Management board
Management board role
PARC’s internal agrees, supports and ensures the achievement of the Centre’s strategy.
Members
The Board comprises office holders from the University’s Management Team, and senior levels of the Research Enterprise and Development Division, Development and Alumni Relations Office and Faculty of Social Sciences and Law.
Professor Agnes Nairn
Agnes Nairn is Associate Pro Vice-Chancellor for Global Engagement and Professor of Marketing in the Department of Management, School of Economics, Finance and Management. She began in Bristol in 2017 after two years as Dean of Hult International Business School in London. She pursued a portfolio career between 2006 and 2015 dividing her time between policy consultancy and a post as Professor of Marketing at EMLyon Business School in France.
Her research focuses on the relationship between the commercial world and young people’s wellbeing and draws on psychology, sociology, culture theory and neuroscience with methodologies ranging from experiments to filmed ethnography. In Summer 2022, Prof Nairn became Chair of PARC’s Internal Management Board.
Professor Phil Taylor
Phil is the Pro Vice-Chancellor for Research and Enterprise at the University of Bristol, responsible for shaping Bristol’s research and enterprise activity, ensuring it meets the University’s strategic ambition to be a world-leading research-intensive university making a positive contribution to the key global challenges facing society.
He is an internationally leading researcher and industrial expert in energy systems, who has worked in industry and academia for over 25 years, joining Newcastle University in 2013 as Dean and Director of the multidisciplinary Institute for Sustainability, and later, as the Head of the School of Engineering.
Currently, Professor Taylor is Co-Director of the EPSRC National Centre for Energy Systems Integration (CESI), and also the Leader of the Supergen Energy Networks Hub. His work in industry includes time at GEC Alstom, EPS (UK), Teradyne and Senergy Econnect, where among many achievements he developed diagnostic software for the automotive and aerospace sectors and designed the grid connection for the UK’s first commercial offshore wind farm.
Professor Robert Bickers
Robert is the Associate Pro Vice Chancellor of Postgraduate Research at the University of Bristol, and a prolific historian and author, specializing in the history of colonialism, and in particular of the British empire and its relations with China and the history of Shanghai (1843-1950s), and modern Chinese history.
He directs the Hong Kong Kong History Project, and the Historical Photographs of China digitization initiative, having formerly run an AHRC-funded project on the history of the Chinese Maritime Customs Service. Alongside this, Robert was Director and Co-Director of the British Inter-university China Centre, and Co-Director of the AHRC-funded REACT Knowledge Exchange Hub.
Professor Melissa Allen
Melissa is the Associate Dean of the Faculty of Arts, Law and Social Sciences and Professor of Psychology in Education in the School of Education. Prior to this she was the Head of School of Education at Bristol, positioning the School as a leading force addressing large-scale issues of social, environmental and epistemic justice across educational contexts.
She is a cognitive and developmental psychologist with research expertise in language and symbolic development in young children and a particular focus on communication and pictorial understanding in autistic children.
Professor Simon Tormey
Simon is Dean of the Faculty of Social Sciences and Law at the University of Bristol, and Professor of Sociology, Politics, and International Studies, working in the fields of political theory, European politics, social critique and continental thought.
In 2009, Simon was appointed as the inaugural Head of the newly created School of Social and Political Sciences at the University of Sydney. Prior to this he was Head of the School of Politics and International Relations, and founding Director of the Centre for the Study of Social and Global Justice (CSSGJ) at the University of Nottingham in the UK.
Simon is the author of numerous books and articles, his most recent being The End of Representative Politics (Cambridge: Polity, 2015), The Refiguring of Democracy (London: Routledge, 2017), and Populism (Oxford: Oneworld, 2019).
Professor Patrick Capps
Patrick Capps studied Human Geography (1990-1993) and Socio-Legal Studies (1993-1995) at the University of Sheffield before completing a doctorate in International Law at the University of Bristol in 1999. He was appointed Lecturer at the University of Bristol in 1999, Professor in 2011 and Research Director for the Faculty of Social Sciences and Law in 2021.
Patrick teaches and researches in the areas of Public International Law, the Sociology of Law and the Philosophy of Law. He has held visiting positions at the Universities of Melbourne, Cambridge and Copenhagen, amongst others.
Professor Karen West
Professor Karen West is Head of School for Policy Studies.
Mr Robert Grimes
Rob is a fundraising and partnerships specialist with 17 years of experience working in large and small charitable organisations. At Bristol he heads up a team of eleven people who work with the University’s major philanthropic supporters.
Before the University he worked for Send a Cow, a charity delivering training and support to rural communities in East Africa and as such brings experience of delivering fundraising support in the International Development sector.
Dr Tiernan Williams
Tiernan is the Head of Research Development International in Research & Enterprise Development (RED) at the University of Bristol.
Tiernan’s work focuses on analyses of the research landscape within the UK and beyond, the development of International research partnerships and large network proposals, the management of strategic calls and the provision of expert advice to the University and academic community on the directions in International research matters.
Mr Andrew Monk
Andrew was appointed to the role of Exec Director of Development and Alumni Relations in March 2020. Prior to this, Andrew was Deputy Director and Executive Head of Philanthropy since joining the University of Bristol in October 2017.
Andrew leads the Development and Alumni Relations Office which builds networks and communities with the University’s 170,000 alumni in over 150 countries around the world, as well as leading on the philanthropic fundraising work across the institution.
Prior to joining the University of Bristol, Andrew was worked for nearly twenty years in fundraising for a range of organisations and causes including the University of Bath, the NHS linked charity Above & Beyond, the ss Great Britain, and CLIC Sargent Cancer Care for Children.