Leaving event for Professor Paul Gough

Professor Paul Gough is retiring from his role as Principal and Vice-Chancellor at AUB at the end of December 2024. Paul has worked for 40 years in higher education, with more than a decade of leadership at the highest level in universities in the UK and Australia. This event will celebrate his achievements and will be an opportunity for AUB staff and external visitors to thank him as well as to welcome AUB’s new Vice-Chancellor from 1 January 2025, Lisa Mann, currently Deputy Vice Chancellor at AUB.

Paul Gough was appointed to the position at AUB in 2019, having served six years as Vice President at RMIT University, Melbourne. During his tenure in Bournemouth, as part of the new 2030 Strategy that he led, the University has grown from 3,000 students to over 4,600 and has expanded its online and hybrid delivery through a suite of new Master’s programmes designed for the global market. As part of an expanded portfolio of courses, new validation partnerships were established in London, and transnational AUB degrees devised in Southeast Asia. A new School of Arts, Media and Creative Industries Management was opened in 2023 and significant progress made on the pathway to gaining research degree awarding powers.

AUB continues to offer a comprehensive provision of skills and education, from short courses and summer schools, through to its Foundation course, which was ranked by Ofsted as ‘Outstanding’ in Spring 2023, an enlarged portfolio of undergraduate degrees, and an expanded Graduate School with campus-based and online provision.

Achieving a markedly improved return for REF 2021, the University has significantly increased its industry engagement, opening an Innovation Studio, funded by ERDF and LEP, in 2020 and maximising its civic engagement through several town centre initiatives including the purchase and restoration of the Palace Court Theatre, which opened its doors to community and stakeholders in 2023. As a result of its increased business and community engagement, AUB was awarded HEIF funding for the first time in 2022, and again in following years. As a mark of its research growth in creative technologies, AUB was awarded competitive research funding of £1.64 million from the AHRC E3 programme, for the PLASTiCS project, 2004–07.

Paul's contribution to the national creative arts community was marked in 2020 by his five-year appointment as Chair of UKADIA – the UK Arts and Design Institutions Association – where he forged links with international federated bodies, such as DDCA and ACUADS in Australia, and ELIA in Europe. During Gough’s tenure, UKADIA also created a formal alliance with FDS, the Federation of Drama Schools, and devised through the leadership of AUB’s Deputy Vice Chancellor, Lisa Mann, the Graduate Careers Framework, which was launched in Autumn 2024.

During his tenure as Vice-Chancellor at AUB, Gough maintained an active studio practice and exhibited in the UK, Southeast Asia, the USA, and Australia. In addition to other scholarly works, he completed a monograph on the painter Gilbert Spencer RA, published by Yale University Press in 2024. He also helped create and stage a touring exhibition of Spencer’s work to UK venues throughout 2024 and 2025. Gough maintained a high media profile particularly in regard to his published works on the street artist, Banksy, amassing 1.7 million views for a TikTok video on the artist that went viral during summer 2022.