Professor and Director - UCL East Asia Institute

Candidate Information Pack Professor and Director UCL East Asia Institute

Table of Contents

About UCL..................................................................................................................................

About the UCL East Asia Institute................................................................................................

About UCL Institute of Education.................................................................................................

The Opportunity..........................................................................................................................

Staff Benefits..............................................................................................................................

Terms of Appointment.................................................................................................................

Our Commitment to Equality, Diversity and Inclusion...................................................................

Job Description...........................................................................................................................

Person Specification.................................................................................................................

About UCL

Founded in 1826 in the heart of London, UCL is London’s leading multidisciplinary university, with more than 18,000 staff and 51,000 students from over 150 different countries.

We are a diverse community with the freedom and courage to challenge, to question, and to think differently.

Through a progressive approach to teaching and research, our world-leading academics, curious students and outstanding staff continually pursue excellence, break boundaries, and make an impact on real-world problems.

Since 1826, we have challenged orthodoxy and applied ourselves to making the world better, seeking to serve society through the generation and application of ‘useful’ knowledge, with a particular focus on leading interdisciplinary discussion and debate.

UCL is now one of the world’s top universities, with broad disciplinary excellence in research, innovation, education and impact. We operate on a large scale and nevertheless deliver exceptional academic performance: an achievement that has few parallels internationally.

Find out more about UCL here.

About the UCL East Asia Institute

The UCL East Asia Institute is a new academic Institute, and this is its inaugural Director position.

The Institute is being launched because UCL holds substantial expertise on China, Japan and South Korea – more than thirty academics with specific regional expertise, colleagues in all eleven Faculties collaborating with Chinese partners, the highest volume of research co-publication with Japanese partners of any UK university, and a growing base in South Korea anchored by a UCL innovation presence in Seoul – but that expertise is dispersed across disciplines rather than held as a regional capability the institution can draw on. The Institute's purpose is to connect it, make it visible, and put it to work.

It is deliberately designed as a connector rather than a consolidator. Research and teaching will remain with Faculties and departments, several of them world-leading in their own right; the Institute adds regional and linguistic depth, cross-Faculty convenorship, and a single identity on the region. Success of the Institute means Faculties delivering more research on East Asia and UCL being a go-to place for expertise on the region.

Three things distinguish the Institute from existing UK centres.

The first is the direction of enquiry: most UK centres on the region exist, in effect, to explain East Asia to Britain. That work matters and the Institute will do it, but it will also run the question in reverse, asking what East Asian experience teaches the rest of the world about problems everyone is facing.

The second is comparative breadth: the Institute will hold expertise across all three nations (China, Japan and Korea) and more rather than specialising in one, which matters because these are deeply entangled neighbours that have built different political and economic systems and are arriving at strikingly different answers to a shared set of demographic, urban, technological and environmental challenges.

The third is disciplinary reach. UCL's East Asia capability spans the world's leading education faculty, a globally pre-eminent built environment faculty, Europe's largest concentration of biomedicine and a large engineering base, alongside established regional expertise in the social and historical sciences alongside the humanities. Questions such as how a super-aged society reorganises its health system, how a city of twenty-five million decarbonises, or how smart technologies fundamentally impact on people’s everyday lives as well the world’s systems, sit beyond the reach of a traditional area studies centre. Very few institutions anywhere could assemble all of this; the Institute is the mechanism that would do so at UCL.

The Institute is based in Bloomsbury, initially co-located with the IOE Centre for Chinese Language Education on Woburn Square. It is administered through the Institute of Education. It is governed by an academically-led, cross-institutional Steering Group, supported by a Management Group, and led by the Director with a small core team. There will also be an International Advisory Board.

Its first education programme, the BA East Asian Studies, has been approved and will recruit its first intake for September 2028. Postgraduate provision and other undergraduate pathways will follow, with development beginning in 2027-28.

About UCL Institute of Education

Working across education, culture, psychology, technology and social sciences, we create lasting and evolving change in a real-world context. We embrace cross-pollination, collaboration and excellence to create a future that is inclusive and just. We do this through world-leading education, research and enterprise, and have been ranked number one for education worldwide every year since 2014 in the QS World University Rankings.

UCL Institute of Education currently comprises six academic departments:

• Culture, Communication and Media (CCM), to be reconfigured as two departments:

Culture, Language and Communication (CLC), and Media, Technology and Arts (MTA) from

July 2027

• Curriculum, Pedagogy and Assessment (CPA)
• Learning and Leadership (LL)
• Psychology and Human Development (PHD)
• Education, Practice and Society (EPS)
• Social Research Institute (SRI)

UCL Institute of Education is also home to the Centre for Languages and International Education (CLIE).

Find out more about UCL Institute of Education here.

The Opportunity

This is a rare appointment: the chance to build an academic institute from the first day, at an institution that already holds the underlying capability but has not, so far, organised it.

Most directorships involve inheriting an existing centre, its commitments and its habits. This one does not. The business case deliberately does not fix the Institute's academic priorities – setting them is the inaugural Director's first substantive task, working with Faculties and the wider UCL community, for agreement by the Institute’s Steering Group. The Director will decide, in consultation with UCL’s senior management team, what this Institute is actually for, intellectually, and will do so with the institution's explicit backing to make that judgement.

What the post does not involve is starting from scratch. The founding investment is agreed and committed by UCL. An undergraduate degree is approved for a September 2028 start. The academic base across UCL is substantial and already engaged. The external timing is unusually favourable: Japan and South Korea's association to Horizon Europe has opened funding routes that did not previously exist, and the UK Government's China Audit has shown unmet demand for exactly the kind of independent, interdisciplinary regional expertise the Institute is designed to provide. We expect the Director to have a track record in successful working with stakeholders, donors and policy makers to build the profile of the Institute and extend its global impact.

The Director will therefore be shaping something genuinely new while building from foundations that are already in place. Within five years, the ambition is that the Institute is recognisable by a BA recruiting at steady state with its first cohort approaching graduation, postgraduate programmes established, a doctoral community of regional scholars co-supervised across Faculties, three or four cross-Faculty research clusters holding external grant income, a visiting fellowship scheme running as a matter of routine, and an annual convening on East Asia that government, embassies, industry and media attend as a matter of course. Faculties should by then be able to point to work they have won, published or placed with policy audiences that would not have happened without the Institute.

The appointee will also build the Institute's own academic base. Early appointments will strengthen UCL's regional and linguistic depth, with particular attention to the areas where UCL is currently thinnest, while disciplinary reach into health, the built environment and engineering is built through cross-appointments with Faculties and through the visiting fellowship scheme rather than duplicated inside the Institute.

For the right person, this is an opportunity to define a field-shaping institution, to convene a university's wealth of expertise around a region that will matter more over the coming decades, and to do so with the freedom to determine what the Institute delivers.

Staff Benefits

UCL is a dynamic, global university based in one of the most exciting capital cities in the world. Not only does working at UCL offer the opportunity to work with game changers in your field, but also provides competitive terms, conditions and benefits.

UCL benefits and policies apply equally, whatever the sexual orientation and/or gender identity of employees. Benefits and policies relating to employees partners include both different sex and same sex partners.

Annual leave

27 days of annual leave plus six closure days at Christmas and Easter (pro rata for part time staff) as well as statutory holidays.

Work life balance

We facilitate flexible working such as flexitime, annualised hours, term-time working, shift working, staggered hours, job share/job splitting, part-time working, compressed hours, career breaks and planned remote working.

Professional development

People development is at the heart of everything we do at UCL. Colleagues have access to a comprehensive range of training programmes and development opportunities that are organised by our Organisational Development team.

Find out more about our other staff benefits here.

Terms of Appointment

The Director will hold a professorship on an open-ended academic contract, in line with UCL's standard terms for academic staff.

The Directorship itself will be a fixed-term role of three years, renewable once for a further threeyear term, by mutual agreement with the Dean of IOE. At the end of a Director's term or terms, they would continue as a professor in their home department.

For the inaugural Director, the appointment will begin with a preparatory year, during which the Director will lead the Institute's set-up, including recruitment, programme launch and partnership development. This will be followed by a first three-year term and a possible second three-year term, giving a maximum of seven years.

Our Commitment to Equality, Diversity and Inclusion As London’s Global University, we know diversity fosters creativity and innovation, and we want our community to represent the diversity of the world’s talent. We are committed to equality of opportunity, to being fair and inclusive, and to being a place where we all belong.

We therefore particularly encourage applications from candidates who are likely to be underrepresented in UCL’s workforce.

These include people from Black, Asian and ethnic minority backgrounds; disabled people;

LGBTQI+ people; and for our Grade 9 and 10 roles, women.

IOE holds an Athena SWAN Silver award, in recognition of our commitment to advancing gender equality.

EDI Networks

Our staff equalities networks are open to all staff. They are places where people with shared identities and backgrounds can connect with colleagues and make positive change across the university.

Find out more here.

Equality Areas

Information on various types of equality, including disability, race, gender, sexual orientation and religion, as well as the various charter marks UCL participates in.

Find out more here.

Job Description

Title: Professor & Director

Department: East Asia Institute

Grade

Location: Bloomsbury, London

Reports to

Executive Dean, Institute of Education

Context

The East Asia Institute is a UCL-wide new endeavour, administered through the Institute of Education. We are looking for an accomplished academic leader to steer the development of this exciting opportunity.

Main purpose of the job

The Director will provide academic and strategic leadership for the UCL East Asia Institute from its establishment. They will set and articulate the Institute's intellectual direction, build its research programme and academic base, convene East Asia expertise from across UCL's eleven Faculties, oversee the delivery and growth of its education portfolio, represent UCL as a leading independent voice on the region, and secure the external funding and partnerships on which the Institute's longterm sustainability depends. They will also maintain their own programme of research.

Duties and responsibilities

• Provide academic and strategic leadership for the Institute, setting its vision and intellectual direction, and holding overall accountability for its performance and development, in consultation with the senior leadership of UCL.
• Develop the Institute's research priorities, in consultation with Faculties and the wider UCL academic community, for agreement by the Institute Steering Group, and build the research programme that follows from them.
• Act as academic convenor for East Asia across UCL – identifying and connecting expertise in all

Faculties, assembling cross-Faculty consortia for major funding calls, and creating the seminar, workshop and fellowship infrastructure that individual departments cannot sustain alone.

• Secure substantial external research and innovation funding, including positioning UCL to lead large interdisciplinary bids where regional and technical expertise are required in combination.
• Develop and lead the Institute's fundraising strategy, working with UCL Advancement to build philanthropic income in support of the Institute's academic priorities – cultivating individual donors, foundations, alumni and corporate partners in the UK and across the region, and securing named or endowed support for posts, fellowships, studentships and programmes as the Institute matures; and developing other non-grant income streams, including executive education and CPD.
• Provide academic oversight for the Institute's education portfolio, including the BA East Asian

Studies and the development of postgraduate and professional provision, working with the lead

Faculty for each programme.

• Lead the Institute's academic appointments, building regional and linguistic depth across

China, Japan and South Korea with particular attention to areas where UCL is currently thinnest, and developing cross-Faculty appointments and a visiting fellowship scheme that extend the Institute's disciplinary reach.

• Lead and oversee the Institute's staff and operations, supported by the Institute Manager, including line management, financial oversight and delivery against the Institute's approved business case and KPIs.
• Act as governance lead for the Institute, reporting to and taking direction from the Steering

Group, and reporting annually on performance against the Institute's objectives.

• Represent UCL as a leading independent source of interdisciplinary expertise on East Asia, engaging with government, international organisations, industry, media and the public, and contributing to evidence-based policy debate.
• Develop and deepen academic partnerships with leading institutions across China, Japan and South Korea, working with UCL's Global Engagement team and adding scholarly substance to UCL's institutional relationships in the region.
• Conduct and publish outstanding research of international standing as part of a personal research agenda.
• Contribute to doctoral supervision and to the development of a doctoral community around East Asia, co-supervised across Faculties.
• Provide mentoring, support and guidance to colleagues within the Institute and across the wider UCL East Asia community.

General

• Follow and actively promote the UCL Ways of Working.
• Takes responsibility to carry out duties in a way that embodies UCL's environmental and social sustainability values, actively supporting UCL's Sustainability Strategy, policies and objectives within the remit of their role.
• Carry out any other duties within the scope, spirit and purpose of the job as requested by the line manager.
• This job description may be reviewed and be subject to amendment in consultation with the post holder.

Person Specification

Essential Criteria

Qualifications, experience and knowledge

A doctorate in a relevant discipline, with an established record of outstanding research on, or substantively engaging with, East Asia.

A distinguished international reputation and research track record appropriate to appointment at professorial level, in a field relevant to the Institute's remit.

Regional and linguistic depth in at least one of China, Japan or South Korea, together with a demonstrable understanding of the region more broadly and of how research is organised, funded and conducted there.

Excellent record of securing substantial external research funding from a range of sources, including research councils, government and international funders.

Track record of successful academic leadership, including effective management of people, budgets and complex projects, and a clear commitment to developing others.

Track record of successful working with stakeholders, donors and policy makers with impact.

Experience of building and leading interdisciplinary research that brings together regional expertise with disciplines beyond area studies.

Track record of teaching and doctoral supervision at a level appropriate to a researchintensive university, and an understanding of what distinctive, challenge-led education on the region requires.

Experience of engaging effectively with audiences beyond academia — government, industry, media or the wider public — and of translating research into policy or realworld impact.

Experience of building academic and institutional partnerships internationally.

Skills and abilities

Ability to set and communicate a compelling intellectual vision, and to bring colleagues with differing disciplinary perspectives towards a shared agenda — leading through influence and convening rather than line authority.

Outstanding written and oral communication, negotiation, influencing and relationship-building skills, including the ability to represent an institution credibly at senior levels nationally and internationally.

Sound judgement on financial sustainability, and the ability to deliver against an agreed business plan while building for the longer term.

Commitment to equality, diversity and inclusion principles, and the ability to work constructively with colleagues and students of all cultures and backgrounds.

Desirable Criteria

Research or professional experience spanning more than one of China, Japan and South Korea.

Working knowledge of Chinese, Japanese or Korean sufficient to engage with source material, partners and policy debate at first hand.

Experience of establishing a new centre, institute or comparable academic entity.

Experience of philanthropic fundraising or of developing income from executive education, CPD or short courses.

Established networks among policy, diplomatic or industry communities relevant to East Asia.

Assessment method (Application / Application Application / Application / Application / Application / Application / Application / Application / Application / Application / Application / Application / Application / Application / Application / Application / Application / Application / Application /