Richard Charkin is Executive Director of Bloomsbury Publishing Plc. He is responsible for Bloomsbury’s adult publishing activities in UK, USA, Australia and Germany (through Berlin Verlag). He is also a non-executive director of the Institute of Physics Publishing. He is Chairman of the International Advisory Board of Bloomsbury Qatar Foundation Journals in Doha. He is a member of the Institute of English Studies Advisory Board; Chairman of the Centre for Manuscript Studies at the University of London; a member of the UK’s Literary Heritage Group; a Trustee and former Chairman of Common Purpose International; Council member and former President of the Publishers Association; UK representative to the Federation of European Publishers and the International Publishers Association; and Visiting Professor at the University of the Arts London. He was formerly Chair of the Trustees of the Whitechapel Art Gallery; Chair of the Society of Bookmen; Chairman of xrefer.com; a director of the Centre for Creative Business at the London Business School; Adviser to World Health Organisation, Copenhagen; and non-executive director of Melbourne University Publishing.
He has held senior positions at Macmillan (CEO worldwide including being Chairman of Nature Publishing Group and Macmillan India), part of Verlagsgruppe Georg von Holtzbrinck (Director) ; Current Science Group (CEO); Reed Elsevier (CEO Reed International Books); and Oxford University Press (Managing Director Academic and General Divisions); Pergamon Press (Senior Publishing Manager, Life Sciences.
He has an MA in Natural Sciences from Trinity College, Cambridge; was a Supernumerary Fellow of Green College, Oxford; and attended the Advanced Management Program at the Harvard Business School.