Author: Evelyn Welch

Dear colleagues,

Welcome to 2025 and the start of a new year. I hope you all had a lovely Christmas break and have returned to work feeling well rested and energised for the year ahead. I spent much of the holiday with a new-born granddaughter and her exhausted but delighted parents, so I know that for some of you, the holidays may have been very busy indeed!

This week is Preparation Week, a brand-new moment in the academic year where both staff and students have dedicated time to get on top of things before teaching begins. For those students who are on campus, a whole host of events and activities are taking place, and all services are open as usual. For our academic staff, it’s a time to complete marking and prepare for Teaching Block 2. I once again want to thank those staff who worked tirelessly in the lead up to the Christmas break, and continue to do so, in response to SAY changes.

Planning is now well underway for our January Graduations as around 3,000 students don their caps and step into their gowns to celebrate the significant milestone in their lives. It’s always a pleasure to see students come together with their families, friends and members of staff to mark their achievements. A big thank you to all the staff who make these events happen.

The health, wellbeing and success of our students is our utmost priority, and I’m delighted that our students can now benefit from our improved student wellbeing services, with the introduction of a self-booking form, an increase in specialist mental health provision, a new dedicated Sexual Violence team and improved internal processes. These changes mark a major step to making it quicker and easier for students to access the support they need, when they need it.

During our October All-Staff Assembly, we told you about our current financial situation, which is stable but not growing, and our confidence in the University of Bristol’s future. We also called on you to ‘Act now’ to ensure that we remain financially resilient going forward. I’d like us all to start the year with this fresh in our minds. We, like many other universities in the UK and worldwide, will need to be proactive in our response to the challenges – thinking creatively, adjusting our behaviours and contributing to finding solutions to help to safeguard our own future and that of generations to come.

Our next All-Staff Assembly will take place on Tuesday 11 February, when my team and I will provide more updates about the external financial environment and our own position. There will be other opportunities to meet with us and ask questions throughout the year at our one-to-one surgery sessions. Please do engage with these opportunities so we can hear directly from you, what’s going well and where we can improve.

I’m excited to see what this year brings and look forward to working with you all as we continue our mission to make a positive impact locally, nationally, and globally.

Thank you,

Evelyn

Dear colleagues,

As we approach the spring break, I wanted to thank you all for your extraordinary efforts this term. It’s been an incredibly busy time and we’ve achieved a great deal together.

I’ve recorded a short video message, in which I celebrate our many recent successes, including the award of nine Centres for Doctoral Training, progress on the Reparative Futures programme, our new logo, and the outstanding response from you all to the Our Voices Matter, the 2024 Staff Experience Survey, with over 4,000 responses.

Elsewhere, work continues on the University Structures 2030 programme; on our transition from six faculties to three, ensuring our Professional Services are the best they can be under the Professional Services Transformation Programme, and preparing colleagues for the new structure of the academic year.

Under the Structure of the Academic Year project (SAY), we are looking in detail at key areas including assessment, international students and the start of the 2024/25 academic year. I am very grateful to all colleagues who are carefully planning how we transition from the current structure to the new one which will mean compressed time in August for many teams.

As we look ahead to our final term, I’m looking forward to this year’s Bristol Teaching Awards and celebrating our shortlisted nominees and their incredible efforts. We also look forward to welcoming our new Pro Vice-Chancellor for Global Engagement, Professor Michele Acuto, in early June. Meanwhile, the search for our next Pro Vice-Chancellor for Research and Innovation is well underway.

Finally, the next ‘In Conversation’ event will take place on Wednesday 8 May at Langford Campus, hosted by Professor Jeremy Tavaré, Pro Vice-Chancellor and Executive Dean for the Faculty of Health and Life Sciences. I hope many of you can join us; more details to follow soon. And as always, if there is anything you would like to discuss with me personally, do please book a slot at my next surgery on Monday 22 April.

On a more sombre note, I am acutely aware that this is a very hard time for many, and I would like to express the importance of looking after one another. The continuing Israel-Gaza conflict is being felt across the world, and it’s important more than ever that we stand together as a community and uphold our shared values of mutual respect, care, compassion and inclusivity.

For now, the spring holiday is a perfect opportunity to take some time out, rest and reflect on the past few months. I particularly love this time of year, with our campus in bloom and the promise of warmer and lighter days in the air.

For colleagues observing the holy month of Ramadan, I wish you Ramadan Mubarak! And my best wishes for colleagues celebrating Easter this weekend and Passover next month.

Thank you again for your hard work, and a huge thank you to our brilliant colleagues who will be working over the closure days – the University could not function without you, and I hope you manage to take your own break very soon.

Best wishes

Evelyn

Professor Evelyn Welch

Vice-Chancellor and President

The year’s International Women’s Day theme is #inspireinclusion. I find this exciting and challenging because it is a reminder that, while we have done so much to increase women’s representation, it is not evenly distributed. I am acutely aware that women of colour, women with disabilities and trans women have had fewer opportunities to demonstrate their leadership skills than white women like myself.  

As a leader, I’m very conscious of my responsibility to inspire others as well as to acknowledge those who have inspired me. I want to ensure we nurture a culture where everyone feels they belong and can fulfil their potential. International Women’s Day provides an important opportunity for us all to consider these questions and reflect on the journey we have undertaken towards fostering a more inclusive and equal world.  

This day has always been an excellent way to recognise the significant achievements of women, but we must also use it to highlight continued inequities and barriers that prevent women from feeling seen, heard, valued, and empowered to fully participate. 

Let’s start with the positives.  

I’m proud to lead a university that was the first in England to admit women on the same basis as men. Our fifth Chancellor, Dorothy Hodgkin, was the first British woman to win the Nobel Prize. More recently, our former Chancellor, Baroness Hale, made history by becoming the first female President of the Supreme Court.   

I’m pleased the University continues to make progress in reducing our gender pay gap. We’ve seen a reduction in both median and mean gender pay gap metrics. The median gender pay gap of 10.6% in men’s favour is below national average and has reduced by 5.6% since our first report in 2017, while the mean gender pay gap in men’s favour of 14.4% is below sector average. This has reduced by 6.7% in the same period.   

Elsewhere, 34% of our professors are now women, compared to just 13% in 2013. The success rate for female applications in our latest round of promotions was 85% (compared to 72% for male applicants) and University Executive Board is currently evenly split, male and female.   

Our excellent staff networks, including the Women’s Staff Network, serve as catalysts for change, providing a platform to share experiences, amplify voices, raise awareness, provide mentoring and advocate for the rights and recognition of women. 

We offer a range of fantastic programmes to support women’s progression, such as the Female Leadership Initiative and the Bristol Women’s Mentoring scheme, and the University’s broader progress to advance gender equality was recognised last year with a highly commended institutional Athena Swan Silver award. This comes alongside the increasing number of faculties and schools achieving their own Athena Swan Awards. 

When we look at our efforts to enhance the diversity of our enterprise and entrepreneurship activities, I’m pleased that women made up 49% of our SETsquared Bristol companies’ founders or C-Suite execs last year – far higher than the UK average of 15%. As a research-intensive university, we can all take pride in the fact that our research is actively informing and shaping the outside world, providing an evidence base for public policy and practice. For example, the Domestic Violence Disclosure Scheme, commonly known as ‘Clare’s law’, gives people the right to find out about an individual’s prior domestic violence offences and was a direct result of work done by Professor Marianne Hester and her team at the Centre for Gender and Violence Research. Likewise, we can celebrate academics like Professor Roberta Guerrina, whose work examines the politics of gender in the EU, and Dr Sumita Mukherjee’s exploration of the role of Indian women in the global suffrage movement.

But we still have a way to go…

While there are many positives to point to, and more to come, we also need to be clear about how much more work there is still to do, particularly to be truly inspired and inspiring in terms of our approach to inclusion. As we see greater gender parity, we need to ensure that we are similarly supportive of colleagues from global majority backgrounds. This is something I and my senior executive colleagues are determined to address here at Bristol.  

We are, for example, bringing onboard HR-Rewired, who specialise in supporting racial equity and are partnering with 100 Black Women Professors NOW – a pioneering systemic change programme aiming to increase the number of Black women in the academic pipeline. This is only the start of a very determined programme to ensure the success of all our staff of colour, male and female, at the University of Bristol.   

Every day belongs to women 

Finally, by coming together on International Women’s Day, we reaffirm our collective commitment to dismantling barriers to equality and inclusion, and creating an environment where every individual can thrive. But I am clear that every day, not just one day of the year, belongs to women around the world.  

Dear colleagues

Welcome back to the start of a new year. I hope that you all had an enjoyable and restful break and are feeling ready for the term ahead. I would particularly like to thank colleagues who worked during the holiday to support students, keep key facilities open, and our buildings and grounds safe. I myself had a wonderful holiday season, cooking for friends and family, getting out into the countryside, and braving what seemed like non-stop rain.

I am excited to be back at work, knowing that we have much to look forward to this year, as well as some challenges ahead. Let me start by congratulating Professor Sir John Iredale who was knighted in the New Year Honours and Professor Ronald Hutton who was awarded a CBE. Read our media release for the full story, which also includes details of honours bestowed on University alumni and a former member of staff. I am exceedingly proud of the achievements of our current community and our alumni and former colleagues.

2024 will see us progress the delivery of our Temple Quarter campus and the Isambard-AI supercomputer. We will continue to develop the new academic and professional service structures to ensure we remain agile and effective. We will also take our Silver Teaching Excellence Framework award and build toward Gold. A list of further key updates can be found below.

2024 is also very likely to see a General as well as local elections. We will do our utmost to make sure that all political parties understand how important universities are for creating opportunity, both locally as well as nationally and internationally. With inflation still in place, and no sign of any change to domestic fees, we will want to navigate the coming year with some caution to ensure we remain financially resilient, whichever party comes to power in the future.

Staff voice

When I started this role eighteen months ago, I promised that the listening never stops. I and the senior team know how important it is to remain connected to your day-to-day experiences of working at the University of Bristol. This term, we’ll be launching our Staff Experience Survey, which will run for a month from the end of February. Please take time to complete it. We will take the results seriously and let you know what we will do differently because of what we have heard. We are keen to find out what you think about our strategy, how you feel about our organisation and our approach to blended working. We are also going to ensure that your views feed into our continued work to be a truly inclusive institution.

Sharing your views with us — through surveys, online spaces, such as the Thanks and Recognition Wall, and in-person events, like the US2030 Staff Voice workshops — is critical if we are to continue to be a great place to work. I hope you’ll take up all engagement opportunities, including my VC surgeries and the In Conversation events. You can also find out more about other ways to get involved on the Staff Engagement SharePoint site. If you have other ideas about the on-going development of the University, then I’d be delighted to hear more. Please email vc-team@bristol.ac.uk.

• My next VC surgeries are running on 18 January, from 10 am — please book a slot here. These are almost full up, but you can also book available slots on 14 February, from 9 am.
• Our next In Conversation is taking place in the afternoon of 19 February with Professor Phil Taylor, Pro Vice-Chancellor Research Enterprise. Please hold the date for what will be an exciting conversation about research, enterprise and innovation.

Key updates

• Thank you to everyone who attended a Staff Voice workshop before Christmas. The outcomes of these will be shared soon. In the meantime, we have updated our FAQs in response to your questions about the University Structures 2030 programme.
• Please note the changes to the structure of the academic year, particularly that the start of Welcome Week 2024 will be 9 September 2024. This Wednesday (10 January) you will receive an email with further updates that you need to know about the programme, so please keep an eye on your in-boxes.
• The Reparative Futures programme is now in its mobilisation phase. Colleagues are working to update the University logo and we will provide further information later this term.
• We know that recent UK Government announcements aimed at reducing legal migration to the UK will have a significant impact on universities, our international colleagues and students, and wider family members. I want to assure you that we will continue to collaborate with sector bodies and more widely, to lobby the UK Government on the impact of the changes. The Staff Immigration Team is available to assist staff.
• 2023 was a defining year for the Temple Quarter Enterprise Campus (TQEC). From the opening of the new Bristol Dental School to work on the TQ Research Hub, all is captured in this summary review, including updates on the exciting projects lined up for 2024.
• A reminder that support is available for staff and students affected by the ongoing conflicts in the Middle East and in Ukraine.

Thanks to you all for the difference that you make to our University. I look forward to meeting many of you during 2024.

With best wishes

Evelyn

Professor Evelyn Welch
Vice-Chancellor and President
University of Bristol

Dear colleagues

As we near the end of 2023, I want to say a huge thank you and congratulations to you all for your amazing work this year. It has been a year of many triumphs, despite challenging times for the sector and the University. My team and I are very proud of how you have responded and of everything we have achieved together.

My Executive Group and I wish you all a very restful and enjoyable seasonal break and look forward to what is ahead in 2024.

With warm wishes and season’s greetings from us all.

Evelyn

Professor Evelyn Welch
Vice-Chancellor and President
University of Bristol

This is an open letter from our Vice-Chancellor, Professor Evelyn Welch, addressing the outcomes of the renaming consultation and following actions.

Over the past three years, we have been examining the University of Bristol’s history, and the potential links of our founders and their wealth to the transatlantic trafficking of enslaved African people.

Following an initial report from a group of historians and other colleagues, the ‘Legacies of Slavery’ report, this summer we concluded a consultation with staff, students, alumni and our wider community about how to represent our history including whether it was appropriate to have major buildings named after these individuals. Nearly 4,000 people responded to our survey and hundreds more attended in-person sessions. Along with members of our Board of Trustees and our Senior team, I personally attended several powerful and impactful events that were led by local Bristol communities of African and Caribbean descent.

Throughout, whether in writing or during these meetings, I heard many distressing stories from those who had experienced racism and racist behaviours while engaging with, working at, or studying at the University of Bristol. What began as a consultation on our history and building renaming became a powerful channel for people to expose the challenges they have been facing. It also gave people the opportunity to voice their frustrations with the pace of our progress and raise concerns about our commitment to racial equity.

My message today, therefore, begins with an apology. I am deeply sorry for these damaging and hurtful experiences which continue to the present day, and I apologise to everyone impacted by those injustices. We aspire to be an inclusive institution and we must do better.

I also want to share what future-facing actions and commitments we are going to take.

To begin, I want to explain in more detail the relationship between the University and the three families and figures that are most closely involved in our history; Wills, Fry and Colston.

Edward Colston was a seventeenth-century slave trader. Famously, his statue was toppled into the docks during the Black Lives Matter protests in 2020. The University received no funding from Colston, who died nearly 200 years before we were founded, but his personal emblem – the dolphin – still forms part of our crest and our modern logo.

The Wills and Fry families provided substantial funding in the early 20th century which enabled the University to be founded. The families did not own or traffic in enslaved people but the products that their predecessors, during the eighteenth and up to the second part of the nineteenth century dealt in, such as tobacco, sugar and cocoa were undoubtedly connected to enslaved labour. But the past is rarely straight-forward. Indeed, in the case of the Fry family, many members were staunch abolitionists.

The complexity of this history is reflected in the mixed and polarised feedback we received throughout the consultation process (we have made the consultation and engagement report available so you can see the results for yourself). But what is unequivocal, is that all respondents felt that it was crucial to acknowledge and explain our past, and to invest in co-creating solutions to address the educational, economic and health inequalities that we face today.

We have listened. I am, therefore, announcing today that we will be committing to a ten-year, £10 million reparative futures investment programme. The names of key buildings, including those of Wills and Fry will be retained and explained in the proper context. The programme will seek to present the complexities of our past in new ways. We will invest in initiatives and projects that will make a tangible contribution to addressing the racial injustice and inequality that our communities, in Bristol and beyond, face every day.

Importantly, it will look to secure the future of some of the significant initiatives that are ongoing and have already received support over the last few years. It will also ensure we take a more holistic and consistent approach to how we invest and govern our commitments to racial equity and justice as a university. We will appoint accountability partners and experts from our ethnically diverse communities to guide our decision-making and hold us to account going forward. We will create a community fund for proposals from local groups to work with University of Bristol colleagues on initiatives that collaboratively tackle educational, health, and economic inequalities.

We will also be replacing the Colston dolphin insignia from our University of Bristol logo which was designed in 2003. As I explained, Colston was not a donor to the University and had no relationship with the institution or its predecessors. We had already removed Colston’s name from one of our student residences and I feel it is therefore appropriate to remove this symbol, too. The sun symbol of the Wills family and the horse emblem of the Fry family will remain reflecting the wider decision around retaining building names.

I know that some of these decisions will not please everybody – but I believe we must tell our history in an honest, open and transparent way, while at the same time putting our full weight behind substantive action to address the broader issues of systemic racism and inequality here in Bristol and beyond.

The process that has led to these decisions has taken a long time. For some, it has been an imperfect process and may have felt at times that we were dragging our feet or avoiding difficult decisions. I want to reassure you that this was not the case and I share the frustration that it has taken a long time to reach this point. I am confident that we have reached the right balance between proactively addressing our history and being transparent and honest about our past.

But just because the consultation is closed does not mean the debate comes to an end. Indeed, the one place where we should be able to disagree and debate these issues is here, at one of the great global universities. We are an evidence-based institution and fully committed to freedom of speech. This means that continued discussion is welcome as we think carefully about how we describe the full picture of our past, how we represent it, and what we can learn from it. History matters to all of us, particularly when it impacts on current assumptions and practices.

We will of course keep you all updated on the programmes, the initiatives we will be undertaking and how to get involved in our Reparative Futures work. My thanks to the programme team who have led us through this conversation and thank you again to everyone who has taken the time to engage with us and share their views on this complex issue. For more information, see what action we are taking  or if you’d like to comment further, please contact reparative-futures@bristol.ac.uk.

Read the University’s Annual Equality, Diversity and Inclusion (EDI) Report highlighting work to deliver equitable outcomes for our students and staff.

As we approach the end of the current academic year, and my first at Bristol, I would like to thank everyone across the University for the work that we’ve all done to make us such a special place.  I have learned so much about the outstanding work colleagues are doing across the board, from devising sustainable catering options to creating successful spin-out companies. The year has not been without its challenge – more below – but I am very proud of everything we’ve been able to do together.

Building our international reputation

This term I’ve focused on international visits; meeting with our Bristol alumni, supporters and partners on both coasts of the United States.

In New York City, I was quizzed by our graduate and BBC reporter, Laura Trevelyan, famous for her determination to redress the legacy of her ancestors who profited from the work of slaves on plantations in Grenada. I was able to talk with her and fellow alumni about how we and our city are responding to the same challenge and how they can help provide redress for long-standing social injustices.

On the West Coast, the conversation turned to our major quantum spin-out success and we were  joined by the UK’s envoy for Science and Industry.

Those that have done well recognise that Bristol helped them with their first steps and we are very grateful for their ongoing support with, for example, our Bristol Black Scholarship Programme.

There is still more to do to ensure that future students, businesses and academic collaborators in the USA hear more about our world-leading work in research and education. We now have a team of three colleagues working in the States, focusing on raising our profile and reputation. If you are planning a trip to the US, let us know and we can connect you.

Bristol participates in a number of international consortia. I joined Agnes Nairn and colleagues at the University of Monterrey for the annual meeting of the World Universities Network. We were one of the founding members of this network, which supports international research links, including themes such as student mental health and climate change. This was an opportunity to link up with our partners to discuss the next steps in launching our charter on equitable partnerships between the Global North and South. Thanks to the work of the Perivoli Africa Research Centre and colleagues at UCT and the University of South Africa (UNISA), we will launch the charter in Namibia next month.

Building networks back home

I’ve been continuing to meet schools, faculties, staff networks and students; most recently Geography, Education, Law, Policy Studies, Physics, Chemistry and Engineering, and our specialist research groups such as the Quantum Engineering Technologies Lab. I spent time with more than 100 members of our different staff groups working on Equity, Diversity and Inclusion. I left this conversation proud of our mutual support for each other but also very aware of how much more we need to do to ensure colleagues from minority backgrounds feel their experiences are understood, appreciated and valued; and, even more importantly, that their voices are heard and acted upon.

Industrial action

This year has been one of celebrating success but also a time when we have had to have frank conversations around pay, pensions and the terms and conditions for staff. I hope we can all agree that the clear agreement between our union, UCU and UUK, over next steps on the USS pension, is very positive. Now we need to find a negotiated outcome to the other disputes. I hope UCU members will join me in advocating for the changes that Bristol has already put in place around the issues to do with terms and conditions; this makes us amongst the lowest users of short-term contracts in the Russell Group. We are also working with all our local trade unions on our pay spine.

I explained in the live-stream why things have become so difficult. Despite what you may have heard, UCEA, the employers’ negotiating group, has not left the negotiating table. UCEA remains open to discussing terms of reference for a national conversation about the many things that we care about: pay spines, pay gaps, contract and workloads. But with so many higher education institutions facing severe financial challenges, often necessitating redundancies, we will only be able to discuss further national pay rises next spring when we look at the 24/25 pay settlement. In a special meeting of Senate, called by members on 19 June, to discuss the temporary regulations in place to support student progression and graduation this summer, I am pleased to say that, after robust discussion, 78% of Senators supported and had confidence in the regulations. The marking and assessment boycott is truly regrettable and will do little to change the financial challenges caused by rising inflation, flat tuition fees and research income that doesn’t cover its costs. I remain open to hearing from anyone, whether on an individual basis or as a group, about how we try to move forward in a way that supports both our own University and the wider sector as a whole.

Regional and civic engagement

One of the very special aspects of our University is the difference we can make to the city and region in which we live. I was pleased to share the stage with Mayor Marvin Rees at a conference on ‘Realising Regional Growth’ and to have West of England Mayor, Dan Norris, with us when we signed the contract for our new CM1 Temple Quarter main building. This was followed by a ‘breaking ground’ ceremony on site, where we were joined by Mayor Rees, local councillors and our constituency MP, Thangam Debbonaire.

Professor Steve West and I celebrated 30 years of collaboration in Bristol on UWE’s anniversary of becoming a university, signing the Civic University Agreement which provides the framework for future partnership working across the city. And in probably the most impressive news of all, our wonderful University Challenge Team became the first Bristol showing in a series final. Given it was Jeremy Paxman’s last episode, it was particularly nail-biting. While the team eventually lost out to Durham, they really did us proud!

University Structures 2030

Finally, our work is progressing on our strategic business change programme University Structures 2030. Our ambition is to create a clearer framework for decision-making, build a smaller, more agile leadership team, and enable decision-making at the lowest appropriate level. This programme will bring together three strands of change to ensure integration and alignment – Academic Structures, the Professional Services Operating Model, and the Structure of the Academic Year. We intend to establish three new faculties, and are implementing some academic leadership changes from 1 August 2023, as part of a two-year transition period during which structures will evolve to ensure we are fully integrated by 2025.

In support of these changes, I am delighted to welcome our new Pro-Vice Chancellors and Executive Deans: Jeremy Tavare (Health and Life Sciences), Ian Bond (Engineering and Science) and Esther Dermott (Arts, Law and Social Sciences), as well as our new Director of Faculty Operations, Mary Millard, who will lead this change through our transition period. Please also welcome our two new Associate Pro-Vice Chancellors, Liang Fong Wang (Global Engagement) and Palie Smart (Civic Engagement). We also have a suite of new Heads of School including Chrissie Thirlwell as Head of Bristol Medical School, joining us from Exeter University; Jennifer McManus as Head of the School of Physics; and John Wylie, as Head of Geographical Sciences, the latter two both internal appointments.

We have a lot going on across our University and it’s important that we all take time to rest and recharge. I hope that you have holiday booked to enjoy the rest of this glorious British summer weather. We are blessed on campus with the many green spaces to enjoy – thank you to our campus team who do a fantastic job of keeping us close to nature. Remember to make use of these spaces to relax and unwind. Our world-class Botanic Garden offers free entry to staff and students, and is well worth a visit for some peace and tranquility (and, as I can testify, a fabulous place to have coffee and cake).

I hope you have a wonderful summer.

Endnotes

• Temple Quarter breaking ground ceremony image:
  Professor Welch, Mayor Marvin Rees, Hector McAlpine of Sir Robert McAlpine, Chair of Trustees, Jack Boyer, and Thangam Debbonaire MP
• Civic University Agreement image:
  From left to right: Julia Gray, Principal and Chief Executive Officer – City of Bristol College; Professor Evelyn Welch, Vice-Chancellor and President – University of Bristol; Professor Steve West, Vice-Chancellor, President, and Chief Executive Officer – UWE Bristol; Andrea Dell, Head of City Office; and Stephen Peacock, Chief Executive – Bristol City Council. Photo credit – UWE Bristol

It is six months since I became Vice-Chancellor of the University of Bristol.  My thanks to everyone who has helped me get to know the University and the City in all their brilliance and boldness. I have seen such great things happening but have also had numerous conversations about individual and collective challenges. I appreciate the open way in which colleagues, students and other members of our broader Bristol community have shared their insights, ideas and opinions.

I wanted to take time to write down my reflections and share some of what I see as the future for our University in light of those discussions. I do so in the knowledge that not all is well in Higher Education across the UK, or indeed globally, as I write this in South Africa during my first trip abroad on behalf of Bristol. However, while some of what I say below is quite sobering, I am optimistic about the future. Everywhere I’ve been (whether it has been a Bristol, Pretoria or Cape Town classroom), I have met such extraordinary people who are determined to do, and be, their very best.

As part of my trip, I have been visiting our strategic partner, the University of Cape Town, who, like us, have ambitious plans that take them to 2030. Like us, they also have concerns about student fees, accommodation costs and the need for greater inclusion, social and racial justice, and access to the benefits of Higher Education.

While we also have considerable differences, there are some fundamental shared issues. Declining home fees no longer cover the actual costs of tuition; we are increasingly dependent on international fees or philanthropy to cover gaps in research funding and education. For public institutions that don’t have large endowments, there are few easy answers.

I don’t need to remind you that, at Bristol, while our income is constrained by caps on home tuition fees, our costs are not. Inflation has hit everybody personally. Our students are worried about how far their maintenance grant will stretch. Colleagues are understandably concerned about rising costs, pay and pensions. It has hit the University as an institution as well. Some of this isn’t new, and these growing financial pressures have led to staff strikes and student protests in Higher Education for almost five consecutive years. But post-COVID, things really do need to change. The goodwill that has kept our system working is fraying at every level.

But if this is the challenge,  there is some hope on the horizon in the United Kingdom. Our unions and Universities UK have agreed a joint statement on pensions which we endorse, and while negotiations on pay may have concluded, we support ongoing talks on broader working conditions.

I have been out listening to colleagues in numerous venues, from individual meetings at my monthly VC surgeries to picket line conversations. I have heard sensible suggestions about practical steps that we can take to be more effective and efficient, as well as exciting ideas for new opportunities. In turn, I have done my best to explain why we need to change our approach to University finances and decision-making, ensuring we simplify processes, reduce bureaucracy and build more trust into our systems. I know there is more to do to explain how we make investment decisions, particularly in terms of capital expenditure.

This does mean change, something that I know can elicit groans of “not again!”

Let me explain what is being proposed and why. Our current University Executive Board is very large, with more than 25 members. We also have a Strategic Implementation Board, featuring essentially the same people, monitoring our progress against our strategy and agreeing investments that will help deliver our aims. A host of committees feed into these two groups, including the Academic Leadership Group, Operations Board, Portfolio Boards and other groups which oversee implementation of the various themes of our strategy. Faculties and Directorates have their own layers of meetings, which should join up with these senior-level university groups but often don’t. Then there is Senate, a key academic body, which has its own essential groups that meet and report regularly.

Universities are complex places, but as the description above suggests, we can build in more  complexity than is really needed. These committees and meetings consume people’s attention, focus and time.

My ambition is for Bristol to be more open, trustworthy and trusting, restoring energy by placing authority where it is needed most. With greater autonomy comes greater local accountability. Within agreed guidelines, and referring to specific expertise when needed, we should trust one another to do our very best.

To make this possible, Judith Squires has been leading a review of our academic leadership structures, drawing upon ideas from a working group drawn from Senate members. I’ve been clear with that group from the beginning that I do need a smaller number of Deans on our University Executive and that, above all,  Schools need greater visibility and autonomy. The working group, in turn, has come up with a range of ways in which this could be made possible, while retaining elements of the current structures they believe are valuable.

In the Spring, therefore, we will be appointing three Executive Deans for Health & Life Sciences, Arts, Social Sciences & Law and Science & Engineering, initially for a period of up to two years. Executive Deans will work with colleagues to define, within agreed overarching university guidelines, local frameworks that work for their Schools, staff and students. These appointments will be made from the current cohort of Deans or equivalents to ensure some continuity as we work through the detail of the changes over the next eighteen to twenty-four months.

What does this mean for Professional Services (PS) colleagues?  Simplified Faculties, and Schools with more responsibility and accountability will need appropriate levels of PS support (balanced across local and central teams) with appropriately streamlined processes and systems. Work to create efficient and effective PS teams is now underway at Bristol and engagement on this will continue. Lucinda Parr is leading this work. Over the next six months she will be leading a process to define the structures required to give Executive Deans and Heads of School the help they need. Lucinda will be supported in this by a new Executive Director of Faculty Operations, who will be appointed over the summer to help us evolve the Faculty PS model in support of our strategy. More information about the changes can be found here and here.

I realise there will be some anxiety around implementing changes. This is why we are moving swiftly to make the direction of travel clear while also taking time to implement the detail, which will include confirming how students are represented in our decision-making.

While University structures matter, they are the mechanism for delivering our ambitions, not an ambition in their own right. We have a lot to do and a lot to deliver by 2030. We have a bold strategy and a new campus to open in 2026. We face serious issues around climate change and meeting our Net Zero commitments, with or without offsetting. We are part of a city that is changing all around us. We need to contribute to its overall prosperity, not just our own.  As just one of many examples of how we make this work, our city is home to the Bristol Robotics Laboratory, where last month I signed an agreement with UWE Vice-Chancellor Steve West, formalizing our ten-year partnership commitment in what is the largest academic centre for robotics research in the UK.

On practical matters, let me finish by outlining some major financial decisions that we have recently made or are in the process of deciding. There are often concerns that we invest more in buildings than in people, but that isn’t the case: at Bristol more than 50% of our income goes on salaries. Nonetheless, our people need the right infrastructure within which to work. The Board of Trustees has approved recommendations to modernize our computing network. They have also approved a major upgrade to our teaching and learning facilities in the Veterinary School, as well as the extension on our lease of Maggs House, enabling more innovative student-focused space to be developed on the Clifton Campus. At the end of March, the Board will also make the final decision on the construction of the main CM1 building at Temple Quarter, a key moment in planning that has been ongoing since the idea of a new campus was first discussed almost a decade ago.

This is exciting. This is ambitious. This is bold. This is why I came to Bristol.

I realise that some of what I have written may raise more questions for you. We can pick these up either in our next town-hall live-stream meeting or you can always email me at vice-chancellor@bristol.ac.uk.

Thank you again for the welcome shown to me over these first six months and the work that each and every one of you does to make us such a special place. I look forward to meeting with many more of you in the weeks and months ahead.

The past four months have flown by so quickly and it is hard to believe that we are almost at the end of term.

It has been a real pleasure to get to know the University of Bristol community, our city and our many friends and partners. I have been so impressed by the high calibre of our academic and professional services work. I have seen the depth of the shared commitment of staff, students and our city to solving long-term issues such as public health, environmental sustainability and social justice. I have participated in open conversations on difficult and complex issues ranging from contemporary racial inequalities to cost-of-living pressures.

I am committed to building on these foundations and it was great to launch the University’s new strategy, one that will take us to 2030.  I was not here when the strategy was developed but it is a privilege to lead the delivery of its purpose-led, bold and uniquely Bristolian drive for excellence and inclusion over the next seven years.

The next phase is to move forward to meet our promises and put our strategy into practice. I have every confidence that we can do this, and more. Over the past months, I have visited schools, faculties and directorates and held two live-streamed conversations with staff. I have worked closely with our University of Bristol Students’ Union to hear their views on what we do well, and where we need to improve. I have met regularly with the Mayor of Bristol and the Metro Mayor of the West of England Combined Authority and caught up with what we do collaboratively through our SetSquared, GW4 and the Western Gateway Initiatives. Our University senior team have met with UWE and the University of Bath’s executives to explore areas where we can deepen our local partnerships. I have been out to see the National Composites Centre and Science Create where some of our most entrepreneurial work takes place and taken Research council, Research England and parliamentary visitors around the new Bristol Digital Futures Institute and our exciting emerging Temple Quarter site.

I have also been struck by the special place that the University of Bristol has in the life of the nation as well as globally. It was a privilege to represent the University at Her Royal Highness, the late Queen Elizabeth II’s funeral and to host the Mayor’s Annual State of the City Address and the High Sheriff’s conference on how to make the legal system more diverse. I have met numerous alumni in the UK and from across the world who want to help make the University as effective as possible. If we can deliver on our 2030 ambitions, we will be an exemplar of what it truly means to be a global-civic university.

Throughout these conversations, I have also been aware of the challenges that we face, both in dealing with our past and in formulating our future. We have an increasingly diverse student body but this isn’t reflected in our the make-up of our staff. We are seeing much higher levels of stress, anxiety and depression in both our student and staff bodies than ever before. Expectations about what we should provide are rising at the same time as our financial resources are being stretched to their limits. But I believe that Bristol will rise to these challenges today just as we have done in the past. I am very excited about what 2023 will bring and look forward to seeing you all again in the New Year.

I’ve recorded a short film for my University colleagues reflecting on my experiences this term and looking ahead to 2023 which you may like to watch.

Have a wonderful, restful break and a Happy New Year.