Reports

Report of the General Board on the establishment of a Professorship of Hypoxia Signalling and Cell Biology

The General Board beg leave to report to the University as follows:

1. The School of Clinical Medicine has identified cancer, cardio-vascular disease, and neurosciences as among its key strategic priorities. Its strength in each is underpinned by an understanding of the basic biology of disease mechanisms, and its approach is to foster collaborations between basic scientists with an interest in biological mechanisms with clinicians undertaking human studies on patients and healthy volunteers.

2. A particularly powerful approach to understanding mechanism is to combine molecular techniques with cell culture models of disease. The School now wishes to strengthen its expertise to interrogate disease processes, in particular the role of oxygenation in these processes. It intends to do this through the establishment of a Professorship of Hypoxia Signalling and Cell Biology. It is proposed that the Professor will be based in the Department of Medicine, but will have access, as appropriate, to the research facilities of the Departments of Medicine, Oncology, and Clinical Neurosciences. The School of Clinical Medicine will meet the full costs of the appointment.

3. The General Board have accepted the Faculty Board’s proposal, and have agreed that election to the Professorship should be made by an ad hoc Board of Electors, and that candidature should be open without limitation or preference to all persons whose work falls within the field of Hypoxia Signalling and Cell Biology.

4. The General Board accordingly recommend:

I. That a Professorship of Hypoxia Signalling and Cell Biology be established in the University for one tenure from 1 December 2012, placed in Schedule B of the Statutes, and assigned to the Department of Medicine.

10 October 2012	L. K. Borysiewicz, Vice-Chancellor	Martin Daunton	Patrick Maxwell
	Philip Allmendinger	Simon Franklin	Sadie Jarrett
	N. Bampos	C. A. Gilligan	Rachael Padman
	H. A. Chase	David Good	John Rallison
	Sarah Coakley	Robert Kennicutt	Amanda Talhat

Report of the General Board on the establishment of a Readership in Quantitative Sociology

The General Board beg leave to report to the University as follows:

1. The Department of Sociology is a leading international centre for theoretically strong, empirically orientated research, with a growing portfolio of large research grants from the UK Research Councils and Europe. Although Sociology at Cambridge developed in the latter part of the twentieth century, the Department follows a much longer academic tradition in sociological research, dating from Marx, Weber, and Durkheim, that focuses on the practical consequences of socio-economic change. Its academic strategy is to pursue niche areas of excellence – employment, family, and gender, media, technology, and culture, and public health and biomedicine – through methodologically rigorous empirical research, including quantitative analysis of large and complex data sets. The General Board’s review of the provision of teaching, learning, and research in the social sciences (Reporter, 2009–10, pp. 467–76) highlighted the need to make appointments in areas which would support this strategy.

2. There are increasing opportunities to take advantage of expanding data resources for social science, and the School of the Humanities and Social Sciences is taking steps to ensure that the University is in a stronger position to bid for new data resource and analysis funds from the ESRC and other sponsors. The Department of Sociology aims to make an important contribution in this area; however, its current capacity to contribute to bids is limited by having too few people with the necessary skills. Therefore, the Department propose establishing a Readership in order that the person appointed can take a leadership role in large-scale interdisciplinary bids utilizing quantitative methods. Although the Readership will be established in the Department of Sociology, the person appointed will be expected to help foster productive and collaborative links with relevant quantitative research in other disciplines, including demography, education, criminology, and economics, and to contribute to the development of quantitative research training across the social sciences. In addition, the person appointed to the Readership will be expected to contribute to the development and teaching of the interdisciplinary research methods paper for Part IIa of the new Human, Social, and Political Sciences Tripos.

3. The Council of the School of the Humanities and Social Sciences have approved the case made by the Department, and recommend the establishment of a Readership in Quantitative Sociology in the Department of Sociology with effect from 1 September 2013. The costs of the Readership will be met from funds available to the School of the Humanities and Social Sciences.

4. The General Board have accepted the Council of the School’s proposal for the establishment of this Readership. The criteria for appointment to a Readership through open competition will be identical to those for appointment through the senior academic promotions procedure. The Appointments Committee will be constituted as specified in the Regulations (Statutes and Ordinances, p. 743).

5. The General Board accordingly recommend:

I. That a Readership in Quantitative Sociology be established in the Department of Sociology with effect from 1 September 2013.

10 October 2012	L. K. Borysiewicz, Vice-Chancellor	Martin Daunton	Patrick Maxwell
	Philip Allmendinger	Simon Franklin	Sadie Jarrett
	N. Bampos	C. A. Gilligan	Rachael Padman
	H. A. Chase	David Good	John Rallison
	Sarah Coakley	Robert Kennicutt	Amanda Talhat