Professor John Tarrant has been Secretary General of the Association of Commonwealth Universities since May 2007.  The Association was established nearly 100 years ago to serve the interests of member universities throughout the Commonwealth.  There are now over 500 members from 42 countries.

After a two-year appointment at University College Dublin (1966-1968), he joined the University of East Anglia (1968-1995) as a founding member of staff in the School of Environmental Sciences, from where he went on to become Dean of the School and later Deputy Vice-Chancellor of the University. In 1995 he was appointed Vice-Chancellor and Principal of the University of Huddersfield, retiring from that position in 2006.

Professor Tarrant’s research and teaching interests have been in national and international food and agriculture policy, the influence of agriculture on the environment and of climate change on agriculture. He has worked in the United States as a visiting professor at Texas A and M University and at the University of Nebraska, and as a visiting scholar at the Food Research Institute at Stanford University and at the International Food Policy Research Institute in Washington DC.  He has also worked in Australia and New Zealand, and has acted as a consultant in Russia, China, India, Bangladesh, Thailand and Pakistan.

John Tarrant is participating in the Leading tertiary education into a global future and the Power of partnerships: how partnerships in Africa support development session.