Staff News

Nigel Bellingham, Deputy Director Brussels, leaves us this month to take up a new post as Director of the British Council in the Czech Republic. Nigel arrived in Brussels three years ago and has been very actively involved in many important areas of the Council’s work here in Brussels. He has had a particular responsibility for leading the Europe team at the British Council and has also developed very close working relationships with a wide variety of UK and European organisations based in Brussels - these include the Scottish, Welsh and Northern Ireland offices as well as the offices of the English regions. Nigel has played a very important role in helping to develop EUNIC - the EU National Institutes for Culture - which has a high profile role with the European Commission on cultural issues. EUNIC members include the British Council, the Goethe Institute, Alliance Française, the Cervantes Institute as well as representatives from many other of the EU’s 27 member states. Nigel was closely involved in developing EUNIC’s project on intercultural dialogue 'Alterego' which was chosen as one of the EU’s flagship projects for the 2008 European Year of Intercultural Dialogue. We wish Nigel, his wife Debbie and their two sons every success and happiness in their new posting.

Nigel’s successor will be Martin Hope who is joining us in September. He is currently working at the British Council office in Moscow.

After doing Modern Languages (Russian and French) at University, Martin Hope taught English in Spain, Chile and Italy before doing his RSA Dip TEFL and joining the British Council Naples in 1989. He worked there as a teacher and teacher trainer, and set up a Business Communications Unit to provide training for the corporate sector. In 1995 he moved with his family to British Council Prague, where he was Assistant Director of Studies, and then Teaching Centre Manager. The main feature of the work there was the large volume of EU funded projects, particularly legal English. His next job was Director British Council Bologna, where the most memorable project was Peter Greenaway’s multimedia history of Bologna, projected onto the four walls of Piazza Maggiore. After Bologna the family moved to Singapore, where Martin ran the English Language Centre, and had responsibility for English across East Asia, developing larger scale regional projects such as Animating Literature. In 2006 he became Director British Council Moscow, where his main task has been building relations with senior contacts and leading a team to design projects which link Russia up with other regions in the world.

We welcome Hannah McConnell who is on secondment from London for the next 6 months to cover the Senior Project Manager, World Europe post. Hannah studied Economics and Politics at the University of Stirling in Scotland. She worked for an MP in the House of Commons for three and a half years and joined the British Council in London as a Parliamentary Officer in 2004. In Brussels she hopes to use her extensive experience of working on British Council projects in order to contribute to regional initiatives such as Transatlantic Network 2020, Climate Change projects and other global projects.

We say farewell to Smriti Mallapaty who finished her internship in June. Smriti played a key role in supporting the launch of INDIE (Inclusion and Diversity in Education) as well as contributing to a range of other regional projects. We are extremely grateful for her hard work and enthusiasm. Smriti now plans to head to Nepal - we wish her all the best for the challenges that this will bring.

We also say goodbye to Nuria Ballesteros and Susana Cilveti who worked in the British Council Brussels as Business Development Officers in the EC Projects Support Team. Nuria joined in December 2003 and, with her previous experience of EC external aid activities, she rapidly became a key contributor to the contract pursuit team of British Council, Development Services, concentrating mainly although not only on EC-funded contracts in countries candidate to EU accession and the Caucasus region. Nuria is taking a career break after her recent marriage to follow her husband to South Africa. Susana joined in the autumn of 2004 to further increase our awareness and understanding of EC programmes and to support our offices worldwide in their grant applications. More recently, she also contributed to Development Services’ activities, with a focus on Latin America and Central Asia. Susana is leaving us to take on a challenging position at the European Commission, EuropeAid Office. We will not only miss their vast knowledge and skills, but above all their wonderful sense of humour. We wish 'the Spanish corner' both success and happiness in their new lives.

Job Opportunities

Guidelines for applicants:
There are four documents that must be read as part of the application process:

1. Job description: criteria for the specific job (see links above for relevant job description)
2. Application guidelines: guidance on completion of the ‘standard application form’
   Guidance on applying for a job at the British Council (MS Word 50 KB)
3. Standard application form: the document to fill in that constitutes your application
   Standard application form (MS Word 50KB)
4. Behavioural competency dictionary: each job description lists behavioural competencies that are important to the job, and you will be asked to give examples that demonstrate these on the application form. Please refer to the behavioural competency dictionary for definitions of the competencies
   Behavioural competency dictionary (MS Word 307KB)
5. Background information - working for the British Council (MS Word 37KB)

Further information

• Work permits and visa: all applicants must have a work permit and visa to work in Belgium as the British Council cannot supply these.
• Interview: applicants must be available for face to face interview. The British Council can contribute a maximum of €100 towards travel costs as necessary, upon receipt of travel documents.

This standard application form is available in other formats on request; these are large print, Braille and audio disk. The British Council is an equal opportunities employer.