Rate My Professor Rama Thirunamachandran

Professor Rama Shankaran Thirunamachandran is a British university administrator and the former Vice-Chancellor and Principal of Canterbury Christ Church University, a position he held from October 2013 until April 2026. He joined the university after serving as Deputy Vice-Chancellor and Provost of Keele University from 2008 to 2013. Prior to that, he was Director for Research, Innovation and Skills at the Higher Education Funding Council for England from 2002 to 2008. His earlier career included roles at Royal Holloway, University of London, where he was head of research and enterprise, as well as positions at the University of Bristol and King’s College London. He also worked on flood prevention projects in Bangladesh for the United Nations Development Programme.

Educated at Downing College, Cambridge, where he studied geography and natural sciences and graduated in 1986, Thirunamachandran is an academic geographer. He became the first British-born Black, Asian and Minority Ethnic vice-chancellor of a mainstream UK university. He has held significant leadership positions in the sector, including Chair of the Higher Education Academy from 2015 to 2018, membership of the UCAS board from 2010 to 2013, and service on the board of Universities UK since 2017. He chaired MillionPlus from 2020 to 2022 and served as a non-executive director of Medway NHS Foundation Trust from 2020 to 2024. Thirunamachandran is a Fellow of the Royal Geographical Society. He was appointed a Deputy Lieutenant of Kent in 2020 and awarded an OBE for services to higher education in the 2023 King’s Birthday Honours.

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