New provost of Oriel College announced

Moira Wallace OBE has been formally elected as the next Provost of Oriel College. She will become the College's first female Provost in September this year.

Ms Wallace brings more than 20 years' experience in senior civil service roles across Whitehall. She began her career in the Treasury where she served as Economic Affairs Private Secretary to Prime Ministers Major and Blair, and was the first director of the government's social exclusion unit. At the Home Office, she was Director General of Criminal Justice and then Director General of Policing. In 2008, she was appointed Permanent Secretary to the newly formed Department of Energy and Climate Change, which she led for four years.

She was born in Durham, before moving as a child to Northern Ireland. She read French and German at Emmanuel College, Cambridge, and then studied Comparative Literature at Harvard as a Kennedy Scholar. From 2000 to 2008 she was a Visiting Fellow at Nuffield College, Oxford.

Commenting on her new appointment, Ms Wallace said: 'I am delighted to have been chosen to be the next Provost of Oriel and to join such a great college in one of the world’s top universities. It is an honour to succeed Sir Derek Morris, who has led Oriel with such distinction, and to be the college's first female Provost. I am looking forward to joining the team and helping to promote Oriel's continuing development and success.'