College Board today appointed Prof Linda Doyle as the next Provost of Trinity, after she won the election for the position on April 10th.
Doyle will take over from Prof Patrick Prendergast as Provost on August 1st.
In accordance with the College statutes, Board must appoint the winning candidate after the election of a new provost.
In an email to the college community today, Prendergast said that he was “delighted to congratulate Professor Doyle on her election and appointment and of course it is particularly significant as Linda will be the first female Provost in Trinity’s history”.
“I look forward to helping Linda in any way I can before and after the 1st of August”, he added. “Now that the final stage in the appointment process under the Statutes has been completed, I would like to thank all those who have been involved in the process.”
“In particular”, he said, “I would like to mention Professor Linda Hogan and Professor Jane Ohlmeyer for their important contribution to an active and lively campaign which was a good example of democracy at work. I am very aware of the demands of such a campaign and I wish Linda and Jane all the very best”.
Doyle was elected on the second round of voting, defeating Hogan by 247 votes. Ohlmeyer was eliminated after the first round.
In a speech shortly after she was elected, Doyle said she wanted to make the “extraordinary moment” of having a woman provost an “ordinary” event. When asked how she would make this happen, she said: “I suppose it’s interesting today that I’m the first woman provost, but I think it would become a reality when people don’t comment one way or the other on that. And I think we see this already in Trinity.”
Doyle’s manifesto, “Imagine Trinity,” encouraged voters to imagine what Trinity would be like in 2031 at the conclusion of her provostship. She frequently focused on her first manifesto point about creating a “re-energised democracy” during the provostial hustings, discussing detailed plans of how to redistribute provostial power.
She pledged to introduce an independent chair of College Board, and frequently heralded Trinity East as the answer to many of Trinity’s current problems.
Though she agreed with her opponents on many points, she diverged from their views on the issue of rankings. Hogan and Doyle both promised to improve Trinity’s position in international rankings. Doyle said she believed that “our behaviour should drive rankings”, as opposed to the other way around.
Prior to running for Provost, Doyle was the Director of the Science Foundation Ireland CONNECT Centre, a position she left to become Trinity’s Dean of Research. Doyle has also been heavily involved in the postgraduate advisory service and is a professor of engineering and the arts.
