Council members
Warden
The Warden is a member of Council ex officio and there has been a change of Warden during the year 2009-10
Mr Pat Loughrey took up post as Warden of Goldsmiths on 19 April 2010
[ Webpage containing announcements of his appointment ]
Professor Geoffrey Crossick MA, PhD, FRHistS
Geoffrey Crossick was Warden of Goldsmiths from May 2005 until April 2010.
A historian specialising in the social history of Britain and continental Europe in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, he began his career as Research Fellow at Emmanuel College, Cambridge . After a short period at the University of Hull, he moved to the University of Essex where he was promoted to a Chair in History in 1991, serving in a succession of senior management positions as Deans of School, before spending five years as Pro-Vice-Chancellor (Academic Development). He has extensive academic experience in France, and in 1990-91 was Visiting Professor at the University of Lyon II .
He joined Goldsmiths after nearly three years as Chief Executive of the Arts and Humanities Research Board, leading it through to its establishment as a full Arts and Humanities Research Council in April 2005. This was a major step for the arts and humanities, securing its position alongside the science and social science research councils within the mainstream of research funding through the Office of Science and Innovation.
Geoffrey Crossick has published extensively in the field of social and urban history. After initial research on working-class history, his books and articles have come to focus on the petite bourgeoisie of shopkeepers and master artisans in modern Europe , on urban society, on language and social history and on the nature of comparative history. He has written or edited seven books and has published over forty articles in journals and edited collections. His books include An Artisan Elite in Victorian Society: Kentish London 1840-1880 (1978), The Petite Bourgeoisie in Europe 1780-1914: Enterprise , Family and Independence (1995, with Heinz-Gerhard Haupt), and various edited collections that include The Artisan and the European Town 1500-1900 (1997) and Cathedrals of Consumption. The Department Store in European Society 1850-1940 (1999, with Serge Jaumain ). In a certain sense Geoffrey Crossick has returned to part of his roots, because the first of these books (which arises from his doctoral thesis) is concerned with the skilled working class of Deptford, Greenwich and Woolwich during the middle decades of the nineteenth century.
He is a member of the HEFCE Enterprise and Skills Committee and the Board of UCEA, the university employers’ association. He is a member of the Board of Universities UK, chair of its Longer-Term Strategy Group and a member of its Research Policy Committee. He is also a member of the British Library Advisory Council, the Council of the Royal College of Music, and the Governing Board of the Courtauld Institute. He is Deputy Vice-Chancellor of the University of London and a member of its Board of Trustees.
He chaired a Task Group for the DCMS on Research & Knowledge Transfer for the Creative Industries, and the relations between universities and the creative industries is one of his continuing interests. Goldsmiths has published as a pamphlet a lecture that he gave in May 2005 to the Royal Society of Arts titled Knowledge transfer without widgets: the challenge of the creative economy.
Geoffrey Crossick is an Honorary Fellow of Emmanuel College, Cambridge . He is married to Rita Vaudrey JP and has two adult sons. His leisure interests include music and Tottenham Hotspur.