MOVERS & SHAKERS

A hot-shot corporate lawyer from Australia will be jetting in to Leeds regularly to give tips to law students at Leeds Metropolitan University. John Spender, who has also been appointed Australian ambassador to France, has been made visiting professor at Leeds Met. He will give lectures to law students on his flying visits over the next three years. An experienced barrister and judge, Mr Spender has also been a politician in the Australian House of Representatives, holding the position of shadow minister for foreign affairs.

"These days lawyers are often regarded as people to be avoided," he says. "I'm looking forward to talking to students about how to be good lawyers and why it's such a fascinating job - and occasionally a despairing one. I'll be taking a practical approach and want to talk about how to win cases - not lose gracefully."

In the same city, a leading marketing and media academic, Paul Michell, has been made a professor at Leeds University Business School. Formerly of Manchester Business School, he plans to establish regional research forums to meet the research needs of local advertisers, advertising agencies, retailers and businesses.

One of the world's first professors of cancer health education has been appointed at Manchester University. Anne Charlton, who runs the Cancer Research Campaign's child studies research group at the university, has been given the title in recognition of her extensive studies into smoking, health and children. Her group has discovered links between smoking and cigarette advertising and between smoking and increased risk of menstrual problems, among other things.

A practising solicitor and expert on environmental law has been made the new head of Cardiff law school, part of the University of Wales, Cardiff. Professor Bob Lee was formerly development director for Hammond Suddards, a firm of solicitors for whom he continues to work as a consultant. He has also gained experience of government and industry through working at ICI, the North West regional health authority and as chairman of rent tribunals and rent assessment committees.

A new dean of the faculty of art and design has taken up his post at the University of Hertfordshire. Chris McIntyre, who comes from Loughborough College of Art and Design, is keen to develop links between the arts and other disciplines, especially information technologies.

He says: "I believe there are tremendous opportunities to combine the imaginative and the conceptual with the technological. Computer-based technologies will never replace traditional art and design, but in terms of helping the process and developing new areas of creativity and production they have tremendous value."

And at the other end of the country, Professor Alan Fairlamb has been appointed to a personal chair at the University of Dundee to work at the new pounds 12m Wellcome Trust Building which will house the Institute for Molecular and Cellular Research. This is one of the biggest scientific developments in education in Scotland.

Professor Fairlamb is a leading researcher on malaria and formerly professor of molecular parasitology at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine. Can't be much of that in Scotland n