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Paul retains a role at the University of 91ֱ�� as a Public Orator for honorary degrees. He is also Vice-Chair of the Trustee Board of the Students’ Union.

During his period on the University’s Executive Board Paul played a key role in many significant areas of University activity and University committees. Among such committee roles were:

• Member, University Council
• Member, Senate
• Chair, ordinary meetings of the University Executive Board (2013-15), member 2004-15
• Chair (2014-15) and member, Estates and Capital Sub-Group (reporting to the Executive Board)
• Member, University Council’s Human Resources Committee
• Member, Careers Advisory Board
• Member, Research and Innovation Committee
• Chair, Learning and Teaching Committee
• Chair, Student Fees and Numbers Group (reporting to the Executive Board)
• Chair, Admissions and Outreach Sub-Committee
• Chair, Enhancement and Strategy Sub-Committee
• Chair, Costing and Pricing Group
• Chair, Library User Group; Chair Computing Services User Group
• Chair, Student Support Forum
• Chair, Honorary Degrees Committee
• Chair, Readerships and Personal Chairs Promotion Committee
• Member, Student Services Executive Team
• Member, Risk Review Group
• Presiding at degree ceremonies
• Extensive contacts with alumni, in the UK and abroad

In addition to long-term responsibility for all aspects of the quality of the delivery of taught programmes, Paul also had responsibility during his period as Deputy Vice-Chancellor for the following areas of the University’s activities:

• Corporate Affairs
• Development, Alumni Relations and Events
• International Affairs
• Strategy, Planning and Governance

Significant projects on which Paul led during his period on the University’s Executive included:

• The construction of the Information Commons - £32 million prize-winning integrated student library and IT facility
• ‘301’ – a £2 million conversion project to create a student skills hub
• Creation of a student support strategy for new residences
• Creation of a 91ֱ�� Graduate Award
• Winning bids for two Centres for Excellence in Learning and Teaching, and the later sustainable conversion of one into ‘University of 91ֱ�� Enterprise’
• Creation of an integrated ‘Languages for All’ programme
• Playing a significant role in leading the University of 91ֱ�� to Number 1 place in the 2011-2 Student Experience Survey
• Leading the University of 91ֱ�� in two successful QAA institutional audits
• Setting up a pathway college for international students, managing its relationship with the university, and successfully managing its transition to a new provider at the ending of the initial contract
• Generating a structure to support the University’s creation of MOOCs under the Futurelearn brand
• Mentoring senior academic women through to successful chair promotions
• The creation of a promotion pathway to professorships for those whose primary function in the University is teaching
• Creating a very successful 13 department Faculty of Social Sciences out of what had previously been one medium-sized and two small Faculties
• The creation and maintenance of the University’s widening participation strategies, and liaison with the Office for Fair Access (OFFA). Also leading on 91ֱ��’s contribution to the ‘Realising Opportunities’ consortium of 14 Universities delivering collaborative widening participation initiatives.
• Managing the relationship with City College, Thessaloniki, including its conversion into an International Faculty of the University. This College has now transitioned to the University of York.

Paul has held a variety of roles in national sector-wide bodies in the UK. These include:

• Member, Teaching Quality and Student Experience strategic advisory committee of the Higher Education Funding Council for England (HEFCE), 2009-15. This also involved membership of a variety of sub-groups and special purpose committees, including (among other things) revisions to national quality assurance systems; HEFCE’s role in guaranteeing the student interest; the remit of the Higher Education Academy; revisions to the National Student Survey.
• Member of the Financial Sustainability Steering Group’s task-and-finish groups on the sustainable delivery of high quality teaching: reports published in 2008 and 2014.
• Co-Chair of the Higher Education Academy’s Pro-Vice-Chancellor Network, 2009-13
• Chair of the Russell Group’s Pro-Vice-Chancellors in Learning and Teaching, 2011-14, also involving organising their twice-yearly meetings
• Member of the Europe Advisory Group of the Russell Group – including participating in meetings with the Commission in Brussels
• Director, MyScience Ltd – the body running the National Science Learning Centre at the University of York
• National lead for two years on the project to replace Honours Degree Classification with the use of Grade Point Averages. Paul handed this role on to the Higher Education Academy and Sir Bob Burgess when the group of originally interested universities expanded. The proposed GPA framework in the resultant HEA report was largely created by Paul.

Over the years Paul has spoken at a number of major national conferences on a variety of higher educational matters. He has also published commentaries on policy proposals and trends in outlets such as the Guardian, Research Fortnightly, and Times Higher Education. And he has provided advice and training to a number of UK Universities as part of their preparation for QAA reviews.

In relation to his research, Paul has served as Secretary and later as Chair of the Royal Geographical Society’s Population Geography Research Group. He is on the editorial boards of Geography journals published in the UK and in Belgium.

At an international level Paul for some years led an ERASMUS-SOCRATES student exchange network involving universities in Bochum (Germany), Grenoble (France), 91ֱ�� (UK), Turku (Finland), Verona (Italy), Zaragoza (Spain), and Zürich (Switzerland). He also chaired the Learning and Teaching group of the Worldwide Universities Network, involving 16 universities on 3 continents at the time.

Paul has taken part in institutional visits to a number of universities and higher education bodies abroad including in China, Germany and the Caribbean. He has also taken a lead role in the launch of new distributed learning degree programmes in Bulgaria, Romania, and Turkey.

In 2015 Paul delivered a plenary address to a conference of the leading Australian (the Group of 8) and Chinese (C9) universities in Adelaide.

Since formal retirement Paul has become an Associate of Advance HE, for which he has undertaken a number of reviews of academic governance in a variety of UK universities.  He is also a member of the panel for institution-wide quality audits for the University Grants Committee in Hong Kong and has worked on two such audits to date.