The International Relations Office is delighted to announce our new Global Chairs, who will be affiliated with our University as distinguished international visiting professors for the academic year 2020-2021.

Four prominent scholars from Europe, Australia, and the US will be joining Bath to build high-profile research collaborations and to enhance our strategic networks with universities and research institutes overseas.

Professor John Warner

(Warner Babcock Institute and Monash University)

A pioneer of green chemistry and one of the world’s most prominent proponents of sustainable technologies, Professor John Warner is recognised for his leadership and expertise spanning across academia, industry and policy. He was appointed Distinguished Professor of Green Chemistry at Monash University in 2019 and is President and Chief Technology Officer of the Warner Babcock Institute for Green Chemistry, a research organization developing green chemistry technologies across all sectors of the chemical industry. He also co-founded Beyond Benign, a non‐profit dedicated to sustainability and green chemistry education.

Professor Warner’s Global Chair will be hosted by Professor Matthew Davidson, Director of the Centre for Sustainable and Circular Technologies (CSCT)

Professor Davidson said:

I am absolutely delighted that Professor Warner will be joining Bath as Global Chair. As one of the world’s leading technical practitioners and proponents of sustainable development and the circular economy, and as a distinguished academic, industrialist, and environmentalist, Professor Warner is an inspirational figure who will be a wonderful ambassador for the CSCT and our University. He will be working closely with the CSCT to promote industrial engagement, mentor PhD students and early career researchers on new research and career opportunities in sustainable and circular technologies, and lend further support to Bath’s strategic partnership with Monash University, including joint research with the Monash Sustainable Development Institute. We are excited about Professor Warner’s appointment and look forward to working together to develop creative and collaborative solutions to global sustainability problems.

Professor Alberto Minetti

(University of Milan)

Professor Alberto Minetti is Distinguished Professor of Physiology in the Faculty of Medicine at the University of Milan. He is an internationally renowned scholar in human locomotion, with his research and expertise spanning widely from basic science to application in sports, health, and clinical settings.

Building on successful links with his host Dr Dario Cazzola in the Department for Health, Professor Minetti’s Global Chair provides a unique opportunity to strengthen our institutional connection with a leading European university, including new mobility opportunities for our doctoral and postdoctoral researchers. Research links have already been established through a current European Space Agency (ESA) funded project on injury rehabilitation, using the partial gravity simulator that Professor Minetti has developed in his lab, and providing the opportunity for Bath PhD student James Cowburn to be hosted in Milan.

Professor Minetti’s recognised expertise in biomechanics and the energetics of locomotion will not only add a new research dimension to Bath but will also support new industry engagement, in particular in the use of metrics for monitoring physical activity in the health and sports sectors.

Dr Cazzola said:

I am absolutely delighted to host Professor Minetti as a Global Chair. His research approach to human motion analysis is truly multidisciplinary, bridging the gap between the more experimental and mathematical methods used in biomechanics and the in vivo experimental methods used in physiology. His affiliation promises to be a catalyst for new, cutting-edge research projects and cross-Faculty collaborations at Bath, expanding the scope of research between the Applied Biomechanics Suite and CAMERA, and supporting the ambitions of our research in clinical rehabilitation and exercise medicine, nutrition, and sports injury prevention.

Professor Heike Solga

(WZB – Berlin Social Science Center and FU Berlin)

A world-leading expert in education and labour market outcomes, Professor Heike Solga is Director of the research unit ‘Skill Formation and Labor Markets’ at the prestigious WZB – Berlin Social Science Center. She is also a Professor in Sociology at FU Berlin.

Hosted at Bath by Professor Hugh Lauder (Education) and Professor Lynn Prince Cooke (Social & Policy Sciences), Professor Solga’s Global Chair builds on existing links with the WZB, where Professor Cooke is currently a Research Fellow.

Professor Solga is one of the world’s foremost and innovative researchers into ‘marginalised’ educational populations and educational disadvantage, with a particular interest in vocational training and its impact on social mobility and career trajectories. She is currently also leading a project on education inequality around university admissions in Germany.

Her scholarship speaks closely to the ethos and ambitions of social science research at Bath and echoes our University-wide priorities around widening participation. Her Global Chair will not only create new collaborative research across the Departments of Education and Social & Policy Sciences, and the Institute for Policy Research, but will also provide new training opportunities for our doctoral students and early-career researchers, including in quantitative, experimental and interdisciplinary education research design.

Professor Lauder and Professor Cooke said:

Professor Solga is director of one of the genuinely leading research units in education and social policy in Europe. She is an outstanding scholar, who is internationally recognised for her commitment to interdisciplinarity, and engagement with the worlds of policy and practice. We are very excited to host Professor Solga as a Global Chair at Bath, which will provide an invaluable platform for our University’s high-profile research in social justice, education policy, and widening participation. As we emerge from the current pandemic, the relationship between education, the labour market, and social policy is likely to lead to a major debate across Europe as to how they should be reconfigured. Professor Solga’s Global Chair and the partnership with WZB will allow us to raise further the profile of our cutting-edge scholarship in this field.

Professor Penny Jane Burke

(University of Newcastle, Australia)

Professor Penny Jane Burke is Global Innovation Chair of Equity and Director of the Centre of Excellence for Equity in Higher Education (CEEHE) at the University of Newcastle in Australia. An influential scholar and practitioner in Higher Education policy and widening participation, her work has influenced equity policy and practice in universities in the UK, Australia, and South Africa. She has played a key role on a number of national expert panels, including being selected as a member of the Australian government’s Research & Innovation Equity Panel, advising the Minister of Education.

Complementing Professor Solga’s appointment, Professor Burke’s Global Chair will be hosted jointly by Professor Andrea Abbas and Professor Carol Taylor in the Department of Education, and by Dr Andy Pitchford in the Centre for Learning & Teaching. Bringing together academic and professional expertise across Bath, her Global Chair will help develop new research, organisational practice, and transformative pedagogical approaches that will further enhance our University’s innovative initiatives in widening participation and share this learning with practitioners worldwide.

Professor Abbas said:

We are delighted that Professor Burke has been appointed a Global Chair at Bath. In her role as Director of CEEHE, she is providing global leadership in the field of Higher Education equity, having developed a unique praxis-based framework that supports both equity and excellence in higher education. Her expert advice has not only informed national policy-making in widening participation, but has also had significant impact in HE practice, including in the selection practices of Fine Arts degrees in the UK. One of the focal points of Professor Burke’s activities at Bath will be the development of a joint, comparative UK/Australian research project on gender equity in and through STEAM, which will draw on Indigenous and decolonising methodologies as well as feminist theories to critique the current instrumentalised agenda of women into STEAM.