Interim CEO of ESRC Appointed

According to a press release, Astrid Wissenburg has been appointed as the interim chief executive of the Economic and Social Research Council.
Wissenberg takes over from Ian Diamond who is moving on to be VC at Aberdeen. She joined the ESRC in 2003 as Director of Communications and Information. Previous to that, she had a varied academic career in London, Glasgow and her home country of the Netherlands. Wissenberg was assistant-director of Information Services and Systems at King's College London before joining the ESRC.

Impact Not Clunky, Says New RCUK Chief

In a story that neatly ties together three previous posts on this blog, the newly appointed Chair of RCUK has fired back at David Willett's criticism of Impact assessment as 'clunky'. Alan Thorpe, Chief Executive of NERC, launching the RCUK Framework, robustly countered Willett's criticism. “I don’t think it’s at all clunky to be articulate in describing the really excellent and inspirational impacts that research has and I can’t imagine why it would be anything other than a good thing to celebrate that.”

He went on to recognise the difficult times ahead. "[Thorpe's predecessor] Ian Diamond really advanced the coming together of the missions and activities under this RCUK framework umbrella, but it was at a time when there was strong increasing investment in the research budget. I’m coming in at a time when we’re absolutely clear about the RCUK agenda but we’re looking at a much more uncertain future.”

ESRC Chief to Step Down

Professor Ian Diamond, Chief Executive of the Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC) and Chairman of RCUK (and, according to the Guardian, the 'Santa of Science'), is to step down to become VC at Aberdeen in October 2010.
Diamond was at Southampton before joining the ESRC in 2003. He became Chairman of RCUK in 2004.
No announcement has yet been made about his replacement at the ESRC or RCUK.