Sir Nigel Thrift

Nigel Thrift has had a varied academic career that has involved working at a number of universities. It has involved stints at Cambridge, Leeds, ANU, Wales, Bristol, Oxford and Warwick. Whilst at Bristol, he also became involved in university management, resulting in him becoming Head of Division and then Pro-Vice-Chancellor at Oxford and then Vice-Chancellor at Warwick. He has also been an Executive Director of Schwarzman Scholars and is currently Chair of the UK Government Committee on Radioactive Waste Management.

He is familiar with both US and Asian higher education, having taught, for example, at UCLA as a Visiting Lecturer and at Tsinghua as a Visiting Professor and as a member of the Board of SMU in Singapore and Hong Kong Poly U in Hong Kong.

He has continued with his academic career, having published 45 books and edited collections as well as numerous papers. He has written on a wide variety of topics from financial exclusion to repair and maintenance, from the social theory of time and process to international finance, and from animals to global higher education.