Professor Naren Barfield is Deputy Vice-Chancellor and Provost at the Royal College of Art, London. He has held a number of senior leadership positions in UK higher education and has contributed to the strategic development, support, leadership and assessment of research, knowledge exchange, innovation, and postgraduate research and taught programmes across design, the arts and humanities, both nationally and internationally. He has led significant growth in postgraduate programmes, student enrolments, research intensity and quality, industry partnerships, executive education, and internationalisation.

Since 2017 Professor Barfield has been a Council Member for Research England, where he is also the strategic lead for university engagement. Internationally, he is an advisor and assessor to universities, research councils and learned societies in China, Hong Kong, Australia and New Zealand, and has led international partnership agreements with universities in China, Japan, Singapore and the US. He is a visiting professor at a number of universities internationally.