Provost and Vice-Chancellor, Trinity College: Professor Andy Orchard

PDAD&C #41, 2012-13
Memorandum

To:	PDAD&C
From:	Cheryl Misak, Vice-President and Provost
Date:	March 11, 2013
Re:	Announcement re: Andy Orchard, Provost and Vice-Chancellor, Trinity College

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Please see the memo below from the Hon. William Graham & Ms. Carolyn Kearns. And please join me in thanking Andy Orchard for his stellar leadership of Trinity and in wishing him the very best as he takes up the prestigious Rawlinson and Bosworth Professor of Anglo-Saxon at the University of Oxford.

Cheryl Misak
Vice-President and Provost

Re: Andy Orchard, Provost and Vice-Chancellor, Trinity CollegeThe Chancellor, William C. Graham, and the Chair of the Board of Trustees, Carolyn Kearns, are pleased to announce that Professor Andy Orchard has been elected as Rawlinson and Bosworth Professor of Anglo-Saxon in the University of Oxford, effective October 1, 2013. The Rawlinson and Bosworth Professorship of Anglo-Saxon was established in 1795 and is associated with Pembroke College. Former holders of the Chair include Sir William Craigie and J.R.R. Tolkien. Bill Graham and Carolyn Kearns recognize the huge distinction of this appointment, but are of course saddened by Provost Orchard leaving the College and the University of Toronto.

Andy Orchard became the fourteenth Provost of Trinity College on July 1, 2007. Provost Orchard was born in England and studied Anglo-Saxon, Norse, and Celtic at Queens’ College, Cambridge and English at Exeter College, Oxford; he obtained his PhD from Cambridge in 1990 and for the next ten years held a wide range of academic and administrative positions both at Emmanuel College, Cambridge, and within the University of Cambridge, culminating in becoming Head of the Department of Anglo-Saxon, Norse, and Celtic. He came to the University of Toronto in 2000 as Professor of English and Medieval Studies, becoming an Associate at Trinity in 2001 and a Fellow in 2003. He was appointed Associate Director of the Centre for Medieval Studies in 2001 and Director in 2004. Provost Orchard has also held the posts of Chair of the Senate and Public Orator at Trinity College.

Andy Orchard is the recipient of many awards, including the Pilkington Prize for excellence in teaching in the University of Cambridge in 1998, and in the fall of 2012 he was appointed a Fellow of the Royal Society of Canada. His scholarship covers more than eight centuries of works and authors such as Beowulf, Cynewulf, the Poetic Edda, and Ango-Saxon riddle tradition; he has published extensively and is author of numerous books, including the Cassell Dictionary of Norse Myth and Legend, The Poetic Art of Aldhelm, A Critical Companion to ‘Beowulf’, and The Elder Edda: A Book of Viking Lore.

Andy Orchard is internationally recognized as one of the most innovative and influential academics in the field of Anglo-Saxon, Norse, and Celtic languages and literatures. Trinity College is delighted at his appointment to this important role and is grateful for his inspired leadership and wise stewardship of the College over the past six years.