Contact
Email the Vice-Chancellor and President’s Office: shearer.west@leeds.ac.uk
About
Professor Shearer West joined the University of Leeds on 1 November 2024 as our fourteenth Vice-Chancellor and President.
An expert in Art History, Professor West has held influential leadership roles in universities and higher education.
She obtained her BA degree in Art History and English at the College of William and Mary in Virginia in the United States of America, and her PhD in Art History at the University of St Andrews in Scotland.
Professor West was awarded a CBE in the 2021 Queen’s New Year’s Honours List for services to higher education.
Career
After completing her PhD, Professor West worked as an editor for the Grove Dictionary of Art before taking up her first academic post at the University of Leicester.
In 1996, she moved to the University of Birmingham as Head of the History of Art Department, then Head of the School of Historical Studies, and Acting Head of the College of Arts and Law. She was awarded a personal chair in 2000.
In 2008 Professor West was appointed as Director of Research at the Arts and Humanities Research Council where she also chaired the Research Directors Group for Research Councils UK.
She then took up the role of Head of the Humanities Division at Oxford in 2011, where she oversaw the launch of the Oxford Research Centre in the Humanities (TORCH) and the Ertegun Graduate Scholarship Programme in the Humanities.
She was appointed as Provost and Deputy Vice-Chancellor at the University of Sheffield in 2015. Professor West then joined the University of Nottingham as its first woman Vice-Chancellor in October 2017, leading its campuses in the UK, China and Malaysia and publishing its University Strategy in December 2019.
Board memberships and other roles
Professor West is a board member and deputy chair of the Russell Group, which provides strategic advice, policy development and representation for the UK’s 24 leading research-intensive universities.
She is a Trustee and Deputy Chair of the National Portrait Gallery and a former Visitor (trustee) of the Ashmolean Museum, Oxford.
Professor West has also served in numerous international roles, including acting as the main panel chair for the national research assessment exercise for Humanities in Norway and serving on the steering group to introduce impact into the Excellence in Research (ERA) exercise in Australia.
She is former Chair of the Universitas 21 global network of universities and is currently a board member of the Association of Commonwealth Universities and a member of the University Grants Committee of Hong Kong.
She has also represented the UK on the Science Europe Humanities Scientific Committee and has been a jurist for the Spinoza and Gravitation Prizes in the Netherlands and the Odysseus and Solvay Prizes in Belgium.
Publications
Professor West has authored and edited many articles and nine books including Portraiture, The visual arts in Germany 1897-1940: Utopia and Despair, and Fin De Siècle: Art and society in an age of uncertainty.
She is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Arts, the Higher Education Academy and the Royal Historical Society, and has held two visiting Fellowships at Yale University.
Objectives
- Lead a mid-term strategy review with a focus on delivery.
- Leadership, accountability and structure clarification: initially an accountability framework for the University Executive Group, Thematic Deans, Professional Services Directors and Heads of School.
- Examine academic size and shape — based on value/cost exercises, with quality and impact as key drivers for decision-making.
- Agile, efficient and effective working: examine pain points in service delivery and develop rapid improvement events for a small number of processes — particularly those that will improve the student experience (in support of the NSS).
- Support civic and global engagement and partnerships.
- Ensure the sustained financuial health of the institution and expand on the commercial opportunity.
- Maintain an effective relationship with the University Council.
Salary
- Contractual salary as Vice-Chancellor and President: £330,000
- In lieu of USS pension contributions: £0
- Employer contributions to USS defined benefit pension scheme: £0
- USS death in service cover: £8,250
- Benefits in kind: £0
Total cost: £338,250
The Vice-Chancellor and President’s salary has been determined according to a number of factors including, but not limited to, the depth of their leadership, management and academic experience within the higher education sector, and the breadth of responsibilities for one of the UK’s largest universities.
The University of Leeds is a large and complex organisation with more than 10,000 staff and 40,000 students. It has an annual turnover of more than £1bn and an ambitious ten-year strategy. The University is a world top 100 University with a global reputation for excellence in teaching and research. Students and staff are drawn from more than 150 countries.
The remuneration of the Vice-Chancellor and President is reviewed annually by the Remuneration Committee. This includes consideration of the scale, complexity and performance of the University and external benchmarking, such as from UCEA and Korn Ferry, and guidance of the CUC Higher Education Senior Staff Remuneration Code.
The Vice-Chancellor and President is not a member of the Remuneration Committee and has no role in determining remuneration for herself or those under her line management. She does not attend meetings of the Remuneration Committee unless specifically invited to discuss the performance and her annual remuneration review recommendations for senior staff under her line management.
The Office for Students (OfS) requires the University to publish two key ratios to show the relationship of the remuneration of the Vice-Chancellor and President to that of employees within the University. These ratios will be published in the next annual statement of accounts due in December 2025.