Rick Trainor has been Principal and Professor of Social History at King’s College London since 2004. For the previous four years he was Vice-Chancellor and Professor of Social History at the University of Greenwich. An American by birth and undergraduate education, he took his doctorate at Oxford (where he was a Rhodes Scholar and a junior research fellow) before moving in 1979 to the Department of Economic (later Economic and Social) History at Glasgow University, where he was subsequently Professor, Dean of Social Sciences and Vice-Principal. His published research has focussed on 19th and 20th century British elites, especially in industrialised urban areas. A Fellow of the Royal Historical Society, he is Chair of the Advisory Council of the Institute of Historical Research. He has also been heavily involved in computer-based teaching and in national initiatives to improve teaching and learning more generally. Rick is a member of the Academy of the Social Sciences and an honorary fellow of Merton College Oxford and of Trinity College of Music. A member of the US-UK Fulbright Commission and of the Arts and Humanities Research Council, Rick is also President of Universities UK (alongside his King’s Principalship), which represents the heads of all the UK’s universities.

Founded in 1829, King’s College London is England’s 4th oldest university institution, with almost 20,000 students, many of whom are postgraduates and/or from outside the UK. The nearly five and a half thousand staff of King’s engage in teaching, research and knowledge transfer across a very wide range of fields, including humanities, social sciences, law, physical sciences, engineering and a very broad variety of health-related subjects. A member of the UK’s Russell Group, King’s has the 6th largest research income in England and a broad portfolio of business-related ventures.

Rick Trainor chaired session 1c - MENA research: report on trends and developments.