He was a Research Fellow in history at Emmanuel College, Cambridge from 1970 to 1973. He then became a Lecturer in Social History at the University of Hull from 1973 to 1978. In 1979 he joined the University of Essex becoming a Reader and Professor of History from 1991 to 2002 and becoming Pro-Vice-Chancellor from 1997 to 2002. He was Chief Executive of the Arts and Humanities Research Board from 2002 to 2005 and Warden of Goldsmiths College, from 2005–10. He was Vice-Chancellor of the University of London from 2010 to 2012. According to The Times, he said he would leave the part-time role in July 2012 because the workload was more onerous than he anticipated when deliberately scaling down from a full-time to a part-time position. The part-time role had an annual salary of £135,000. He has held a number of other positions including Visiting Professor to the University of Lyon from 1990 to 1991. He has been a member of the Business and Community Strategy Committee, and later Enterprise and Skills Strategy Committee of the Higher Education Funding Council for England from 2005 to 2012. He has been a Board member of Universities UK from 2006 to 2012 and is Director of the Arts and Humanities Research Council's Cultural Value Project. Amongst other positions he is a Council Member of the Courtauld Institute of Art in London, a Trustee of the Horniman Museum in South London and Chair of the Board of Trinity Long Room Hub at Trinity College Dublin. In 2014 he became Chair of the Crafts Council. He was previously a Trustee of the National Maritime Museum, at Greenwich. He was Director 2012–2016 of the AHRC Cultural Value Project set up to identify the benefits of arts and culture to individuals and society and ways of evaluating and evidencing them. The report, Understanding the value of arts and culture, is to be found at http://www.ahrc.ac.uk/research/fundedthemesandprogrammes/culturalvalueproject/ Since 2013 he has been Chair of the Crafts Council, and is also a trustee or governor of the Guildhall School of Music & Drama, the Horniman Museum & Gardens, the National Film & Television School and the Goldsmiths Centre. He was a member of the Board of the Courtauld Institute of Art 2007–2017. Since 2010 he has been Chair of the Trinity Long Room Hub, the Arts & Humanities Research Institute of Trinity College Dublin. In 2015 he published a report on Monographs and Open Access ''for the Higher Education Funding Council for England.
Personal life
m 1973, he married Rita Geraldine Vaudrey JP in 1973 and they have two sons. In 1993 he was made FRHistS and in 2004 an Honorary Fellow of Emmanuel College, Cambridge. He was appointed FRSA in 2009 and an Honorary Fellow of Goldsmiths, University of London in 2011. He is a Tottenham Hotspur FC supporter.
