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23 January 2008

Professor Lisa Jardine CBE has been appointed by the Appointments Commission to be the new Chair of the Human Fertilisation and Embryology Authority with effect from 1 April 2008.

Lisa is a well known historian who is Director of the Centre for Editing Lives and Letters and Centenary Professor of Renaissance Studies at Queen Mary, University of London. Amongst her many other roles she is a member of the Council of the Royal Institution, a Trustee of the V&A Museum and Patron of the National Council on Archives (biography below in Notes to Editors).

Alan Doran, Interim Chief Executive of the HFEA, said:

“We are delighted to have Lisa join us at the HFEA. This is a very exciting time for the HFEA with a new legislative framework passing through Parliament and our own drive to improve the way we do our work. We look forward to Lisa bringing her own perspective to these ongoing developments.

He added: “All of us at the HFEA are grateful for the continued hard work and commitment Walter Merricks is giving us as the HFEA’s Interim Chair. He has combined his professional skills with his personal insight to provide strong and thoughtful leadership to the HFEA.”

Ends

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Notes to editors

Lisa’s appointment is from 1 April 2008 until 31 Dec 2009. She will receive £55,000 remuneration for 3 days a week work.

The appointment has been made in accordance with the OCPA Code of Practice.

All appointments are made on merit and political activity plays no part in the selection process. However, in accordance with the original Nolan recommendations, there is a requirement for appointees’ political activity (if any declared) to be made public. She has no declared political activity within the last five years and holds no other ministerial appointments

Lisa Jardine CBE is Director of the Centre for Editing Lives and Letters and Centenary Professor of Renaissance Studies at Queen Mary, University of London. She is a Fellow of the Royal Historical Society and Honorary Fellow of King's College, Cambridge and Jesus College, Cambridge.  She holds honorary doctorates from the University of St Andrews, Sheffield Hallam University and the Open University.

She is a Trustee of the V&A Museum, and a member of the Council of the Royal Institution, and Patron of the National Council on Archives. She was for ten years the Chair of Governors at Westminster City School in London (an inner-city boys' comprehensive), and is currently a governor and Chair of the Curriculum Committee of St Marylebone School (an inner-city girls' s comprehensive in central London). 

She is a regular writer and presenter of BBC Radio 4's A Point of View. For the academic year 2007-8 she is seconded to the Royal Society in London as Advisor to its Collections and Archives.

Professor Jardine has written a number of best-selling general books, including Worldly Goods: A New History of the Renaissance, Ingenious Pursuits: Building the Scientific Revolution, and biographies of Sir Christopher Wren and Robert Hooke. Her latest book, on Anglo-Dutch reciprocal influence in the seventeenth century, entitled Going Dutch, is published by HarperCollins in March 2008

The HFEA is the independent regulator for IVF treatment and embryo research. Our role is to protect patients and the public interest, to drive improvement in the treatment and research sectors and to provide information to the public and policymakers about treatment and research.

The HFEA was set up in August 1991 as part of the Human Fertilisation and Embryology Act 1990. Its principal tasks are to license and monitor clinics that carry out in vitro fertilisation (IVF), donor insemination (DI) and human embryo research. The HFEA also regulates the storage of gametes (eggs and sperm) and embryos.

Page last updated: 11 March 2009

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