Professor Colin Riordan
Vice-Chancellor, University of Essex: Universities UK nominee
Professor Colin Riordan was appointed Vice-Chancellor of the University of Essex in October 2007. He came to Essex from Newcastle University, where he had been Pro Vice-Chancellor and Provost of the Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences since August 2005.
Previously he served as the Dean of Postgraduate Studies for the Faculty from 2004 to 2005, and Head of the School of Modern Languages from 2001 to 2004. He also served as Head of German and Director of Research for the School of Modern Languages. Before joining Newcastle University, he taught at the University of Wales, Swansea, and Julius-Maximilians Universität-Würzburg in Germany.
Professor Riordan has published widely on post-war German literature and culture, including writing and editing books on the writers Jurek Becker, Uwe Johnson and Peter Schneider.