Professor Matthew Innes
Senior Strategic Advisor
Professor Matt Innes sits on the University Executive Board as Senior Strategic Advisor, working closely with the Vice Chancellor and the University’s academic and professional leadership to support strategic development, collaboration and innovation.
Matt’s academic and professional experience and interests span University leadership, organisational change, history and policy. His professional career has been inspired by a commitment to social mobility, and a determination to ensure that ladders of opportunity like those from which he had benefited, were accessible for future generations.
By background Matt is a prize-winning author and historian, whose academic career has progressed through research and teaching roles at the Universities of Cambridge, Birmingham, York and London, and he has served as a College and University Governor, Head of School, Dean of Faculty, and Pro Vice Chancellor. He recently completed a period as Deputy Vice Chancellor at Birkbeck, the torch bearer for educational access within the University of London federation. At Birkbeck he implemented values-led strategic changes in response to financial and policy challenges, ensuring that a diverse and disadvantaged student body could succeed through flexible blended study pathways from Foundation through to Postgraduate which allowed University to be combined with caring, family and work responsibilities. Matt is strongly engaged in advocacy and policy work around widening access, adult education and lifelong learning.
At Lincoln Bishop University, Matt is working closely with colleagues on a range of strategic developments. These include preparing for the Government’s new Lifelong Learning Entitlement to support flexible modular learning and regional partnerships; developing an institutional plan to embed social purpose at the heart of all the University does; ensuring that national league tables reflect the University’s outstanding student experience; and supporting academic development and research impact in the ‘Applied Humanities’, Business and the Professions, and Education.