Vice-Chancellor & Principal - Professor Peter Lutzeier

Professor Peter Rolf Lutzeier joined Newman University on 1 January 2010 at a time when Newman was still a University College.  He came to Newman from the University of Hull, where he spent three years as Pro-Vice-Chancellor (Learning & Teaching).   On 4 February 2013 Newman was awarded university title and Professor Lutzeier became its first Vice-Chancellor & Principal.

Professor Lutzeier has a considerable understanding of the issues facing Higher Education, having worked in three different Higher Education systems. He graduated from the University of Stuttgart (Germany) in Mathematics (Dipl.-Math) in 1972, was awarded a Dr. phil in Linguistics at Stuttgart in 1974, and then went on to study at Merton College, Oxford University as a German Rhodes Scholar. At Oxford, he earned a BLitt in Philosophy in 1976 (MLitt in 1984) before completing his Dr. phil. habil in Linguistics at the Free University of Berlin in 1980.

Beginning his career as a lecturer at the Free University of Berlin, Professor Lutzeier spent time at the universities of Cologne and Munich, and as a Heisenberg Fellow of the German Research Foundation (DFG) at the University of California, San Diego and University of California, Los Angeles. He also served as Professor of German Linguistics and as Head of Department in the Institute of German Philology at Ludwig-Maximilians-University Munich. In 1995, he joined as Chair of German the University of Surrey and later became the Executive Head of the School of Arts at the University of Surrey.

Professor Lutzeier is widely published in Linguistics and has an international reputation in Lexicology. In this capacity he has done several major consultancy projects on brand values for BMW Munich. In 2012, he completed the second volume of his three volume dictionary on German words with opposite senses, which is going to be the world’s first dictionary of this kind in any major language.

Professor Lutzeier is a Fellow of the Higher Education Academy (HEA), he was a member of the Advisory Board HEA Subject Centre for Languages, Linguistics and Area Studies and since 2011 he sits on the HEA Board.   He also served on the AHRC Peer Review College.  In 2008, he received an invitation by the Federal Government of Baden-Württemberg to join the Scientific Advisory Board of the Institute of German Language in Mannheim (Germany).  This is the only national research institute for the German language in the German speaking countries and is considered to be the world leading research institute for the German language.