* Tom Sawyer, former deputy general secretary of public service union Nupe (now Unison) and general secretary of the Labour Party, and former chairman of Notting Hill Housing Group, has been elected chancellor of Teesside University.
* The Royal Northern College of Music has appointed: Hansjorg Schellenberger, former principal oboe with the Symphony Orchestra, Cologne (1975-80) and the Berlin Philharmonic (1980-2001), to an international chair of wind studies; and Hakan Hardenberger, guest soloist at festivals such as Lucerne, Salzburg and the BBC Proms, trumpet soloist at Vienna Konzerthaus and the Barbican Centre Celebrity Series, to an international chair in brass studies.
* Dundee University has appointed: Callum Brown, formerly at Strathclyde University, chair in religious and cultural history; and Jim Tomlinson, formerly at Brunel University, Bonar professor of modern history.
* The Institute of Education, London, has appointed: Andrew Pollard, professor of education at Cambridge University, and director of the Economic and Social Research Council's Teaching and Learning Research Programme, to a chair in the School of Early Childhood and Primary Education; and Roger Beard, reader in literacy education at Leeds University, to a chair. He will continue to research projects on home-school knowledge exchange in primary education.
* Hassan Nouri, of the School of Electrical and Computer Engineering at the University of the West of England, has been elected chairman of the European Electromagnetic User Group.