The appointment of three new Heads of Departments and a new Deputy Dean of Science was approved by the Council of Aberystwyth University on Tuesday 7 February.
Professor Andrew Evans has been appointed Director of the Institute of Mathematics and Physics. Dr Martyn J. Powell has been appointed Head of the Department of History and Welsh History and Dr Joanne Thatcher has been appointed Head of the Department of Sport and Exercise Science. Dr Martin Wilding, a Senior Lecturer at the Institute of Mathematics and Physics, has been appointed Deputy Dean of Science.
All appointments, with the exception of Dr Martyn Powell, who takes up his new post in September 2012, are with immediate effect.
Professor Andrew Evans, BSc, PhD (Wales), CPhys, MInstP.
Prof Andrew Evans was educated at the Gwendraeth Grammar School and at Cardiff University where he gained a 1st class degree in Physics and a PhD under the supervision of Prof R.H. Williams FRS.
He was appointed to a lectureship in Aberystwyth in 1997, a senior lectureship in 2002 and a chair in materials physics in 2006.
He specialises in carbon-based materials (organic molecules and diamond) and their characterisation using light, electrons, x-rays and synchrotron radiation.
Professor Evans is currently chair of a UK consortium developing a new soft x-ray facility at the Diamond Light Source, chair of the Welsh Optoelectronics Forum Steering Committee and co-director of the Centre for Advanced Functional Materials and Devices.
Dr Martyn J. Powell, BA PhD (Wales), FRHistS
Dr Martyn J. Powell gained undergraduate and postgraduate degrees at Aberystwyth University and then lectured at Nottingham University before returning to Aberystwyth to take up a permanent post.
He is a specialist in Irish political and social history, and his publications include Britain and Ireland in the Eighteenth-Century Crisis of Empire (Palgrave, 2003), The Politics of Consumption in Eighteenth-Century Ireland (Palgrave, 2005), Piss-Pots, Printers and Public Opinion in Eighteenth-Century Dublin (Four Courts, 2009), Clubs and Societies in Eighteenth-Century Ireland (Four Courts, 2010) (edited with James Kelly), and many articles and essays.
He is the general editor of the bilingual, interdisciplinary journal Eighteenth-Century Ireland/Cumann Éire san Ochtú Céad Déag,
In 2012 he will be a visiting fellow at Trinity College Dublin’s Long Room Hub, researching the early history of Irish debt.
Dr Joanne Thatcher BA (Hons) PhD (Wales)
A graduate of Bangor University, Dr Joanne Thatcher received a PhD in Developmental Sport Psychology, also from Bangor University.
She is a British Psychological Society Associate Fellow and Chartered Psychologist, BASES Accredited Sport Scientist, Chair of the British Psychological Society Qualification in Sport & Exercise Psychology Board and a Fellow of the Higher Education Academy.
She has published research in international and national journals and co-edited books, the second edition of Coping and Emotion in Sport, published by Routledge and co-authored Sport and Exercise Science, Sport and Exercise Psychology (Learning Matters) and Sport Psychology (Palgrave Macmillan).
Dr Martin Wilding, BSc, PhD (Edinburgh), MInstP, FGS
Dr Martin Wilding graduated from what was then Derbyshire College of Higher Education in 1986 and received a PhD from Edinburgh University in 1990.
He was visiting scientist at the Bayerishes Geoinsitut at the University of Bayreuth before moving to the US where he was visiting scientist in Professor Navrotsky’s thermochemistry group at Princeton and latterly the University of California at Davis.
He was research director at the McClellan Nuclear Radiation Centre until 2005 when he was appointed to a lectureship in IMAPS and subsequently a senior lectureship in 2008.
He researches into the structure and structure-related properties of glass, poorly crystalline materials and liquids, especially under extremes of temperature and pressure. He uses high energy X-ray and neutron diffraction techniques at national facilities in both the UK and US.
