Research and Innovation

Title: Pro Vice-Chancellor (Research and Innovation)
Email: d.amigoni@keele.ac.uk
Tel: +44 (0)1782 733209
Location: Claus Moser CM2.15
Contacting me: Executive Assistant - Sheila Allen s.a.allen@keele.ac.uk

Biography

David Amigoni is Pro Vice-Chancellor (Research and Innovation). He is Professor of Victorian Literature:  he acquired his MA in Victorian Studies from Keele in 1985, when he was also awarded the Prince Consort Medal. He has worked at Keele University since 1995, having studied and worked at Liverpool John Moores University (PhD) and the University of Sunderland. He was awarded a personal chair in 2005. He is a Fellow of the English Association. At Keele he has been a head of department, a head of school, and a research institute director (twice, most recently the Keele Institute for Social Inclusion). He was Keele's Pro Vice-Chancellor Research and Enterprise between 2016-2021. He is a graduate of the National Centre for Entrepreneurial Education's Entrepreneurial Leaders Programme, on which he has subsequently taught and mentored.

His research on the Victorian period focuses on life writing, and the relationship between evolutionary science and culture (his monograph Colonies, Cults and Evolution was published by Cambridge University Press in 2007). Since 2009 he has worked in the interdisciplinary field of creative ageing, being a co-I on the Prof Miriam Bernard's 'Ages and Stages' project (New Dynamics of Ageing, ESRC) and PI on the AHRC-funded 'Late Life Creativity' research network (an edited collection, with Prof Gordon McMullan, was published in 2019). He continues to research and curate impact in this field, is preparing a monograph on literature, theatre and ageing, while working with the New Vic Theatre's 'Ages and Stages' company of elders. 

He serves UKRI as a member of AHRC and FLF's Peer Review Colleges. He was a member of the REF 2021 Unit of Assessment Panel 27, English Language and Literature.

He has worked extensively with the Stoke-on-Trent and North Staffordshire cultural sector, having led Keele's Knowledge Exchange Framework, the Keele Deal | Culture, 2019-24. He played a leading role in establishing the civic region's cultural compact, Stoke Creates, from 2021. He is deeply committed to culture-led regeneration through publicly engaged research (he interviewed Booker Prize winner Ian McEwan at the 2009 Darwin Bicentenary Festival); and knowledge exchange (he is a national champion for Research England's National Centre for Academic and Cultural Exchange). He is a director and trustee of the New Vic Theatre, North Staffordshire, and works closely with the Ironbridge Gorge Museum Trust. He chairs the Advisory Council of the Institute for English Studies, School of Advanced Studies, University of London, and is chair of the Editorial Board of The Conversation UK.