University Assembly

Jo-Anne Murray, Vice-Principal Education

Professor Jo-Anne Murray is a Vice-Principal Education and is responsible for all aspects of education and the student experience. Jo-Anne is Professor of Educational Innovation and a Principal Fellow of the Higher Education Academy.  She has led the development of many novel approaches to learning, teaching and assessment, including virtual worlds, online distance learning, massive open online courses, mobile apps and the use of robots in education.  Jo-Anne has also led and participated in a range of research activities in education and the biological sciences and has published over 130 peer reviewed articles.

Nick Edwards, Deputy Director of People

Nick is an alumni of the University‘s School of Law and qualified as a Solicitor in 2011, working in corporate Pensions and Employment law. He re-joined the University as a staff member in 2013, leading on the development of the institution’s immigration compliance processes across the student population.

Since 2018, Nick has headed our Student Support Services and, in Autumn 2019, was appointed as acting Deputy Director of People - a position he was appointed to permanently in July 2022. Nick chairs the Universities Addressing Gender Based Violence Strategy Group and co-chairs the Student Support & Experience Committee.

Externally, Nick is a member of the Law Society of Scotland and is the institutional lead member of AMOSSHE. Nick represents UHR in Scotland on the Scottish Government Core Leadership Group on Equally Safe in Colleges & Universities. 

Claire Hajaj,  Inter Mediate

Claire Hajaj is a specialist in conflict and post-conflict dynamics. For 17 years, she has contributed to humanitarian, political and security strategies to mitigate conflicts in some of the world’s most complex settings.

Prior to joining Inter Mediate, she worked for the United Nations in Lebanon, Kosovo, Iraq, Myanmar, Nigeria and Pakistan. Her experience ranges from negotiating community-level access for vaccinators in external regions on the Afghan-Pakistan border to supporting the UN Special Representative in Iraq at the height of the insurgency, to negotiating and producing a landmark stabilization strategy for Lebanon on the frontline of the Syria conflict and refugee crisis.

Sharing Palestinian and Jewish heritage, Claire’s writing on conflict has appeared in Newsweek, the Sunday Times, the New Statesman, the Economist, Granta, and as the author of two novels. Her policy writing has appeared in Friedrich Ebert Stiftung, Global Journal of Health Governance and the UN Centre for Policy Research.

Paul Gready, Co-Director of the Centre for Applied Human Rights (CAHR), University of York

Paul Gready is the Co-Director of the Centre for Applied Human Rights (CAHR), University of York, and holds a UNESCO Chair, focusing on Protection of Human Rights Defenders and Expansion of Political Space. The UNESCO Chair supports a global network of partners with a shared interest in universities as sites of activism and protection. His research interests also include transitional justice, the arts and human rights, and human rights cities. He is the Principal Investigator on the research project titled, Can the Arts Save Human Rights? Human Rights Truth Claims in a Post-Truth Era?, funded by the AHRC.