Tony Sheil

Senior Manager, Research Policy & Strategy
Griffith University, Australia

Tony Sheil’s career in university management spans over 20 years working for three universities and one national university grouping. With degrees in public policy and applied finance, Tony’s university career began in 1986 as Company Secretary of a university student accommodation company. He later served as Faculty Manager, Asian and International Studies (1988-90) at Griffith University, and as a part-time Residential Consultant for the Australian Institute of Sport, Brisbane (1987-89) prior to taking on the role of Executive Officer to the Vice-Chancellor, Griffith University (1990-92) during a period of four institutional amalgamations.

Tony then spent several years working in the United Kingdom at the University of Manchester and the University of Manchester Institute of Science and Technology. His main role was project manager for an Enterprise in Higher Education program which was aimed at providing undergraduate students with as much exposure as possible to industry input during the course of their degree programs. Following that he returned to Griffith University, serving as Manager of the Graduate School of Management (1996-2003).

Following a short period in the Office of the Deputy Vice Chancellor (Research), and in a change of career direction, Tony resumed his interest in policy and was appointed to the position of Foundation Executive Officer, Innovative Research Universities Australia in December 2003. The Group was established as one of three active university sub-groups and the views of the membership were presented on a range of policy issues related to research, learning and teaching, internationalisation and university governance.

In March 2007, Tony returned to Griffith University in a new role as Senior Manager, Research Policy & Strategy. Tony is currently developing university strategy on a range of major issues including the internationalisation of research and use of metrics by the University to measure the quality of research performance. Tony has also written several newspaper articles and one book chapter on the impact of world university rankings on research strategy of small nations. He has delivered conference papers about rankings strategy in China at the World Class Universities Conference (2007) and Iceland at the OECD and Nordic universities Conference (2008) which discussed the issue of institutional size.