Janet Beer

Professor Janet Beer
Vice-Chancellor of University of Liverpool
Incumbent
Assumed office February 2015
Preceded by	Sir Howard Newby
2nd Chairman of the University Alliance
Incumbent
Assumed office 2009 - 2012
Preceded by	John Craven
Succeeded by	Steven West
Personal details
Nationality	British
Alma mater	University of Reading University of Warwick
Profession	Professor of English and American Literature

Janet Beer (b. 1 August 1956) is the Vice-Chancellor of the University of Liverpool. She took over from Howard Newby in February 2015, having previously been Vice-Chancellor at Oxford Brookes University and Pro-Vice Chancellor and Dean of Humanities, Law and Social Sciences at Manchester Metropolitan University.

Education and career

She is a graduate of the University of Reading and Warwick University and held a fellowship at Yale University. She worked for the Inner London Education Authority between 1983 and 1989 and has fulfilled academic and leadership roles at Warwick, Roehampton and Manchester Metropolitan.

She came to the end of her term of office as Chair of the University Alliance in 2012; from 2000 until 2007 she was a Specialist Adviser to the House of Commons Education & Skills Select Committee; she has served a full term as a Board Member at the HEA and was founding Chair of the PVC Network; she was an Editorial Board member on 'The Journal of American Studies from 1997-2011, Associate Editor of 'The Year's Work in English Studies' from 1999-2007 and a Director of Carcanet Press from 1999-2006; she was a member of the Peer Review Panel for English at the AHRC from 2000-2005 and continues to be a member of the Peer Review College; she has also fulfilled a variety of different Board and Chairing roles for the QAA, Leadership Foundation, British Association for American Studies, the Fulbright Commission and the Council of University Deans of Arts and Humanities.

Beer is the current chair of the steering group for the National Student Survey (HEPISG). She co-chairs the Equality Challenge Unit, is a member of the Universities UK Board and the Board of UCAS, and she chairs SPA (Supporting Professionalism in Admissions). She is a Higher Education Commissioner (IPPR), and a member of the Advisory Board of the Higher Education Policy Institute. In 2011 she was elected as a Visiting Fellow of Nuffield College, Oxford.

Research and publications

Beer has an established record of research in late nineteenth- and early twentieth-century American literature and culture and contemporary Canadian women’s writing. She has written a number of books about Edith Wharton, most recently, in 2011, 'Sex, Satire and the Older Woman' (co-authored with Avril Horner). She has published widely on early twentieth-century American literary figures, transatlantic relationships and cultures.

References

Articles

Preceded by John Craven

Chairman of the University Alliance 2009–2012

Succeeded by Steven West