Geoffrey Crossick

The son of Louis Crossick and Rebecca Naomi (née Backen), Crossick was educated at The Haberdashers' Aske's Boys' School, now an independent school in Elstree in Hertfordshire but at that time a direct grant school, followed by Gonville and Caius College at the University of Cambridge, and was awarded a BA in History in 1967. He did doctoral research at Birkbeck College of London University and was awarded PhD History in 1976.[1]

He was a Research Fellow in history at Emmanuel College, Cambridge from 1970 to 1973. He then became a Lecturer in Social History at the University of Hull from 1973 to 1978. In 1979 he joined the University of Essex becoming a Reader and Professor of History from 1991 to 2002 and becoming Pro-Vice-Chancellor from 1997 to 2002.[2]

He was Chief Executive of the Arts and Humanities Research Board from 2002 to 2005 and Warden of Goldsmiths College, (now Goldsmiths, University of London) from 2005–10.[3]

He was Vice-Chancellor of the University of London from 2010 to 2012. According to The Times, he said he would leave the part-time role in July 2012 because the workload was more onerous than he anticipated when deliberately scaling down from a full-time to a part-time position. The part-time role had an annual salary of £135,000.[2][1]

He has held a number of other positions including Visiting Professor to the University of Lyon from 1990 to 1991. He has been a member of the Business and Community Strategy Committee, and later Enterprise and Skills Strategy Committee of the Higher Education Funding Council for England (HEFCE) from 2005 to 2012. He has been a Board member of Universities UK (UUK) from 2006 to 2012 and is Director of the Arts and Humanities Research Council's Cultural Value Project.[4] Amongst other positions he is a Council Member of the Courtauld Institute of Art in London, a Trustee of the Horniman Museum in South London and Chair of the Board of Trinity Long Room Hub at Trinity College Dublin. In 2014 he became Chair of the Crafts Council. He was previously a Trustee of the National Maritime Museum, at Greenwich.[1] He was Director 2012–2016 of the AHRC Cultural Value Project set up to identify the benefits of arts and culture to individuals and society and ways of evaluating and evidencing them. The report, Understanding the value of arts and culture (with Patrycja Kaszynska, AHRC 2016), is to be found at http://www.ahrc.ac.uk/research/fundedthemesandprogrammes/culturalvalueproject/

Since 2013 he has been Chair of the Crafts Council, and is also a trustee or governor of the Guildhall School of Music & Drama, the Horniman Museum & Gardens, the National Film & Television School and the Goldsmiths Centre. He was a member of the Board of the Courtauld Institute of Art 2007–2017. Since 2010 he has been Chair of the Trinity Long Room Hub, the Arts & Humanities Research Institute of Trinity College Dublin.

In 2015 he published a report on Monographs and Open Access for the Higher Education Funding Council for England.

m 1973, he married Rita Geraldine Vaudrey JP in 1973 and they have two sons. In 1993 he was made FRHistS and in 2004 an Honorary Fellow of Emmanuel College, Cambridge. He was appointed FRSA in 2009 and an Honorary Fellow of Goldsmiths, University of London in 2011.

He is a Tottenham Hotspur FC supporter.[1]

• The Lower Middle Class in Britain 1870–1914 (Editor) Publisher: Croom Helm (20 Jan 1977) ISBN 978-0856643484
• An Artisan Elite in Victorian Society: Kentish London 1840–1880 1978 (Joint editor) Publisher: C. Helm Rowman and Littlefield ISBN 978-0847660988
• Shopkeepers and Master Artisans in 19th Century Europe May 1984 (Geoffrey Crossick and Heinz-Gerhard Haupt) Publisher: Methuen young books ISBN 978-0416356601
• The Power of the Past: essays for Eric Hobsbawm September 1984 (Editors: Geoffrey Crossick, Pat Thane, and Roderick Floud) Publisher: Cambridge University Press ISBN 978-0521275279
• The Petite Bourgeoisie in Europe 1780–1914: Enterprise, Family and Independence 1995, New edition Nov 1997 (Geoffrey Crossick and Heinz-Gerhard Haupt) Publisher: Routledge ISBN 978-0415174633
• The Artisan and the European Town: 1500–1900 (Historical Urban Studies Series) June 1997 (Editor) Publisher: Ashgate Publishing Limited ISBN 978-1859282328
• Cathedrals of Consumption: the European department store 1850–1939 March 1998 (Ed: Geoffrey Crossik and Serge Gaumain) Publisher: Ashgate Publishing Limited ISBN 978-1840142365
• Knowledge Transfer without Widgets: the challenge of the creative economy January2007 (Contributor) Publisher: Goldsmiths College ISBN 978-1904158806

• List of Vice-Chancellors of the University of London