Executive Board

"Shirley’s priority is to engender a vibrant culture for staff and students reinforcing the University’s commitment to excellence in teaching & learning, research, knowledge exchange and equality, diversity and inclusion.

Having lived and worked in the Bradford City Region for ten years she is committed to positioning the University at the centre of the region’s social and economic regeneration."

Shirley is responsible for the leadership and management of the University of Bradford, leading the development of its values and strategy.  Shirley is the eighth Vice-Chancellor of the University of Bradford and is the first woman to hold the role.  Shirley has significant experience of working in higher education championing the quality of the student experience, widening participation, engagement with business and communities and advancing the quality of research and innovation.

Originally qualifying as a Registered Nurse, Shirley’s professional and academic expertise lies within the area of health and social care, service modernisation and cultural change, research methods and evidence-based practice.  She has a strong track record in all aspects of university leadership, having worked within the field of higher education for 25 years and held senior roles in three different universities.

Shirley is committed to value led leadership, equality, diversity and inclusion, increasing social inclusion and mobility through widening participation in higher education; opening up opportunities and unlocking potential for people of all backgrounds. 

A tireless ambassador for students, she is committed to ensuring that they get the best possible education and support that leads to a rewarding career after they graduate.  Her number one priority is to place the student experience at the heart of all aspects of University activities.

Shirley is the Executive Board champion for Religion/Belief issues.

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Contact details

Helen Hague
Senior Executive Services Support Manager/Executive Assistant to the Vice-Chancellor (external).

• h.l.hague@bradford.ac.uk
• 01274 23 3012

Michelle Kenyon
Executive Assistant to the Vice-Chancellor (internal) 

• m.kenyon2@bradford.ac.uk
• 01274 23 3007

Professor Zahir Irani is a Deputy Vice-Chancellor and previously Pro-Vice Chancellor and has also been the Dean of the Faculty of Management, Law and Social Sciences, University of Bradford.

He studied Manufacturing Engineering and then working as a Project Engineer before then doing a PhD in Investment Decision Making at Brunel University London (UK). He started his academic career in a Department of Computer Science at Brunel University. Five years later securing his Chair followed by becoming Head of Department, where he championed industry-academia partnerships. His research interests at that time explored investment decision making in Engineering organisations, expanding to focus on Public Sector Investment Decision Making as local and central Governments started to invest in their eGovernment infrastructures. Much of his work at that time is now considered normative, where it also attracted funding from UK research councils, Qatar Foundation NPRP-6, 7 and 8), industry and from the EU as part of the FP 6-7 and H2020. A move into the Business School saw his research interest broaden, along with changes in his methodological approaches to include techniques such as Fuzzy Cognitive Mapping (FCM) which is an AI based technique. He remains research active, graduating 31 PhD students and has a H-index of 83.

His interdisciplinary background has allowed him to publish across Engineering, Information Systems, Operational Research and Business-related journals. His professional development has seen him complete his leadership and financial management training at Harvard Business School and University of Cambridge respectively. Having completed a 7-year tenure as Head of a Business School where he won the Times Higher Education (THE) Business School of the Year award, he accepted an invitation to work in Government, where he was seconded to Whitehall to become a Senior Policy Advisor in the Cabinet Office during the UK coalition Government. On completion, he returned to academia, to become the Founding Dean of the newly established College of Business, Arts and Social Sciences at Brunel University London. Later headed to the University of Bradford where, as the Dean of Faculty (Management and Law) he led the merger with the Faculty of Social Sciences. He is an active proponent of the Civic University and is the chief architect of the 5-year Bradford District Council Economic Recovery Plan that was developed in response to Covid and through the Bradford Council Economic Recovery Board where Professor Irani was Chair.

Zahir is the Executive Board champion for Age issues.

Zahir Irani Tweets: @ZahirIrani1

Paul joined the University in November 2017. He has led the creation of the Directorate of Learning, Teaching & Student Experience which brought together the previously dispersed functions of educational development, academic quality, student support, careers, and learning resources. His team provides support to Faculties in all aspects of course design, delivery, and enhancement including the operation of the Bradford:Fellowships professional development scheme accredited by Advance HE.

Before joining Bradford, Paul was the Associate Dean for Learning & Teaching in the Faculty of Design, Arts and Humanities at Teesside University, and before that Head of their English Studies Department. His research interests focused on the issues of popular culture and the politics of representation and he is widely published in the area of music video, cinema, and gendered identity.

Paul is an Executive Board champion for Gender Equality.

Contact details

Sabina Adam
Executive Assistant to the Deputy Vice-Chancellor (Academic, Innovation & Quality) and Pro Vice-Chancellor (Learning, Teaching & Student Experience)

• s.adam3@bradford.ac.uk
• 01274 23 4371

Joining the University of Bradford in July 2017, Professor Alastair Goldman is the Dean of the Faculty of Life Sciences. With a first degree in Genetics at Queen Mary College he became a research assistant at East Birmingham Hospital and undertook his PhD research in the Regional Cytogenetics and DNA Diagnostic Laboratory.

He later joined the National Cancer Institute in the National Institutes of Health, USA, followed by 4 years as a postdoc. He then took up a lectureship in the Department of Molecular Biology and Biotechnology at The University of Sheffield, teaching clinical and molecular genetics and continuing research with an emphasis on genetic influences on repair of broken DNA during meiosis.

In 2012 he became head of the department in Sheffield where he oversaw the growth of the Department of Molecular Biology and Biotechnology, increasing student numbers and research income.

Professor Goldman has been published in many high-ranking journals, including The Lancet, Science, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (USA), Nucleic Acids Research, PLoS Genetics, PLoS Computer Biology and Molecular Cell.

His research interests are centred on the meiotic cell division, which is essential for fertility of sexually reproducing organisms. The main scope of his work includes chromosome organisation, chromosome segregation and DNA double-strand break repair. These fundamental aspects of cell biology are central to understanding the Eukaryotic life cycle, improving crop species through breeding programmes and human health; as their function is critical to the avoidance of cancer and ageing.

Professor Goldman is an Executive Board champion for Race Equality.

Chartered Engineer and Fellow of the Institution of Mechanical Engineers (IMechE, UK), Fellow of the Institute of Materials, Minerals and Mining (IoM3, UK), Fellow of the Society of Tribologists and Lubrication Engineers (STLE, USA) and Fellow of the Higher Education Academy (FHEA, UK). Martin is an experienced academic leader and practitioner, and an expert in the multidisciplinary field of tribology (study and application of the principles of friction, lubrication and wear). Prior to joining the University of Bradford in 2015 he held the Jost Chair of Engineering Tribology at the University of Leeds (UK), where he was based from 1987, and before that he worked for British Gas Research and Development (London, UK).

Martin is the Dean of a Faculty comprising the engineering disciplines, computer science and media design and technology (technological aspects of the media industry). To enable and incentivise interdisciplinary working, which is core to the future success all the specialist subjects in the Faculty, he conceived and led a fundamental restructure of the Faculty. Formal schools were removed and replaced with a much more flexible and agile discipline group structure, with leadership and management focussed at the Faculty level.  The Faculty is now committed to deliver the multidisciplinary technology solutions required in the 21^st Century and the people with the skills to lead such innovations. Students develop clear discipline depth but also breadth through extensive collaboration with students in other disciplines, as a formal part of their programme. Research also nurtures core discipline strengths but flexibly reorganises over time into multidisciplinary teams in response to external drivers. Faculty members across the disciplines worked very effectively together to secure the award of an Athena SWAN Bronze Award (Advance HE, UK, framework to support and transform gender equality within higher education) in 2021 at the first attempt.

As an academic practitioner Martin has an established international track record and a long history of successful collaboration with UK and international industry.  He is very proud to have been awarded the 2015 Tribology Silver Medal by the Tribology Trust (IMechE, UK). The award citation read “In recognition of his outstanding contribution to tribology especially in the area of transference of tribology facility research to practical applications”. He is Associate Editor of the academic journals Tribology Transactions (STLE, USA, Taylor & Francis) and the Journal of Engineering Tribology (IMechE, UK, SAGE). Martin highly values interaction with students and still maintains a role as a lecturer, tutor and supervisor for engineering students in the Faculty alongside his duties as Dean.

Martin is the Executive Board champion for Marriage and Civil Partnership issues.

Amir M. Sharif is the Dean of the Faculty of Management, Law and Social Sciences and Professor of Circular Economy. Before joining the University of Bradford in 2017 as Associate Dean (International and Accreditations), Amir held several senior academic leadership positions including as Head of Brunel Business School, Associate Head, Director of MBA Programmes, and Director of Learning and Teaching (at Brunel University London). 

Prior to academia, Amir worked for several years as an industry practitioner in the financial services and professional services sector including for JPMorgan, UBS Investment Bank and KPMG, gaining deep experience across technology, manufacturing and the public sector as a result.   Starting his academic career as a researcher within the field of artificial intelligence, Amir rapidly developed his research interests to apply his knowledge to addressing complex societal challenges in the areas of food security, circular economy, healthcare, operations / supply chain management, decision-making and humanitarian logistics. His specific area of interest is in the application of systems thinking, causal and cognitive models to explore human decision-making behaviours in complex environments.