Nick Petford

Nick Petford (b. 27 May 1961, London) is Vice-Chancellor of the University of Northampton. Previously he was Pro-Vice Chancellor (Research and Enterprise) at Bournemouth University and before that Professor of Earth and Planetary Sciences at Kingston University. He has also worked for BP and on academic and commercial research projects throughout the world, but is best known for his expertise in magmatic systems and volcanology.

Petford grew up in North London and Hillingdon, West London, before moving to the Hiltingbury district of Chandlers Ford where he went to The Mountbatten School, a comprehensive, near Southampton. He is married with three children. In 1977 Nick co-founded Strate Jacket, Southampton's first punk band. In the early 1980s he contributed to Geoff Wall's 'Stick it in your ear' tapes and played with the Lewisham-based Afghan Rebels.

Petford trained initially as a refrigeration engineer and worked in retain including Liberty in regent Street before doing an Access Course in Science at Southwark College then reading Geology at Goldsmiths, University of London (1984–1987). He received a PhD from the University of Liverpool in 1991 and a DSc in 2009. He is a former Royal Society University Research Fellow and Fellow of Churchill College, Cambridge. Petford’s contributions to the media on volcanoes include appearances on Sky News, BBC TV and Radio, the Richard and Judy show and National Geographic's Top 10 Natural Disasters. In 2005 the BBC featured the work of his research team in a documentary Krakatoa Revealed. During the 2010 eruption of Iceland's Eyjafjallajökull volcano this year he fronted the Channel 4 documentary The Volcano That Stopped Britain.

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