areas. These were later edited by Jonathan Bate FBA and published in 2010 as The Public Value of the Humanities. While Chief Executive of the AHRC (2005-2009), Esler chaired the Research Councils UK Knowledge Transfer and Impact project that formulated an approach to impact that was then applied to Research Council grants. Impact was also later adopted, after some development, by the Higher Education Funding Council for England. Esler also brokered a collaborative agreement between all seven UK Research Councils and the Research Funding Agency of the State of São Paulo in Brazil ("FAPESP"). This agreement was signed by him on behalf of the Research Councils and by the President of FAPESP on 15 September 2009. This agreement was renewed for a further three years in September 2012 On 1 October 2010 Professor Esler became Principal and Professor of Biblical Interpretation at St Mary's University College, Twickenham. In 2012 St Mary’s was the subject of a QAA report into a degree programme in Clinical Hypnosis provided with a partner institution, a programme that Esler and the Senior Management later closed. In the same year a number of other issues related to the University College were widely reported in the press: opposition to the decision to merge two academic schools; the unpopularity of the suspension of the head of one of those schools; protests against the merger and senior management by some theological and other students at the University College and at the Catholic Bishops Conference of England and Wales; the legal proceedings preparatory to commencement of a defamation suit brought by Esler and two other members of staff against the editor of a Catholic news site, Josephine Siedleka (one of the three Catholic Women of the Year in 2012), proceedings from which Esler later withdrew; a vote of no confidence in Esler by the local branch of the Universities and Colleges Union (UCU). From 2009 to 2015 Esler was one of fifteen members of the Council of the Society of Biblical Literature (SBL), one of the oldest learned societies in the US, with members from the US and other countries. On 22 January 2013 Esler announced that he would step down as Principal of St Mary's on 31 March 2013. On 1 September 2013 Esler was appointed Portland Chair in New Testament Studies at the University of Gloucestershire in Cheltenham, England. Esler's book, Babatha's Orchard: The Yadin Papyri and An