About us

star1 Leadership and Governance

Welcome to the web pages that explain the leadership and governance of the University of Portsmouth. You will find here details of our Vice Chancellor’s Executive, Board of Governors, University Secretary and responsibilities of the Planning Team.

Vice-Chancellor's Executive

The Vice-Chancellor's Executive, our senior management team, comprises the Vice-Chancellor, Deputy Vice-Chancellor, the Pro Vice-Chancellor and the Director of Finance.

The Vice-Chancellor, Professor John Craven, is the Chief Executive of the University, the Chief Academic Officer, and the Funding Council's nominated accounting officer. Under the Articles of Government, the Vice-Chancellor carries a wide range of responsibilities, including the determination of the University's activities and management of its budgets and staff.

In respect of academic activities, the Vice-Chancellor is required to consult the Academic Council. The Vice-Chancellor is responsible for making proposals to the Board of Governors on the educational character and mission of the University, for preparing and presenting financial estimates and for the maintenance of student discipline.

In addition, Sally Hartley, Clerk to the Board of Governors and University Secretary, has management responsibility for legal matters, including interaction with external legal advisers.

Chancellor - Sandi Toksvig

The University is delighted to have appointed the writer, broadcaster and comedian, Sandi Toksvig, as Chancellor. In 2010 the University awarded her an honorary degree in recognition of her work and she was installed as Chancellor in October 2012.

Ms Toksvig is well known to British audiences for her varied roles in television and radio. Her links with the University include the donation by her family of their father’s books to the School of Languages and Area Studies, which teaches American Studies.

Ms Toksvig is a graduate of Girton College, Cambridge, where she gained a first class honours degree in archaeology and anthropology and where she also won the Theresa Montefiore Memorial Award for Outstanding Academic Achievement and the Raemaekers Prize for Archaeology.

She hopes to use her role to help bring the University and its excellence to the attention of a wider audience. She said: ‘I was surprised and delighted to be invited by the University to become Chancellor and am very honoured to accept. I am passionate about higher education and am hugely impressed by Portsmouth’s mission to encourage students from every walk of life to excel’. ‘At university I learnt to think and most importantly, to question what I thought I already knew. Historically great ideas have often sprung from the unexpected.’

Vice-Chancellor - Professor John Craven

John Craven was educated at Cambridge where he read Mathematics and Economics and then took up a Kennedy Memorial Scholarship to the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. From there he went to University of Kent at Canterbury where he spent 25 years, first as a member of the Economics Department and then in a variety of senior management roles. He was promoted to Reader in Economics in 1980 and Professor in 1986. In 1987 he was elected Dean of the Faculty of Social Sciences; a position which he held for four years. He became Pro Vice-Chancellor in 1991 and Deputy Vice-Chancellor in 1993 when he had responsibility for planning and resource allocation. He was appointed as Vice-Chancellor at the University of Portsmouth and took up that position on 1 January 1997.

John Craven's main academic interests lie in theoretical economics and the theory of social choice. He has published three books including a well-known textbook on introductory economics which has been widely used in schools, colleges and universities. His inaugural lecture on taking up the position of Vice-Chancellor at the University of Portsmouth brought together his main interests in social choice theory and reflected on the relevance of that theory to the issues of accountability facing Vice-Chancellors and others in publicly funded organisations.

John Craven has a number of outside interests. He is a member of the Archbishops' Council of the Church of England, the Cathedral Councils of Portsmouth and Canterbury and of the Board of the National Museum of the Royal Navy. He is a member of the University Choir, and his leisure activities include white-water rafting, gardening and wood-turning.

Deputy Vice-Chancellor - Rebecca Bunting

Rebecca Bunting has responsibility for academic planning and strategic academic development. This includes the following functions:

  • Curriculum planning
  • Academic partnerships, including those with Further Education Colleges and Schools
  • Recruitment, admissions, school liaison
  • Widening participation, Lifelong Learning Network, 14-19 Agenda
  • International strategy, recruitment, partnerships
  • Marketing and communications
  • Skills and employer engagement agenda
  • Employability, careers, guidance
  • Research degrees

Pro Vice-Chancellor - Dr David Arrell

David is a mathematician by training, having studied in the Universities of St Andrews and Oxford. He first joined the University of Portsmouth in 1993 as its first International Director. Subsequently he spent over seven years as Dean of the Faculty of Technology before joining the University's Directorate as a Pro Vice-Chancellor in 2003.

David's role in the University is two-fold. One is in managing all aspects of Human Resources including workforce well-being and health and safety. The other is in promoting international research and the transfer of knowledge and skills to the regional economy. Successful partnerships here include many of the multinational scientific and engineering companies and the active creative industries in the South East.

Also of rapidly growing importance is using University expertise to support the regional third sector to enhance regeneration and social inclusion in South Hampshire.

Director of Finance – Emma Woollard

Emma Woollard is a CIMA qualified accountant and has worked at the University of Portsmouth since 1989. Emma joined as Management Accountant shortly after the then Polytechnic gained independence from Hampshire County Council.

Emma has experienced the huge expansion in activity and corresponding increasing complexities with University finances and financial administration. After promotion to Chief Accountant in the mid 1990's and Deputy Director of Finance in 2001, Emma became Director of Finance in August 2004.

Emma has responsibility for the financial strategy and financial management of the University. This includes ensuring the long term viability of the University is secured, development and investment can be appropriately and adequately financed, strategic opportunities are evaluated and financial risks identified and mitigated against, and our financial policies and processes support both the University’s overall strategy and its financial strategy.

Board of Governors

The Board of Governors is the governing body of the University and carries responsibility for ensuring the effective management of the institution and for planning its future development. It is the Board that has ultimate responsibility for all the affairs of the institution and holds management accountable.

Further information on the Board of Governors – what it is, what it does, and a range of related information can be found here.

If you need more detailed information, then please contact the Clerk to the Board of Governors, Sally Hartley on email sally.hartley@port.ac.uk.

Committees

The Board of Governors conducts its work through a number of committees, which include:

  • Audit and Quality
  • Estates and IT
  • Finance
  • Human Resources
  • Students' Academic and General Affairs

The Vice-Chancellor’s Executive conducts its work through Academic Council, which includes:

  • Academic Policy Committee
  • IT Committee
  • Quality Assurance Committee
  • University Ethics Committee
  • University Equality and Diversity Committee
  • University Research Degrees Committee
  • University Research and Knowledge Transfer Committee

University Secretary

The University Secretary’s office has management responsibility for a wide range of duties, which include:

Planning

The Planning Team’s work focuses on:

Supporting the Deputy Vice-Chancellor in leading effective University strategic planning including setting KPIs and monitoring performance against strategic objectives. More information on the role and responsibilities of the Planning department can be found here.

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building2 Corporate Information

Corporate publications

University Strategy 2012 – 2017 (pdf 1.3MB)

Celebrating Success (pdf 3.8MB)

Facts and Figures 2012 – 2013 (pdf 652KB)

Policies

The University's corporate documents including: strategies, policies, procedures and codes can be found in the Our Document Warehouse.

Freedom of Information

The Freedom of Information Act 2000 gives a general right of access to all types of recorded information held by public authorities. Information about our publication schemes and requesting information from the University can be found here.

Quality and standards

Like all universities, we regard quality and standards as very important aspects of our work.

You can access the policies and processes we use to assure and improve the quality of the learning, teaching and student support in the University. You can also find details of the outcomes of internal and external reviews such as those conducted by Professional Bodies.

Our Quality Management team administers information relating to academic committees, assessment and regulations, collaborative programmes, and accreditation of our courses by Professional, Statutory and Regulatory Bodies. More information about quality management can be found here.

Environment and sustainable development

The University is committed to a low carbon future. We have a number of policies, plans and practices that support this commitment from the way we manage procurement, construction and travel to encouraging the adoption of recycling, waste reduction and ‘green’ meetings behaviours within our community of staff and students. Read more about Green Portsmouth.

In addition to the work of our Green Portsmouth team, the University has a wider role in creating positive environmental impacts that have regional, national and international benefits through our research, teaching and collaborations with business and industry. The University of Portsmouth Environment Network (UPEN) seeks to coordinate and promote our activities in this area.

Equality and diversity

The University is dedicated to ensuring equality of opportunity and the promotion of diversity for the benefit of our staff, students and community. Our community includes students from over 30 countries and we are committed to widening access to higher education. Our Equality and Diversity Unit administers a number of policies, guidelines and equality schemes, which outline the way in which we behave as an employer that embraces equality of opportunity and diversity.

The Unit also hosts and number of forums liaising with students, staff, other HE institutions and the wider city and helps organise events which celebrate diversity, such as One World Week. Read more about our commitment to equality and diversity.

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