Professor Colin Riordan CBE is the ACU's Secretary General and Chief Executive. He studied German at the University of Manchester, gaining his PhD from there in 1986. He was Lecturer, then Senior Lecturer in German at Swansea University from 1986 to 1998, when he moved to Newcastle University to become Professor of German. He became Head of the School of Modern Languages at Newcastle in 2001. After three years in that role, he was appointed as Faculty Dean of Postgraduate Studies, and a year later, in 2005, as Pro Vice-Chancellor and Provost of the Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences. In October 2007 he became Vice-Chancellor of the University of Essex, before moving to Cardiff University in 2012, where he served as President and Vice Chancellor until August 2023.
Professor Riordan has undertaken numerous Board roles including on Universities UK, UCAS (twice), Advance HE, the Association of Commonwealth Universities (until May 2023), as Chair of UUKi, Chair of Universities Wales and as Chair of The Conversation. From 2021 to 2023 he was Chair of the IDP Connect Strategic Advisory Board.
