Paul Boyle

Professor Paul Boyle was appointed Vice-Chancellor of Swansea University in 2019. Prior to this, he was President and Vice-Chancellor of the University of Leicester. Previously, Paul was Chief Executive of the Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC), the UK’s largest funding agency for social science research; the International Champion of Research Councils UK, with responsibility for international strategy on behalf of all seven UK research councils; and President of Science Europe, representing over 50 European funding agencies.

Paul is a Fellow of the Learned Society of Wales, the British Academy and the Academy of Social Sciences. He is Chair of Universities Wales’ Research and Innovation Network; a Board Member of Universities UK, who provide leadership and support to executive heads of 133 UK University institutions, as well as Chair of their Research Policy Network; Vice-President and Council Member of the European University Association which represents over 800 universities in 48 countries; and Chair of Jisc, a not-for-profit organisation providing digital services and solutions to the UK’s higher and further education sector.

A quantitative social scientist with varied research interests in the broad areas of population studies (demography) and health research (epidemiology). He has over 100 peer-reviewed publications on various topics including the influence of family migration on women, health inequalities and the clustering of disease, and the links between migration and health.

He was Director of the ESRC-funded Longitudinal Studies Centre – Scotland, Co-Director of the ESRC-funded Centre for Population Change, and Co-Investigator on both the Wellcome Trust-funded Scottish Health Informatics Programme and the ESRC-funded Administrative Data Liaison Service. He was the Founding Director of the Social Dimensions of Health Institute, which was a joint initiative between the universities of St. Andrews and Dundee. He also served as President of the British Society for Populations Studies.