Professor Naren Barfield is Deputy Vice-Chancellor and Provost at the Royal College of Art, London, the world’s leading university of art and design (QS#1 2015, 2016, 2017, 2018, 2019, 2020, 2021, 2022, 2023).  He has held a number of senior leadership positions in UK higher education and has contributed to the strategic development, support, leadership and assessment of research, knowledge exchange, innovation, and postgraduate research and taught programmes across design, the arts and humanities, both nationally and internationally.  Since 2011 at the Royal College of Art, he has led significant growth in postgraduate programmes, student enrolments, research intensity and quality, industry partnerships, executive education, and internationalisation.  

Professor Barfield has been a Council Member for Research England (2018-2022), the national council for university research in England, where he was also the Insight & Engagement champion (2022-23), and has served on national research assessment (RAE2008, REF2014) and teaching assessment (TEF2023) panels, as well as serving on and chairing research funding panels for the Arts and Humanities Research Council.  Internationally, he is an advisor and assessor to universities, research councils and learned societies in China, Hong Kong, Australia and New Zealand, and has led international partnership agreements with universities in China, Japan, Singapore and the US.  He is a visiting professor at a number of universities internationally.