The Midlands Graduate School is delighted to announce the appointment of Professor Jon Coaffee from the University of Warwick as the new Midlands Graduate School DTP Director. Jon Coaffee is Professor in Urban Geography based in the Politics and International Studies department at Warwick and has been deputy-director of the Warwick Institute for the Science of Cities (WISC), which home to the EPSRC Centre for Doctoral Training (CDT) in Urban Science and Progress. Professor Coaffee takes up the post from 1 May 2019 and will succeed Professor Nicholas Gane.

Professor Gane is standing down from his role as Director of the MGS DTP at the end of April 2019. After working with the Warwick Doctoral Training Centre for 3 years and directing the MGS DTP from its inception in 2016, he will return to his home department – Sociology – at the University of Warwick. Through a period of study leave that he has been awarded for the next academic year, he plans to complete his research on the history of concept of competition and to start a new project on private, corporate, and sovereign debt. He will also serve as a member of the REF 2021 sub-panel for Sociology. We bid a fond farewell to Professor Gane and are grateful for all of his hard work with the MGS.