Professor Sally Mapstone joined the University of St Andrews as Principal and Vice-Chancellor in September 2016. She had previously served since 2009 as Pro-Vice-Chancellor for Personnel and Equality and since 2011 as Pro-Vice-Chancellor for Education at the University of Oxford. She maintains a strong interest in issues both of access and diversity within the higher education sector. She is currently chairing a workstream on admissions policies in the HE sector for Universities Scotland.

Sally gained her BA and D.Phil. at Oxford, was a Fellow of St Hilda’s College (of which she is now an Emeritus Fellow) and Professor of Older Scots Literature in the Faculty of English Language and Literature. She is an expert on the literature of Scotland before 1707, and has published widely on literature both in Scots and in Latin, on political literature and on book history. Earlier in her career she worked as an editor in the book publishing industry. She is Honorary President of the Scottish Text Society, an Honorary Fellow of the Association for Scottish Literary Studies and a Fellow of the English Association.

Professor Mapstone has a long-standing engagement in European issues and while at Oxford served on the steering group for the League of European Research Universities community of Vice-Rectors for Teaching and Learning. She is a member of the international advisory board for the University of Helsinki and will be chairing that board from 2018.