
Jim was appointed in April 2016 as Director of Continuing Education at the University of Cambridge Institute of Continuing Education.
The Institute is Cambridge's open university, delivering over 100,000 course enrolments per annum to adults across the UK and globally on undergraduate, postgraduate, apprenticeship, summer, weekend and fully only programmes.
As the Head Department at ICE, he leads over 100 employees and 200 tutors and assumes overall responsibility for the delivery of high-quality teaching. His primary role is to develop and deliver ICE’s strategy, ensuring that Cambridge’s approach to lifelong learning is relevant and accessible to adults seeking to learn for professional development and personal enrichment. He also oversees the Madingley Hall campus.
Prior to working for the University of Cambridge, Jim held a personal professorial Chair from 2012-2016 in Workforce Futures in the Faculty of Medicine and Health Sciences at the University of East Anglia. He was also an Associate Dean for Enterprise. In his roles, Jim led UEA’s partnership with the NHS to provide post-registration training for clinically qualified staff. Jim now holds an Honorary Professorship at UEA.
Previously, Jim held a Lectureship at the Royal Veterinary College, University of London. His cross-campus role focused on enterprise and work-relevant and employability-related learning.
Earlier in his career, Jim held roles at GlaxoSmithKline (Principal Scientist: Education and Training), Cranfield School of Management (ESRC Research Fellow: High Performance Teams), and Medical Research Council Technology (Technology Transfer Manager). He maintains a broad interest in academic commercialisation, innovation in academic leadership, and workplace-relevant learning.
Jim holds undergraduate (Cardiff) and postdoctoral (Nottingham) qualifications in genetics, an MBA (Stirling) focusing on entrepreneurship, a postgraduate certificate (London) in higher education, and is a Fellow of the Higher Education Academy. He was awarded an honorary MA from the University of Cambridge in 2020.