Assistant Vice-Principal (Dean of Learning and Teaching) and Provost

The Assistant Vice-Principal (Dean of Learning and Teaching) works in the Proctor’s Office, supporting the Vice-Principal Education in successfully implementing the University’s Strategy 2018-2023 in areas related to education.

The Dean of Learning and Teaching role supports the Principal’s Office in implementing strategic goals and managing academic business in the University and the role of Provost is responsible for the development of postgraduate education and research and for the postgraduate community.  

The AVP (Dean of Learning and Teaching) and Provost is part of a team of Assistant Vice-Principals, including the AVP Dean of Science, the AVP Dean of Arts and Divinity and the AVP Diversity. Together they work to support the Principal’s Office in implementing strategic goals and managing academic business in the University.

The AVP (Dean of Learning and Teaching) deputises for the Vice-Principal Education. The role holder keeps a strategic overview of the taught curriculum and has line management responsibility for the Associate Deans Education, the Associate Deans Students and the Associate Deans Curriculum.

Frank was born in 1970 and grew up in what was then West Berlin, with a year in Bristol thrown in for good measure. Having graduated from the Free University of Berlin with a degree in History and English in 1996, he gained his DPhil as a Rhodes Scholar from the University of Oxford in 2000.

Frank was a Junior Research Fellow in History at University College Oxford before joining the School of History at St Andrews as a lecturer in 2002. A Senior Lecturer since 2005, Frank was promoted to a Professorship in Modern History in 2012. He mainly works on the politics and political culture of 19th and 20th-century Europe, with special interests in the history of monarchy, nationalism, liberalism and biography.

Frank has published books on British perceptions of German nationalism, the revolutions of 1848 to 1849, the German Emperor Frederick III and on succession in the monarchies of 19th-century Europe. He led the AHRC-funded project 'Heirs to the Throne in the Constitutional Monarchies of 19th-Century Europe' (2012 to 2017) and is founder-editor of the Palgrave Studies in Modern Monarchy. His current research interest is the legacy of monarchy in post-WW1 Europe.