RLUK and SCONUL have appointed Christopher Pressler of the University of Nottingham as the new Chair of the Joint Scholarly Communications Group, taking over from Michael Breaks, who is retiring as University Librarian of Heriot-Watt University.

Christopher Pressler on the appointment has said: "I am genuinely pleased to be able to have the opportunity of chairing this important Group. A huge amount has been achieved in recent years towards opening access to intellectual resources. The institutions which collectively form RLUK and SCONUL are some of the world’s most important research communities and combined with the emerging REF landscape, are a key voice on the crucial issue of broadening availability to research and its assessment. I look forward to working with colleagues in these challenging but exciting times."

Biography

Christopher Pressler, Director of Research and Learning Resources, The University of Nottingham.

Christopher is responsible for the University libraries and archive collections, elearning services and is Co-Director of the Centre for Research Communications. He is Co-Chair of DART-Europe, a member of the SPARC-Europe Board and Chair of Digital Research in the Humanities and Arts. His PhD research is in musicology and has broadcast on Elgar for BBC Radio 4 and soon on John Ireland for BBC 1. He also holds degrees from Queen’s Belfast, Nottingham Trent and Sheffield Universities. Previous roles have been at UCL, JISC, Senate House and at Dartington. In 2004 he was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society of Arts.