University of Chichester announces the promotion of four of its academic staff to Professors and Readers The University of Chichester is pleased to announce the promotion of four members of its academic staff to the position of Professor and Reader. Dr Bill Gray and Dr Alison MacLeod both from the English team have been appointed as Professors and Dr Andrew Chandler from History and Dr Benjamin Noyes also from English are appointed as Readers. Dr Robin Baker, Vice Chancellor at the University of Chichester, said: “It is important to the University's future that quality research and teaching are recognised and that those who are successful in their applications are supported to enrich the research and teaching culture and achievement of the University.”

ENDS

Professor Alison MacLeod Alison MacLeod was raised in Canada and has lived in England since 1987. She has published two critically acclaimed novels, The Changeling (Macmillan,1996) and The Wave Theory of Angels (Hamish Hamilton, 2005). Her short stories and essays have been widely published in a variety of literary magazines and collections in both the UK and abroad. Her stories have also been broadcast on the BBC. Her short story collection, Fifteen Modern Tales of Attraction, was published by Penguin in 2007. In 2008, she was the recipient of the Society of Authors’ Olive Cook Award for Short Fiction, while her collection was nominated for the International Frank O’Connor Award for Short Fiction and named as one of the top ten ‘Books to Talk About in 2009’, part of World Book Day events. In addition to her writing, she teaches on the MA programme in Creative Writing at the University of Chichester and supervises on the Ph.D. programme in Creative Writing. Her next novel is due to be published by Hamish Hamilton in 2010 and is set in Brighton, where she now lives.

Professor Bill GrayBill Gray took degrees at Oxford, Princeton and Edinburgh before coming to Chichester in 1981 as a university lecturer in Religious Studies, with a special interest in philosophy and literature. Gradually moving over into English (his first love), he was joint acting Head of English in 2001-3 before becoming Reader in 2005. He has published four books and many essays on writers including Philip Pullman, C.S. Lewis, J.R.R. Tolkien, E.T. A. Hoffmann and especially Robert Louis Stevenson and George MacDonald. The latter, a seminal writer of fantasy for children of all ages, deeply influenced both Lewis Carroll and C.S. Lewis. MacDonald is almost a local author, having been minister of the Congregational church in Tarrant Street, Arundel (now Ninevah House antique market). Besides preparing new editions of texts by Stevenson and MacDonald, Bill is lecturing on MacDonald both in the ‘prestigious speakers’ lecture series run by the Oxford Centre for Christianity and Culture in June, and also in the ‘Changing Childhood’ conference at the University of Chichester in July. Bill is also engaged in establishing a centre for research into the folklore and fantasy literature in which Sussex abounds.

Dr Andrew Chandler (Reader) - Completed his BA (hons) in History, First Class, University of Birmingham in 1987; Ph.D, University of Cambridge 1990. Between 1990 and 1996 taught modern history at the universities of Birmingham and Keele; Visiting Lecturer, University of British Columbia 1995. In 1996 he set up the George Bell Institute (GBI), an international foundation for scholars, thinkers and artists, from the Queen's Foundation in Birmingham. He also taught Church History and supervised research students for the University of Birmingham. He brought the GBI to the University of Chichester in 2007. publications include a succession of studies of twentieth century religious and political history, mostly relating British experience to international affairs. Many of these focus on the work of George Bell, Bishop of Chichester, 1929-1958. In 2006 he published The Church of England in the Twentieth Century: The Church Commissioners and the Politics of Reform, 1948-1998. At the department of history at the university I teach courses in modern British, European and North American history. Dr Benjamin Noys (Reader) joined the University of Chichester in 2000 as a lecturer in English, which was his first academic position since completing my DPhil at the University of Sussex under the supervision of Professor Geoffrey Bennington in 1998. He had already completed his first academic monograph, Georges Bataille: A Critical Introduction, which was also published in 2000. In 2005 he published his second academic monograph, The Culture of Death, and is currently completing his third, The Persistence of the Negative: a Critique of Contemporary Continental Theory, which will be published in 2010 by Edinburgh University Press. Since arriving at the University he has also published over 18 journal articles in international peer reviewed journals, including Theory, Culture & Society, Angelaki, the Quarterly Review of Film and Video, and Filosofksi Vestnik. He has edited four journal special issues, including three with the University of Chichester’s Dr Hugo Frey (Subject Leader of History), published five review essays, and regularly reviews for academic and non-academic journals (including The Philosophers' Magazine, The New Humanist, Radical Philosophy, and Historical Materialism). He is also on the editorial boards of the international Lacanian journal S, and of the online journal Film-Philosophy.