Sir Howard was born in Derby and was educated at John Port Grammar School in Derbyshire and Atlantic College in South Wales. He obtained his BA and PhD at the University of Essex where he eventually became a Professor of Sociology. He was also a Professor of Sociology and Rural Sociology at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.
Sir Howard has written several books on social change in rural England and eventually became Rural Development Commissioner. In the 1980s he was seconded to the BBC to work on the Domesday Project which celebrated the 900th anniversary of the Domesday Book, using what was then considered to be state-of-the-art information technology. In 1988 he was appointed as Chairman of Economic and Social Research Council which funds research in Social Sciences.
In 1994 he was appointed Vice-Chancellor of the University of Southampton and in 2001 Chief Executive, Higher Education Funding Council for England. Following a short period as Vice-Chancellor at the University of the West of England he was appointed Vice-Chancellor of the University of Liverpool in 2008, before finally retiring in 2015.
Sir Howard is married to Sheila; Lady Newby and Sir Howard have four grown-up children. He is a life-long supporter of Derby County Football Club and has held an equally life-long interest in railway history. Until 2015, he chaired the Board of the National Railway Museum and was a Trustee of the Science Museum Group.
He was for a time a member of the Liverpool LEP Board and the Liverpool Mayoral Development Corporation Board. He is a past chairman of the Daresbury Enterprise Zone Board, the Liverpool City Region Innovation Board and the Liverpool Science Park Board. His tenure in all these roles concluded when he retired from his appointment as Vice-Chancellor of Liverpool University in January 2015.
He was made a CBE in 1995 for services to social science and knighted in 2000 for services to higher education.
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