A NORTH-EAST university professor has been appointed to national higher education body,

Professor Veronica Strang, executive director of Durham University’s Institute of Advanced Study (IAS), has been appointed to an interdisciplinary advisory panel, which will assist the Higher Education Funding Council for England.

She said: “This is a really encouraging acknowledgement of the IAS’s contribution to thinking about interdisciplinarity.”

“The institute has done a lot of work over the last five years to analyse the issues that challenge or support interdisciplinary research; to develop ways to consider how such research should be evaluated; and to engage directly in the development of related policy and practice.

“This national recognition of the IAS’s strengths in this area also reflects well on the visionary leadership in Durham University that established and supported the IAS long before most universities around the world began to set up such institutes.”