Professor Chris Brink served as Vice-Chancellor of Newcastle University in the UK from 2007 till 2016. He was a Board member of the Russell Group, as well as the N8, the partnership of eight research-intensive universities in the North of England, which he also chaired. Previously he had served as a Board member of Universities UK (where he chaired the Student Policy Network), the national Equality Challenge Unit (also as Co-Chair), the national Quality Assurance Agency, JISC (the national digital services provider), the Advisory Committee on Leadership, Governance and Management of HEFCE, the North East Local Enterprise Partnership, and various regional Boards. Currently he serves on the University Grants Committee in Hong Kong, where he chairs the implementation group for the 2020 Research Assessment Exercise.

Chris Brink is known as a champion of the idea of a civic university, which he phrased in two key questions: ‘What are we good at?’ and ‘What are we good for?’. For his work with the city he was awarded the Freedom of Newcastle. During his tenure as ViceChancellor, Newcastle University set up three branch campuses (Malaysia, Singapore and London) and twice won the national THELMA (the Times Higher Education Leadership and Management Award), as well as the Athena SWAN Silver Award for the advancement of gender equality. He has wide experience on issues of equality and diversity, particularly drawing on his experience in South Africa. He was awarded a CBE for services to higher education in the Queen’s Birthday Honours in 2018.

Before taking up his position at Newcastle, Professor Brink was Vice-Chancellor of Stellenbosch University in South Africa, where he led a transformation agenda which attracted national and international attention. Earlier, he had served as Pro-ViceChancellor (Research) at the University of Wollongong in Australia. Before that he was Professor and Head of the Department of Mathematics and Applied Mathematics at the University of Cape Town, and served as the University’s Coordinator of Strategic Planning. Other positions include a Senior Research Fellowship at the Australian National University in the 1980s, a brief spell in industry in the USA, sabbatical and other leave periods at Oxford, and visits to many other European universities.

Professor Brink has served on review panels for universities in a number of countries. He is a logician with a Cambridge PhD, an interdisciplinary DPhil, Master’s degrees in philosophy and mathematics, and a Bachelor’s degree in computer science. His research areas include mathematics, logic, philosophy and computer science, and he has published in all these fields. Before moving into management he held the prestigious “A”-rating of the National Research Foundation, which ranked him as one of South Africa’s leading scientists. He is a Fellow of the Royal Society of South Africa, and holds an Honorary Doctorate in Civil Law.