Anthony Forster (political scientist)

Anthony W. Forster
Forster in 2012
Education	BA Hons (1985), politics, University of Hull MPhil (1993), politics, St Antony's College, Oxford DPhil (1996), St Hugh's College, Oxford PgCAP (1999), University of Nottingham.[1]
Occupation	Vice-chancellor of the University of Essex
Website	"Profile", University of Essex

Anthony William Forster, FAcSS, is a British political scientist and former British Army officer. He is the current vice-chancellor of the University of Essex and was previously deputy vice-chancellor of Durham University.

Education

Sponsored by the military in the form of an undergraduate cadetship, Forster graduated from the University of Hull in 1985 with a BA (first class) in politics.^[1][2][3]

After completing six years of military service, he studied Politics (European Politics and Society) at St Antony's College, Oxford from 1991, obtaining his MPhil in 1993.^[1] He remained at Oxford to undertake further research in European politics, and completed his DPhil in 1996 at St Hugh's College, Oxford.^[1][4]

Career

Military service

From 1985 to 1991 Forster served as an officer in the British Army.^[1][2] On 2 September 1983, he was commissioned into the Royal Corps of Transport as a second lieutenant (on probation) (Undergraduate Cadetship).^[5] After graduating he began his full-time military career as a second lieutenant (on probation) in July 1985.^[6] His commission was confirmed and he was promoted to lieutenant on 7 July 1985 with seniority from 9 April 1985.^[7] He was promoted to captain on 9 April 1989.^[8] He left the British Army on 1 May 1991 and was appointed to the reserve of officers.^[9]

His military service came at the end of the Cold War, and he completed several postings to West Germany.^[2] In 1990 he was deployed to Namibia as a British military adviser to the government of the newly independent nation.^[2]

Academic career

Forster began his academic career while a postgraduate student at the University of Oxford. He was a lecturer at St Hilda's College, Oxford from 1985 to 1986. He later held positions at the University of Nottingham (1996–2000), King's College, London (2000–2002) and the University of Bristol (2002–2006). From 2006 he worked at Durham University and from 2011 held the positions of deputy vice-chancellor and honorary professor of politics.^[1]

In 2012 Forster was appointed as the vice-chancellor of the University of Essex, where he has presided over reforms that seek to emphasize the university's commitment to education and teaching, as well as to research, alongside a strategic goal of increasing student numbers by 50 percent by 2019.^[10][11] He was criticized in 2014 by author and academic Marina Warner, after she resigned from the university, who argued that decision-making power at Essex had been handed to administrators at the expense of academics.^[12]

D-Notice system review

In 2014 Jon Thompson, Permanent Secretary of the Ministry of Defence, asked Forster to chair an independent review to examine the efficacy of the Defence, Press and Broadcasting Advisory Committee and DA-Notice system. The review was completed in 2015.^[13][14][15]

Selected works

• (2007) Out of Step: The Case for Change in British Armed Forces, London: Demos (with Tim Edmunds).
• (2006) Armed Forces and Society in Europe, Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan.
• (2004) Reshaping Defence Diplomacy: New Roles for Military Cooperation and Assistance, Adelphi Paper 365, Oxford: Oxford University Press (with Andrew Cottey).
• (2002) Euroscepticism in Contemporary British Politics: Opposition to Europe in the British Conservative and Labour Parties since 1945, London: Routledge.
• (2001) The Making of Britain's European Foreign Policy, Essex: Longman Press (with Alasdair Blair).
• (1999) Britain and the Maastricht Negotiations, London: Macmillan/St Antony's and New York: St Martin's Press.

References