Provost and Vice-Chancellor Professor Andy Orchard

Professor Andy Orchard was installed as Trinity's 14th Provost and Vice-Chancellor in September 2007. He is an experienced administrator, as well as a professor who has supervised more than forty PhD students to completion on both sides of the Atlantic, receiving a Pilkington Prize for excellence in teaching in the University of Cambridge in 1998. He honed his administrative skills at the Centre for Medieval Studies, University of Toronto and previously as Admissions Tutor for Arts at Emmanuel College, Cambridge, and as Head of the Department of Anglo-Saxon, Norse and Celtic at Cambridge.  Professor Orchard has published extensitvely. He is the author of the Cassell Dictionary of Norse Myth and Legend and has been widely interviewed to unravel the antecedent legends behind Wagner's Ring Cycle. His other books include The Poetic Art of Aldhelm and a forthcoming companion volume, The Poetic Craft of Cynewulf.  He edits a number of series and journals and has recently completed The Elder Edda: a Book of Viking Lore for Penguin Classics.

Professor Orchard was born in London, England and took degrees from both Oxford and Cambridge. His early interest in English and Classics later developed into a full-blown passion for Anglo-Saxon, Norse and Celtic, which he pursued at Queens' College, Cambridge, then at Exeter College, Oxford, before receiving his PhD in 1990 at the age of 26 from Cambridge. For the next nine years he taught Anglo-Saxon, Norse and Celtic at Cambridge. He came to the University of Toronto in 2000 as Professor of English and Medieval Studies and became Associate Director of the Centre for Medieval Studies in 2001 and its Director in 2004. In 2008 he became Chair of the Manuscript Review Committee after serving as a member since 2000.

Just 42 when appointed, he is an inspired leader, charismatic teacher and brilliant lecturer, fully committed to safeguarding Trinity's important traditions. Professor Orchard lives in the Provost's Lodge at the College with his wife Clare and two children, Ellen and Oscar.

"Trinity has long been a place where the old world and the new meet and merge," he said when introduced as the next Provost at the fall 2006 meeting of Trinity's Corporation. "I hope to maintain the same sense of the lively co-existence of tradition and innovation, and am both inspired and humbled by the achievements of the past and the challenges ahead."