I’m pleased to update you that our search for a new Professor and Associate Dean, R&I has progressed well. We had a strong shortlist and we interviewed just before Christmas. We are currently negotiating start dates with our preferred applicant and I do hope to be able to announce details shortly. In the meantime the Senior Leadership Group and I are putting in place interim arrangements. While we do this I wanted to provide an update on a few research-related items:

• Support for conference travel and attendance will continue in 2018. Em is helping me with this process and we will provide details shortly.
• As you know the 2018 Academic Workload Allocation Framework has a provision for staff to extend their research allocation. The Senior Leadership Group agreed last week to put a hold on these allocations for semester 1. We will review the 2017 process, including an analysis of our 2017 outputs. We aim to have a revised process available in preparation for semester 2, at which point we can adjust workloads.
• Two research programs were established late last year: Well-being, Resilience and Enterprise: Critical Perspectives for the Anthropocene and Policy, Pedagogy and Practice Inter-connectivity and Intra-Disciplinarity in Teacher
  Education: Creating the Future. Both groups were funded in 2017 to work with GrantEd. Funding for 2018 will be confirmed when our R&I interim leadership is in place.
• Work to develop the UNESCO UNEVOC is continuing. This builds on good work previously done in the school and is a terrific opportunity for SoE leadership in this space. Peter Kelly will provide more details over the coming months.