Background
He is the son of Louis Crossick and Rebecca Naomi (née Backen).
He is the son of Louis Crossick and Rebecca Naomi (née Backen).
He was educated at The Haberdashers" Aske"s Boys" School, now an independent school in Elstree in Hertfordshire but at that time a direct grant school, followed by Gonville and Caius College at the University of Cambridge, and was awarded a Bachelor in History in 1967. He did doctoral research at Birkbeck College of London University and was awarded Doctor of Philosophy History in 1976.
He was formerly Vice-Chancellor of London University from 2010-2012. According to The Times, he said he would leave the part-time role in July 2012 because the workload was more onerous than he anticipated when deliberately scaling down from a full-time to a part-time position. The part-time role had an annual salary of £135,000.
He was a Research Fellow in history at Emmanuel College, Cambridge from 1970-1973.
He then became a Lecturer in Social History at the University of Hull from 1973-1978. In 1979 he joined the University of Essex becoming a Reader and Professor of History from 1991–2002 and becoming Pro-Vice-Chancellor from 1997–2002.
He was Chief Executive of the Arts and Humanities Research Board from 2002-2005 and Warden of Goldsmiths College, (now Goldsmiths, University of London) from 2005-2010. He was Vice-Chancellor of the University of London from 2010-2012.
He has held a number of other positions including Visiting Professor to the University of Lyon from 1990-1991.
In 2014 he became Chair of the Crafts Council. He was previously a Trustee of the National Maritime Museum, at Greenwich.
He has been a member of the Business and Community Strategy Committee, and later Enterprise and Skills Strategy Committee of the Higher Education Funding Council for England (HEFCE) from 2005-2012. He has been a Board member of Universities United Kingdom (UUK) from 2006-2012 and is Director of the Arts and Humanities Research Council"s Cultural Value Project. Amongst other positions he is a Council Member of the Courtauld Institute of Art in London, a Trustee of the Horniman Museum in South London and Chair of the Board of Trinity Long Room Hub at Trinity College Dublin.