Pro Vice-Chancellor for the Faculty of Engineering and Environment (Interim)

Professor Jane Entwistle is the Faculty Pro Vice-Chancellor for Engineering and Environment (Interim) at Northumbria University.

As Faculty Pro Vice-Chancellor for Engineering and Environment (interim), Jane works closely with the University Executive shaping and delivering the University’s Vision, Strategy and supporting plans.

Jane provides strategic, disciplinary and wider leadership and vision for the faculty and its academic departments, leading and promoting cross University working and strategic external partnerships, enabling empowered people to succeed and be the best they can, and supporting an inclusive, innovative and high performing culture.

Jane leads and directs the faculty’s activities and drives performance to achieve transformational change within the context of the University’s Vision, Strategy, plans, policies and procedures.

Jane is responsible for the overall performance of the faculty, including all aspects of academic provision, achieving targets and objectives for the Faculty and University, and for the management, leadership and effective deployment of the faculty’s resources and estate.

She fosters innovation and agility in all aspects of the faculty’s activity, ensuring the faculty is committed to high-quality, professional standards.

Jane drives the Faculty strategic contribution to the Research Excellence Framework (REF), Teaching Excellence Framework (TEF) and the Knowledge Exchange Framework (KEF) working closely with Deputy PVCs and Heads of Department, ensuring quality and academic excellence lie at the heart of them.

Jane is a Fellow of the Higher Education Academy, Fellow of Royal Geographical Society and Fellow of the Society for Environmental Geochemistry and Health. She currently sits on the Evaluation Committee for the Geobiotec Research Unit, University of Aveiro, Portugal and is a member of the peer review college for the Slovenian Research and Innovation Agency.

Prior to becoming Faculty Pro-Vice-Chancellor, Engineering and Environment (interim), in March 2024, Jane has held roles as Deputy Pro Vice-Chancellor for Education, Faculty REF lead and Faculty Associate Pro Vice-Chancellor (Research & Innovation). Prior to joining Northumbria University, Jane has held roles as a lectureship in Environmental Science at Kingston University, a Reader and then Head of Department of Geography and Environmental Sciences and Professor of Environmental Geochemistry and Health.

Jane studied (BSc and PhD) at the University of Wales, Aberystwyth.

Jane’s research addresses problems at the interface between geochemistry and human health. She works in partnership with both academic and professional practitioners and increasingly with members of the communities which they serve. Her involvement in environmental geochemistry extends over 25 years and her publications and projects evidence a commitment to improve environmental practice, policy and decision making in a complex real-world environment. The Newcastle Allotments Biomonitoring Project involved working in close collaboration with the local city council and a steering group comprising specialists from Public Health England, the Food Standards Agency, the Environment Agency and the Health and Safety Laboratory, to better understand exposure and uptake parameters in urban settings.

Jane is co-founder of DustSafe, a global research initiative to obtain baseline data on chemicals and microbial communities in regular households via a global citizen science-academic partnership and is currently principal investigator on two exciting interdisciplinary projects: In2Air (NIHR) and ECLIPS (UKRI).

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