Chairs

Wellcome Trust

Valerie Smith, marine microbiologist and reader in the school of environmental and evolutionary biology at the University of St Andrews, has been awarded a Wellcome visiting professorship in the microbiological sciences and will lecture at Florida International University in Miami. The professorship is administered by the American Society for Microbiology and sponsored by the Burroughs Wellcome Fund.

University of Oxford

The Weidenfeld visiting professorship in European comparative literature has been awarded: for 1999-2000 to Roberto Calasso, publisher and author, winner of the Prix Veillon in 1992 and the Prix du Meilleur Livre Etranger, 1992; for 2000-2001 to Mario Vargas Llosa, novelist, holder of the Simon Bolivar chair, Cambridge (1977) and the Robert Kennedy chair, Harvard (1992), founder of the Movimiento Libertad in Peru.

Kent Institute of Art and Design

Peter Roberts, former head of consumer technology at Massey University, New Zealand, has been appointed professor and head of research and consultancy at Rochester School of 3-D-Design.

University of Reading John Mawson, head of the school of town and regional planning, University of Dundee, has been appointed professor of planning in the department of land management and development from October 1, 1998.

University of Havana

Tony Kapcia, principal lecturer in the school of languages and European studies at the University of Wolverhampton, has been appointed profesor invitado (honorary professor). His appointment was proposed by three of the university's faculties and witnessed by the British ambassador to Cuba.