Eric Thomas (academic)

Eric Jackson Thomas, born 24 March 1953 in Hartlepool, County Durham, is an academic who has been Vice-Chancellor of the University of Bristol since 2001. He is also the current chair of the Worldwide Universities Network.

Academic career
Professor Thomas' training was originally in medicine at the University of Newcastle upon Tyne where he graduated with the Bachelor of Medicine and Bachelor of Surgery degrees in 1976.

He spent the next two decades in various training positions in Newcastle, Leicester and Sheffield, including lectureships at the universities of Newcastle and Sheffield, before eventually becoming a consultant obstetrician and gynaecologist at Newcastle General Hospital in 1987. At the same time, he received the Doctor of Medicine degree from Newcastle. In 1991, Thomas became Professor of Obstetrics and Gynaecology at the University of Southampton and was appointed a consultant to Southampton University Hospitals Trust. He became Head of the School of Medicine at Southampton in 1995 and Dean of the Faculty of Medicine, Health and Biological Sciences in 1998. Upon becoming Vice-Chancellor at Bristol in 2001, he resigned all of his Southampton-based posts.

While in Bristol, Thomas has served on various committees and agencies. Since 2001, he has been a member of the board of the Regional Development Agency for the South West of England. In 2002, he began serving on various committees for Universities UK and as a Medicines Commissioner, stepping down from that post the following year. He joined the Council for Industry and Higher Education and was appointed Chair of the Worldwide Universities Network in 2003. In 2005, Thomas joined the Council of the Academy of Medical Sciences and became Director of UCAS (the Universities and Colleges Admissions Service). He also chaired the Department for Education and Skills' Taskforce on Voluntary Giving in Higher Education which reported in 2004 &mdash; an attempt to study how British universities might benefit from the kind of philanthropic donations their American counterparts are familiar with.

He was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society of Arts in 1998 and the Royal College of Physicians in 2004. After three years as the University's Vice-Chancellor, he was awarded an honorary Doctorate of Laws by Bristol in 2004. He was awarded an honorary DSc from the University of Southampton in 2006. He is now a UK Board member of Universites UK and Chair of their Research Strategy Policy Committee

Personal life
Thomas is married and has two children. His interests include golf and Newcastle United Football Club.