Nuffield Foundation Trustee Sir Ernest Ryder has been elected as the next Master of Pembroke College, University of Oxford. He will take over as Master at the end of June 2020 and will become a Senior Associate of the Centre for Socio-Legal Studies in the Department of Law.
Sir Ernest is a distinguished member of the judiciary, who has also served the higher education sector and the wider community. He was called to the bar in 1981 and became a QC in 1997. He was appointed a Justice of the High Court in 2004 and was both the Presiding Judge of the Northern Circuit and its Family Division Liaison Judge. He was the judge in charge of the modernisation of family justice that led to the creation of the Family Court.
In 2013 Sir Ernest was appointed a Lord Justice of Appeal, and in 2015 was appointed Senior President of Tribunals for the UK. This has involved leading the largest specialist part of the judicial system, with more than 5,500 judicial office holders working across the four different legal jurisdictions of the UK. He also leads a £1bn change transformation programme for the justice system which aims to modernise the courts and tribunals system.
Sir Ernest Ryder has been a Trustee of the Nuffield Foundation since September 2014. He has worked with colleagues to develop a sustainable model for research in Education, Welfare and Justice, and to integrate quantitative and economic work into many of the Foundation’s justice projects. He is the Chair of the Administrative Justice Council and holds Honorary Professorships at the Universities of Lancaster and Bolton.
Between 2014 and 2017 Sir Ernest was Chancellor of the University of Bolton, and he continues his involvement in his home area as a Deputy Lieutenant of Greater Manchester.
Sir Ernest will succeed Dame Lynne Brindley, who steps down at the end of June 2020. He will remain a Trustee of the Nuffield Foundation.
