Jackie Kay has been appointed as the University of Salford’s new chancellor. She succeeds Dr Irene Khan, who stepped down earlier this year after her five-year term came to an end.

Kay is a novelist, playwright, children’s author and broadcaster, as well as being a very popular poet. As well as the honorary role of chancellor, she will become the university’s writer in residence, and will contribute commissions that will enhance learning and teaching and students’ broader experience at the university.

Prof Martin Hall, the university’s vice-chancellor, said: “We are thrilled to welcome Jackie to our university. She will inspire our staff, work with our students to help them imagine their future selves and strengthen our role as a civic institution in our wider community.”

Kay, who lives in Manchester, was born to a Scottish mother and Nigerian father in Edinburgh, and was adopted as a baby by Helen and John Kay, growing up in Glasgow. Her first book of poetry, The Adoption Papers, published in 1991, won the Scottish Arts Council Book of the Year and a commendation from the Forward Poetry Prize judges. She was made a Member of the Order of the British Empire for her services to literature in 2006. In 2010 she published Red Dust Road, an account of her search for her birth parents, which won the Scottish Book of the Year award.

She said: “It’s a huge honour to have been chosen to be chancellor of the University of Salford, and I’m very much looking forward to taking up the role, and to being a hands-on chancellor, as well as a ‘shaking hands’ chancellor. As writer in residence, the idea of getting to know each department thoroughly and of finding new and pioneering ways to work across disciplines excites me.”

PHOTOGRAPH: GREG FREEMAN / WRITE OUT LOUD