Judging the 2018 awards will be specialists from within the Guardian and across the higher education sector in the UK. Guardian journalists on the panel will include Rachel Hall, Richard Adams, and Rebecca Ratcliffe.
Kalwant Bhopal
Kalwant is a professorial research fellow and professor of education and social justice at the University of Birmingham. She has recently been appointed visiting professor at Harvard University at the Harvard Graduate School of Education. Her new book, White Privilege: the myth of a post-racial society, will be published by Policy Press, April 2018.
Tim Blackman
Tim joined Middlesex University as vice-chancellor in July 2015, moving from the Open University where he was acting vice-chancellor and previously pro vice-chancellor. Tim graduated from Durham University, where he also completed his PhD, returning there after professorial appointments at Teesside and Oxford Brookes universities. He is a fellow of the Academy of Social Sciences and Royal Society of Arts. Tim also worked in local government for several years and has held various advisory and consulting roles.
Alex Bols
Alex is deputy chief executive of Guild HE, one of the two officially recognised representative bodies in higher education. He is chair of governors at Vittoria primary school, on the board of directors at the University College of Osteopathy and is currently doing his doctor in education (EdD) at UCL’s Institute of Education.
Previously Alex was executive director of the 1994 group of research-intensive universities and assistant director for research and head of higher education at the National Union of Students. He was also secretary general at the National Union of Students in Europe (now European Students’ Union) from 2001 to 2004 and president of the students’ union at the University of Southampton.
Alec Cameron
Alec is vice-chancellor of Aston University. Previously he was deputy vice-chancellor (education) at the University of Western Australia and dean of the Australian School of Business, overseeing its emergence from the integration of academic units at the University of New South Wales.
Alec also served as deputy vice-chancellor (resources and infrastructure) at the University of New South Wales, and held several senior corporate positions in the IT and telecommunications industry.
A Rhodes Scholar, Alec holds a BSc and bachelor’s degree in electrical engineering. He has a university medal from the University of Sydney, a DPhil from Oxford University, and an MSc from Polytechnic Institute, New York University.
Judy Friedberg
Judy is a visiting professor at Coventry University and an education consultant at the Guardian. For five years, she was universities editor of the Guardian, having previously worked in a range of roles on the paper and website.
Sandra Heidinger
Sandra leads the development of strategy and policy on all people issues within the University of Strathclyde in Glasgow. Whilst at Strathclyde, Sandra has overseen a range of strategic reshaping initiatives, has led on the development of a values-based culture and has introduced a new leadership support strategy to enable agile and effective leadership at all levels. She has developed new career options including an award-winning knowledge exchange job family.
Sandra is the current chair of Universities Human Resources. In this role, she leads UHR to support HR professionals within UK universities in driving the people agenda for the sector. She holds a number of non-executive director roles.
Matt Hiely-Rayner
Matt founded Intelligent Metrix Ltd in 2009 – the company that provides the statistics and rankings to the Guardian’s University Guide. Responsible for designing the guide’s unique value-added score, Matt is especially interested in developing this as a means of illustrating gaps in attainment between different student groups. Matt is also head of planning at Kingston University.
Lucy Hodson
Lucy started her higher education career at Imperial College London and Oxford University, and became director of strategic planning at De Montfort University in 2008. Since 2012 she has been director of planning and member of the executive at Aberystwyth University, which was awarded University of the Year for Teaching Quality by the Good University Guide in 2017. Lucy was founder chair of the Higher Education Strategic Planners Association from 2011 to 2016, is still involved in the network and also writes regularly on HE matters.
Gabriel Huntley
Gabriel head of communications and external relations at University Alliance, the mission group representing professional and technical universities. Prior to his current role, he was political advisor to Chuka Umunna MP as Labour’s shadow secretary of state for business, innovation and skills where he worked on the opposition’s response on the proposed merger of AstraZeneca and Pfizer, the privatisation of Royal Mail and initiating Britain’s first ever Small Business Saturday. He is a fellow of the Centre for Science and Policy at the University of Cambridge.
Koen Lamberts
Koen is vice-chancellor and president of the University of York. He is deputy chair of the Russell Group and chair of the N8 Research Partnership, the Employers Pensions Forum for Higher Education, Yorkshire Universities and the UK Council for International Student Affairs. He is also a board member of the York, North Yorkshire & East Riding Local Enterprise Partnership, Universities and Colleges Employers Association, the White Rose University Consortium and the Worldwide Universities Network. He has a track record of experimental research into cognitive processes in perception, memory and decision making, and of mathematical and computational modelling of these processes. He was a recipient of the British Psychological Society’s cognitive award in 1996 and of the Experimental Psychology Society prize in 1997.
Smita Jamdar
Smita is relationship partner for Shakespeare Martineau’s university and college clients and advises on strategic, regulatory, constitutional, governance and student matters. Identified as a leader in her field in both Legal 500 and Chambers & Partners, her approach is best summed up by Chambers & Partners: “She is very knowledgeable about the sector, very well informed about the challenges the sector faces, and insightful about how we could change and adapt”. Smita is a regular speaker at sector conferences and an enthusiastic contributor to the firm’s education blog.
Liz Jolly
Liz is director of library and information services at Teesside University. She joined Teesside in 2008; prior to this she was associate director in information and learning services at the University of Salford. Liz has also held departmental senior management positions at East London and London South Bank universities. From 2014 to 2016 she was chair of Sconul, the UK university library directors’ organisation and is currently chair of the Northern Collaboration of university libraries. Liz is a fellow of the Chartered Institute of Library and Information Professionals. She is a member of the editorial board of the New Review of Academic Librarianship and of the British Library Advisory Council.
John Latham
John leads delivery of Coventry University’s strategic objectives, as agreed by the board of governors. John is a double graduate of the university and has a background in information technology and telecommunications. He has held high-profile roles at regional, national and European levels promoting innovation, technology and economic development. He previously worked for private sector organisations including JHP Group, Jaguar Cars and BT. He chairs the University Alliance mission group and is a board member of Innovate UK and the Coventry and Warwickshire Local Enterprise Partnership. John is a committee member of Hefce, and an advisory board member of the National Growth Board, the Design Council and Universities UK. He is professor in the area of enterprise and entrepreneurship at Stellenbosch University in South Africa.
Emma Leech
Emma is director of marketing and advancement at Loughborough University, overseeing communications, marketing, recruitment, web and digital, widening participation, international and fundraising and development. She is the Chartered Institute of Public Relations president elect 2018. Emma started her career in fashion and consumer PR in 1988, working in tourism and destination marketing before settling in higher education in 1997. She has won a string of awards over more than two decades spanning PR, marketing, innovation, fundraising, digital, and web.
Simon Marginson
Simon is professor of International Higher Education at the UCL Institute of Education at University College London, director of the ESRC/HEFCE Centre for Global Higher Education (CGHE), and editor-in-chief of the journal Higher Education. Simon’s research focuses on global and international aspects of higher education, and higher education and social inequality. Originally from Australia, he was Clark Kerr lecturer on higher education at the University of California, Berkeley in 2014 and is a member of Academia Europaea. Currently he co-chairs the Higher Education Commission inquiry into education exports. His most recent book is Higher Education and the Common Good (2016).
David Morris
David is vice-chancellor’s policy officer at the University of Greenwich. He was formerly deputy editor of Wonkhe, the home of higher education policy, people, and politics, and before that worked in policy at the National Union of Students. David is a graduate of Durham University and was the winner of the 2016 CIPR award for Best Newcomer to Education Journalism. David is a regular writer for Wonkhe and the Guardian Higher Education Network.
David Ruebain
In June 2010, David took up the post of chief executive of the Equality Challenge Unit, a policy and research agency funded to advance equality and diversity in universities in the UK and colleges in Scotland and England. Prior to that, he was a practicing solicitor for 21 years; latterly as director of legal policy at the Equality and Human Rights Commission of Great Britain. David is also the equality advisor to the English FA Premier League and a member of the diversity & inclusion advisory board of the Wellcome Trust.
Suzy Verma
Suzy is the UK head of public sector and education for HSBC’s corporate banking business. She is responsible for developing, coordinating and leading the public and education strategy for customer-facing teams across the bank’s commercial banking business. This includes providing thought leadership, alignment, direction and focus, with a view to achieving higher quality engagement with local authorities, universities, schools and alternative providers. In her role, Suzy has provided funding solutions of some £1.5bn across the education sector and has also supported institutions with their global growth aspirations. Suzy is also responsible for the coordination of strategic initiatives focusing on business and university collaboration and is an active member of HSBCs apprenticeship steering committee.
Greg Walker
Greg is chief executive of MillionPlus, the association for modern universities. Greg is a university governor and former deputy chief executive of Colleges Wales, having previously served as acting director of Universities Wales. He has been a member of a number of Higher Education Funding Council for Wales Committees between 2006 and 2016, playing a significant role in the much-praised Diamond Review on HE Funding in Wales in 2016. Greg is completing an MBA in higher education management at University College London. Greg taught political science at Cardiff University in the mid-2000s, where he later gained a PhD.
Shearer West
Shearer is president and vice-chancellor of the University of Nottingham. Her former roles include provost and deputy vice-chancellor of the University of Sheffield, head of the humanities division at Oxford University and director of research at the Arts and Humanities Research Council. She has published nine authored and edited books on eighteenth-, nineteenth- and twentieth-century European art. She has held two visiting fellowships at Yale University. Her international roles include being a jurist for the Spinoza and Odysseus prizes, a member of the Science Europe humanities scientific committee, and, most recently, a panel chair for the Norwegian national research assessment exercise.
Andy Westwood
Andy is vice dean of humanities and professor of government practice at the University of Manchester. He is a visiting professor of further and higher education at the University of Wolverhampton and an occasional adviser to the IMF and OECD. He is currently a specialist adviser to the House of Lords Committee on Economic Affairs and was previously a special adviser to ministers at the Department for Innovation, Universities and Skills and a senior adviser at HM Treasury and the Departments for Education and Communities and Local Government. He writes regularly for Wonkhe, the Times Higher and the Guardian.
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