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Prof Elan Closs Stephens CBE
Elan Closs Stephens is Professor of Communications & Creative Industries in Aberystwyth University's Department of Theatre Film & Television where she also acts as Director of Enterprise and Knowledge Transfer. She has been a member of the University since 1975. The Department is one of the largest in the UK and ranked as world-class and of international significance in its research output. She is currently approaching partial retirement, but will remain as Research Professor and consultant on Knowledge Transfer.
Elan has a professional interest in the arts, broadcasting and creative industries and wide-ranging experience of the public institutions that provide grant aid for the arts and media. In 1998, Elan became the Chair of the Welsh national broadcaster S4C (Welsh Fourth Channel Authority), a DCMS appointment that was renewed for a second term. In 2006, she chaired the Stephens Report on the financing and structure of the arts in Wales for the Welsh Assembly Government, a report that has since been implemented fully. She is a Board member of several arts organisations including Music Theatre Wales - an associate company of the Royal Opera House, the Centre for Performance Research and Arts & Business.
She was a Governor of the British Film Institute ("bfi") until 2007 and chair of its Audit and Governance committee during the recent major refurbishment of the National Film Theatre. She is currently a member of the Board of the Film Agency for Wales and a non-executive director of the Imax, Waterloo on behalf of the bfi. She was a member of the Board of the British Council until 2008 and a member of its Remuneration committee. She continues to chair the Wales advisory committee of the Council.
In January 2008, she was appointed a non-executive Director of the Civil Service Strategic Delivery and Performance Board of the Welsh Assembly Government. In July 2008, she took over the chair of Corporate Governance of the Assembly Government's £16bn spend and is currently restructuring and aligning the Departmental corporate governance committees to move towards risk analysis. Elan was born in Talysarn, in the quarrying valley of Nantlle, Gwynedd; educated at Ysgol Dyffryn Nantlle; and was an Open Scholar at Somerville College, Oxford where she read English Language and Literature.
In 1972, she married Dr Roy Stephens who died in 1989. Elan has two grown-up children: one a Lecturer in the Geography Department of Durham University; and a son who has set up a successful interactive company in Cardiff. Elan received a CBE in the Queen's Birthday Honours 2001 for services to broadcasting and the Welsh language and is a member of the Royal Society of Arts. Her hobbies are cooking for friends (and eating out), theatre, film, television, literature, and new media, and walking Jack, the black Labrador.
