Author: Evelyn Welch

Professor Evelyn Welch graduated from Harvard University with a BA in Renaissance History and Literature, receiving her PhD from the Warburg Institute, University of London. Prior to Bristol, she was Senior Vice-President (SVP) Service, People & Planning at King’s College London. She had previously served as King’s Vice-President (Arts and Sciences) and later Provost (Arts and Sciences). Professor Welch has taught at the Universities of Essex, the Warburg Institute, Birkbeck, and held senior leadership roles at the University of Sussex (Pro Vice-Chancellor Teaching and Learning) and Queen Mary, University of London (Dean, Arts and Pro Vice-Chancellor Research and International). As Professor of Renaissance Studies, Professor Welch has led a range of major research programmes including The Material Renaissance, funded by the Arts and Humanities Research Council (AHRC) and the Getty Foundation; Beyond Text: Performances, Sounds, Images, Objects, a £5.5 million AHRC strategic research programme which ran from 2005-2012, and has recently completed a Wellcome Trust Senior Investigator Award for a major project on ‘Renaissance Skin’. Professor Welch is the author of numerous books and articles, including Fashioning the Early Modern: Creativity and Innovation in Europe, 1500-1800 (OUP 2017), and Shopping in the Renaissance (Yale 2005), which won the Wolfson Prize for History. She currently serves as the Chair of Trustees of the Dulwich Picture Gallery.

Reflections on my first month

Posted on by Evelyn Welch

I have been in post now for four weeks. While short, it has been a memorable period with events ranging from attending the funeral of the late Queen Elizabeth II at Westminster Abbey on your behalf or watching carefully as the new government has put its priorities in place to see what this means for Higher Education.

Alongside these national events, we’ve welcomed our students back to campus and enjoyed the Welcome Fair and all the amazing activities that the Students’ Union have put in place. I finished my first round of local and student media interviews, including with BBC Points West, Radio Bristol, Heart FM, Bristol 24/7, Epigram, UBTV and the Tab; and for colleagues who missed it, you can view my Town Hall introduction and Q&A session on the staff intranet.

Elsewhere, we’ve also had good news from Research England’s Knowledge Exchange Framework exercise which shows that Bristol is second only to Oxford in the amount of investment that our spin-out companies attract, testimony to the brilliance and impact that our research is achieving.

On a more sobering note, I’ve been speaking to UNISON colleagues on their picket lines last week. I’ve heard understandable worries about pay, cost-of-living concerns and workload pressures. While the issues around pay can only be negotiated at a national level, my colleagues will be working with all our trade unions to see what local measures we can take to help staff get through the winter and beyond.

Finally, I’ve had just over 170 messages to the VC-Feedback inbox and I’ve done my best to reply to each of you individually. I remain so impressed with the deep affection that you all have for the University of Bristol, one that I now understand and share myself. That gives me great confidence that we will be able to navigate any shifting funding or political challenges together. The dedicated mailbox is now closed but you can always contact me on vice-chancellor@bristol.ac.uk

In this short video, filmed in the study spaces of Senate House, I’ve tried to capture what this month has felt like.