Pamela Gillies

Pamela Gillies CBE, FRSE has been Principal and Vice-Chancellor of Glasgow Caledonian University since 2006, having previously served as Pro-Vice-Chancellor at the University of Nottingham. A public health epidemiologist by training, she has been seconded to the World Health Organisation’s Global Programme on AIDS in Geneva (1989-90); been a Visiting Scholar in Residence at Cabot House, Radcliffe College, Harvard in Health and Human Rights (1992-3) and was seconded as the first Executive Director of Research at the Health Education Authority for England in London (1996-99).

She is a Founding Member of the Global Advisory Council for the African Leadership University; Trustee of the National University of Science and Technology in Muscat, Oman and a Founding Board member of the Grameen Caledonian College of Nursing in Dhaka, Bangladesh. She is also President of Glasgow Caledonian New York College (GCNYC) and a member of the Board of Trustees. She was a member of the Board of Trustees of the British Council from 2008 to 2014 and a Founding Board Member of the RFK Human Rights UK Board (2018-2020).

She has also served on the Boards of the Scottish Institute for Enterprise, Grameen Scotland Foundation, STV, CBI, Saltire Foundation, Scottish Council for Excellence in Social Work and the Carnegie Trust. She has served as Chair of the European Commission Working Group on Human Rights, HIV/AIDS and Discrimination, Chair of the Glasgow Health Commission and Chair of UK Ministerial task forces on welfare and on unintended teenage conceptions. She is currently the Lead Member for Universities Scotland on the Student Mental Health Group and on the Student Misconduct Guidelines Review Group.

She was awarded the honour of CBE for services to education and public health in December 2012; an Abbott Fellowship for Aids Research (1988) and a Harkness Fellowship of the Commonwealth Fund of New York at the Harvard School of Public Health (1992-92) and more recently awarded Social Mobility Champion of the Year in 2019. Pamela was elected a Fellow of the Faculty of Public Health of the Royal College of Physicians of London in 2002; a Fellow of the Academy for Social Sciences in 2005; an Honorary Fellow of the Royal College of Physicians of Glasgow in 2007 and became a Fellow of the Scottish Academy, the Royal Society of Edinburgh in 2015. She holds an Honorary Professorship with the University of Jinan and an Honorary Doctorate from the University of Aberdeen.

She is the founding patron of a school for children of sex workers in Domjur, Kolkata and has researched and written widely on HIV/AIDS, health development, and inequalities in health focusing on the potential of social action for health.

She is a keen associate member of the Scottish Lawn Tennis Association and a member of Glamis Castle Musicale, Glyndebourne Opera, the Royal Horticultural Society and the National Trust.