who was Poet Laureate from 1999 to 2009. During the period of his laureateship, Motion founded the Poetry Archive, an online resource of poems and audio recordings of poets reading their own work. In 2012, he became President of the Campaign to Protect Rural England, taking over from Bill Bryson.
Æthelthryth was an East Anglian princess, a Fenland and Northumbrian queen and Abbess of Ely. She is an Anglo-Saxon saint, and is also known as Etheldreda or Audrey, especially in religious contexts. She was a daughter of Anna, King of East Anglia, and her siblings were Wendreda and Seaxburh of Ely, both of whom eventually retired from secular life and founded abbeys.
Anthony John Colman is a British politician, businessman, and academic, who served as the Labour Member of Parliament for Putney from 1997 to 2005. Prior to entering Parliament, he was the Leader of Merton London Borough Council from 1991 to 1997. Colman has since become an academic in water management and resource innovation.
Anna was king of East Anglia from the early 640s until his death. He was a member of the Wuffingas family, the ruling dynasty of the East Angles, and one of the three sons of Eni who ruled the kingdom of East Anglia, succeeding some time after Ecgric was killed in battle by Penda of Mercia. Anna was praised by Bede for his devotion to Christianity and was renowned for the saintliness of his family: his son Jurmin and all his daughters – Seaxburh, Æthelthryth, Æthelburh and possibly a fourth, Wihtburh – were canonised.
Richard Laurence Millington Synge FRS FRSE FRIC FRSC MRIA was a British biochemist, and shared the 1952 Nobel Prize in Chemistry for the invention of partition chromatography with Archer Martin.
Hubert Horace Lamb was an English climatologist who founded the Climatic Research Unit in 1972 in the School of Environmental Sciences at the University of East Anglia.
Adrian A Husain is a Pakistani poet, Shakespearean scholar, and literary journalist. He was also founder Chairman of the civil rights think tank Dialogue: Pakistan prior to the return of democracy in 2008.
Nicholas Crane is an English geographer, explorer, writer and broadcaster. Since 2004 he has written and presented four television series for BBC Two: Coast, Great British Journeys, Map Man and Town.
Felix of Burgundy, also known as Felix of Dunwich, was the first bishop of the kingdom of the East Angles. He is widely credited as the man who introduced Christianity to the kingdom. Almost all that is known about him comes from the Ecclesiastical History of the English People, completed by the English historian Bede in about 731, and the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle. Bede wrote that Felix freed "the whole of this kingdom from long-standing evil and unhappiness".
Michael Charles Evans was the third Roman Catholic Bishop of East Anglia, in the Ecclesiastical Province of Westminster.
The Climatic Research Unit email controversy began in November 2009 with the hacking of a server at the Climatic Research Unit (CRU) at the University of East Anglia (UEA) by an external attacker, copying thousands of emails and computer files to various internet locations several weeks before the Copenhagen Summit on climate change.
Greater Anglia is a British train operating company owned as a joint venture by Transport UK Group and Mitsui & Co. It operates the East Anglia franchise, providing the commuter and inter-city services from its central London terminus at London Liverpool Street to Essex, Suffolk, Norfolk and parts of Hertfordshire and Cambridgeshire, as well as many regional services throughout the East of England.
Thomas Alexander "Sandy" Heslop,, publishing as T. A. Heslop, is a British academic who specialises in the art and architecture of medieval England. He is Professor of Visual Arts at the University of East Anglia (UEA). He was Slade Professor of Fine Art at the University of Cambridge for the 1997/1998 academic year.