Michael Gunn

Michael Gunn was the Vice-Chancellor and Chief Executive of Staffordshire University. He was also chair of the university think tank million +.

He went to Manchester University to read Law in 1974. After graduation, he worked for the National Health Service as a national administrative trainee for a year before taking up the post of Lecturer in Law at the University of Nottingham in 1978. He spent nearly 15 years there teaching and researching, as well as being involved in the running of the Department.

Professor Gunn moved from Nottingham to head Westminster Law School in 1993 and from there to a research professorship in mental health law at De Montfort University in 1997. In 1999, he took up the post of Head of the Department of Academic Legal Studies at Nottingham Trent University and finished his time at NTU as Dean of Nottingham Law School.

Prior to joining Staffordshire University, he was a Pro Vice Chancellor at Derby University with a range of leadership responsibilities including research and scholarship, further education at Buxton, all the Faculties at one time or another, quality assurance and enhancement for most of the time, and, successively, for Learning and Information Services and Student Support and Information Services.

His research expertise in law is primarily in the law of decision-making, now covered by the Mental Capacity Act 2005. He also has expertise in mental health law that includes having been a member of the then Mental Health Act Commission (1991-9).

He retired in 2016.