Eric Cross

Professor Eric Cross - Project Director

Professor Eric Cross is Dean of Cultural Affairs at Newcastle University – a role that involves fostering internal cross-disciplinary activities and links between the University and the region, especially relating to strategic partnerships such as those around the Great North Museum.  He is Director of the Newcastle Institute for Creative Arts Practice and has been closely involved in the establishment of the University’s new Confucius Institute. His background is as a musician, with research interests in Italian baroque opera, and he also conducts the Newcastle Bach Choir and co-founded the Newcastle Early Music Festival.

He has been PI for three other recent research projects: Ageing Creatively, a pilot study, funded by the MRC through the Lifelong Health and Wellbeing programme, to explore the relation between creative arts interventions and wellbeing in later life; The Cutting Edge, a JISC-funded project bringing together information from several different archaeological and world cultures museum collections; and Northumbrian Exchanges, an AHRC Knowledge Exchange project focusing on the contribution of visual arts practice and music to the rural cultural economy.