The Macaulay Institute, Aberdeen has appointed Professor Richard Aspinall as its new Chief Executive. Professor Aspinall will take over as Chief Executive of the Institute – where he previously worked between 1987 and 1997 on a wide variety of land use topics – on 18 September 2006. He is returning to the Macaulay after nine years in the USA, where he has been Professor and Chair of the School of Geographical Sciences at the Arizona State University since 2004.