Richard Balkwill

Richard Balkwill graduated from Christ Church, Oxford, in 1968 with a degree in modern languages. His editorial career as an educational publisher included spells at Ginn, Nelson, and from 1977 at Macmillan, where he was publishing director of their education division. He was also later managing director of the Reed Elsevier division now known as Heinemann Library, part of Harcourt Education (now Pearson Education).

In 1992 he set up COPYTRAIN, an independent consultancy offering training and copyright advice to companies and individuals. Working both independently and with the Publishing Training Centre, he has devised and run editorial, project management, financial, and copyright training courses in over 12 countries, as well as creating many in-house programmes for individual publishers. One of his most popular training sessions outlines the basics of copyright, contracts and rights, and stresses the importance of compliance in the digital age. Another focuses on making finance clear to non-financial managers and the impact all publishing staff can have on controlling costs and improving profitability.

Richard has for four years successfully led and taught the publishing law module at City University, part of the MA course in publishing in their school of journalism. He was until 2010 one of the external examiners on a similar publishing course at the London College of Communication, part of the University of the Arts. With a Certificate in Teaching in Higher Education, and an NVQ in Assessment, he has a good command of French and is reasonably fluent in Spanish.

At Oxford Brookes University, Richard was appointed senior lecturer in 1998, and taught on both the BA and MA publishing courses. This was a part-time post he held until 2002. He now acts as an associate consultant in the Oxford International Centre for Publishing Studies. In this capacity, he has since 2000 been course director of the highly successful STM Master Class. This course is held annually in Oxford (and since June 2008 in the USA), and is a joint enterprise between Oxford Brookes University and the International Association of Scientific, Technical and Medical publishers.

Richard acted as consultant to the Publishers Licensing Society from 1993 to 2007. For five months in 2003-4 he was its acting chief executive. He is joint author of the World Intellectual Property Organization's new guide on the Management of Intellectual Property in the Book Publishing Industry, and has partaken in several copyright and IP workshops run by WIPO in Jamaica, Trinidad, India, Sudan and Ghana. He has recently undertaken training and consultancy in copyright for the publications staff at UNESCO in Paris and Bangkok.

The main focus of Richard's current work is on advice and consultancy to organisations and institutions working out policies and protocols for the management of rights in a digital environment, including the drafting of new contracts. He is much in demand as speaker, writer and trainer, and Kogan Page have recently published his latest full-length work, The Professionals' Guide to Publishing, which he co-authored with Professor Gill Davies.

Richard is married with one daughter, and lives in Oxfordshire. Author of twelve other books on subjects as diverse as copyright and railways, his main interests include music (especially choral singing), cookery and wine, and reading and writing.