Meet Professor Hugo Tucker, Dean of the Faculty of Arts, Humanities and Social Science

Thursday, 18 August 2011

As of 1 August the Faculty of Arts and Humanities merged with the Faculty of Social Sciences to form the Faculty of Arts, Humanities and Social Science. The new Faculty has six schools (three from each faculty), 245 academic staff and about 4,700 students. Professor Hugo Tucker, who is Dean of the new Faculty, discusses the merger and his hopes for its future:

Why are the two Faculties merging?

This merger comes as a result of the overall re-shaping of the University, reducing the number of faculties from five to four, in order to rationalise and render more effective the management structure of the University. In the case of our new Faculty this will maximise opportunities within it for interdisciplinary collaboration in both teaching and research, across the range of Arts and Humanities and Social Science. This rationalisation and integration should also help encourage broader, University wide research collaborations, as well as those with partner institutions in the UK and abroad.

How do you think the formation of the new Faculty will benefit research across the Arts, Humanities and Social Sciences?

Inevitably, this should lend us opportunities for increasing research focus and strength, as well as developing new or nascent areas of research at the disciplinary boundaries. Research activities previously conducted separately in separate faculties can be drawn together within a single faculty umbrella. The new enlarged Faculty should also serve as a platform for encouraging collaboration in the Social Sciences from across the University.

How will you encourage collaboration?

I would like to encourage research collaborations across the new Faculty and beyond, by promoting activities such as research workshops at faculty level, and identifying, with Schools, broad faculty-wide research themes with the potential for internal and external collaborations.

By its size, breadth, and new disciplinary configuration, the new Faculty will be better placed to meet the challenges facing the Higher Education sector and in the Arts and Humanities and Social Sciences, by pooling resources and expertise to create new synergies. In particular, this should enhance opportunities for multidisciplinary and interdisciplinary research in order to attract large-scale research funding, in collaborative grant bids from the funding councils, across councils, and for identifying new sources of funding.

What will you be doing in your first few months as Dean of the new Faculty?

I shall be listening to the Schools within the Faculty, and learning how they each operate. This will help me to understanding their concerns, needs and aspirations, and identify with them the best ways to co-ordinate these, within the new Faculty structure. This should help us harmonise our initiatives, lending them new direction and impetus, in response to the immediate challenges in the HE sector in general, and those faced by the University of Reading.

[This interview has been adapted from the Summer 2011 edition of Research Review. View Research Review >>>]