Message from of Jessica Corner and Tim Softley

As you will be aware, Steve Hill and Steve Watson successfully led a bid for five years of funding for COMPARE from the Universities of Birmingham and Nottingham in 2016, and have been its co-Directors since its launch. Their intention was to lead the first five years of the Centre as co-Directors and to then step back, with others taking over leadership. To this end, we have recently undertaken a process to recruit their successors, and are pleased to announce that, from January 2021, the new co-Directors of COMPARE will be Professor Jeanette Woolard (Nottingham) and Professor Davide Calebiro (Birmingham) – congratulations to you both.

The Strategic Oversight Group that works with COMPARE on behalf of both universities’ UEBs met with the International Advisory Group towards the end of last year to discuss the progress and future plans of COMPARE. The meeting and the report of the IAB were very complimentary and celebrated many of the successes of COMPARE since it was established. This is due to the hard work of everyone in COMPARE and we wanted to take this opportunity to recognise and thank all of you for your hard work in making COMPARE a success.

We would also like to formally thank Steve and Steve for their strong leadership of COMPARE to date, and we look forward to continuing to work with them in their current capacity as co-Directors until the end of the calendar year.

Jessica Corner, Pro-Vice-Chancellor, Research and Knowledge Exchange, University of Nottingham

Tim Softley, Pro-Vice-Chancellor for Research and Knowledge Transfer, University of Birmingham