Dr Jamil Salmi, the former coordinator of the World Bank’s tertiary education programme, will deliver the opening keynote address of the ACU’s HR Management & PR Network Conference which will take place at the University of Glasgow between the 13 and 16 July 2014.

A renowned education economist and author, Dr Salmi’s career has predominantly been spent advising governments and tertiary education institutions in more than 80 countries on policy and strategic matters. He will share this wealth of experience, infusing it with his personal insights, to deliver the conference’s opening address titled 'In search of academic excellence: new management challenges' to delegates from universities from all over the Commonwealth.

The conference, themed ‘Steering institutional strategy: the critical roles of HR and PR’, will examine the role that HR, PR, marketing and communications professionals can and should play in articulating and steering institutional strategies. It will focus on the strategies and the competencies required by HR and PR professionals in addressing the challenges facing higher education, and will feature sessions on the growth of the sector in Asia and the Middle East, the significance of MOOCs, the rise in overseas branch campuses and the increase in competition to attract international students.

The conference will appeal primarily to HR and PR directors in universities but will also be of value to other senior policymakers with an interest in the themes that will run through the conference.

Dr Salmi joins a varied list of influential international practitioners hailing from 16 different countries who will be speaking at or presenting workshops during the conference. Professor Simon Marginson, Professor of International Higher Education at the Institute of Education, will also deliver the plenary address of the session focussing on internationalisation. His talk is titled 'The University, the nation-state and internationalisation'. Brooke Young, the Vice-President of Marketing and Advancement at the University of Victoria, Australia, will open the final day of the conference with a talk about how to develop an effective social media strategy for universities. Continuing the theme of communicating to audiences online, the ACU’s Beyond 2015 campaign team will also host a workshop session focusing on how universities can work with media – both traditional and online – to better communicate the knowledge they produce to wider society.

The HR Management and PR Network Conference will mark the conclusion of the ACU’s Centenary-themed activities, which has encompassed the ACU’s Centenary Lecture Series by Sir David King, and the ACU Centenary Conference. Details about the conference, including the programme, speaker list and registration can be found at www.acu.ac.uk/glasgow-2014