Richard ARMOUR

Dr Richard Armour has over 38 years' experience in higher education, having served in faculty, administrative and leadership positions in various universities around the world. Originally an MA graduate in Philosophy and History from the University of Glasgow, for his graduate study he undertook an MSc degree in Advanced Research Methods, followed by a PhD from the University of London. His research and recent publications have concentrated principally on higher education policy, planning and management, performance indicators and the quality of the student experience.

Dr Armour began his higher education career in universities first in Glasgow and then in Edinburgh, Scotland from 1979 until 1992. He then moved to Hong Kong to take up an appointment as the Director of Academic Planning at City University of Hong Kong where he served for a number of years. During that period, he secured and led as the Principal Investigator in a major University Grants Committee (UGC) research grant project valued at over HKD 10 million (USD 1.3 million). There followed a period of eight years as the Registrar of the newly established Open University of Hong Kong. In 2006, he joined Griffith University in Australia as the Academic Registrar. He returned to Hong Kong in January 2009 at the invitation of The Hong Kong University of Science and Technology to take up the post of Senior Advisor to the President. More recently, he was appointed as the Secretary-General of the UGC in January 2012, in which capacity he served until 31 December 2017. The UGC is the funding, planning, policy formulation and research grants body for Hong Kong's highly ranked university sector. In that capacity, he served as an ex-officio member of the Quality Assurance Council for six years. As an experienced quality assurance auditor, he has served in that capacity in Australia, the United Kingdom (UK) and Singapore as well as Hong Kong.

In November 2012 Dr Armour was greatly honoured by being appointed to the designation Global Scot by the First Minister for Scotland.

Dr Armour continues to serve the Hong Kong higher education sector as a member of a number of UGC Committees and Task Forces. He is also a member of the Council of Research England, a national research funding council in the UK and a constituent body of UK Research and Innovation. He also serves as a Member of the Strategic Review Board, for the Future of Higher and Further Education in Scotland. He is a Court Member of Heriot-Watt University of Edinburgh, a Director of Heriot-Watt University Malaysia, and a member of the Advisory Group of Heriot-Watt University Dubai.