Sir Richard Hughes Trainor, KBE, FRHistS, FKC, FAcSS (born 31 December 1948), is a retired academic administrator and historian.

[1] Trainor was educated at Calvert Hall College High School in Towson, Maryland, in the United States.

in 1981 at Nuffield College, Oxford, entitled "Authority and social structure in an industrialized area: A study of three Black Country towns, 1840–1890".

[15] Trainor was President of the Economic History Society 2013-2016,[16] and he chaired the Advisory Committee of the Institute of Historical Research 2004-2009.

[18] He is married to Marguerite Dupree, an academic historian of medicine who is Honorary Professor of Social and Medical History at Glasgow University.

[31] Trainor received the Annual Leadership Award of the Council for the Advancement and Support of Education in June 2011 for his role in the College's fundraising (which raised more than £500 million in its 'World Questions/King's Answers' campaign) and for alumni relations.

[37] In June 2013 Exeter College, Oxford announced that Trainor was the preferred candidate to succeed Frances Cairncross as Rector.

The Governing Body is responsible for Exeter's staff, its student population of c.380 undergraduates and c.300 postgraduates, its finances and its buildings.

A key project completed in early 2017 was Exeter's Cohen Quadrangle, on Walton Street in central Oxford, the College's largest single physical expansion in its more than 700-year history.

[40] Another major building project at Exeter was the restoration and renovation of the College's Victorian library designed by Sir George Gilbert Scott.

Between 2016 and 2024 Trainor was also a Pro-Vice-Chancellor without portfolio of Oxford University, chairing professorial appointment panels and presiding at ceremonies when the Vice-Chancellor was not available.

[57][58] Further, the institution's decision to close the Division of Engineering in 2009, was criticised for risking charges of "reckless academic vandalism".

[60] The university's choice of cuts was the subject of a House of Commons Early Day Motion in March 2010: "That this House notes the proposal by the Executive of King's College London as part of its budget review process to abolish the Chair of Palaeography, the only one of its kind in the United Kingdom; further notes the fundamental importance of palaeography to a broad and interdisciplinary scholarly community; considers that without the development of palaeographic skills, millions of documents would be rendered inaccessible, thus depriving the nation of its full historical legacy; and therefore urges King's College London to consider very carefully any proposals in respect to this prestigious and important Chair.

"[61] In January 2012, King's announced the appointment of Dr Julia Crick as Professor of Palaeography and Manuscript Studies in the School of Arts & Humanities.