Rosemary Deem - Biography#

Rosemary Deem is Emeritus Professor of HE Management at Royal Holloway (University of London), where she was also Dean of History/​Social Science (2009–11); Vice-Principal, Education (2011–17); Vice-Principal for Teaching Innovation & Equality/​Diversity (2017–19), and Doctoral School Dean (2014–19).

She previously worked at Bristol University’s Faculty of Social Sciences & Law where she led the UK Education Subject Centre for several years, followed by becoming Postgraduate Dean (2004–6) and then Faculty Research Director (2007–2009). Before Bristol, Rosemary worked at Lancaster University where she was Head of Educational Research (1992–4), Dean of Social Sciences (1994–1997) and University Graduate School Founder/​Director (1998–2000). She spent eleven years before that at the Open University before leaving for her first Professorship at Lancaster.

She has been a Fellow, UK Academy of Social Sciences, since 2006. She is a Co-editor of Higher Education (Springer) since 2013- present. She was appointed OBE for services to HE & Social Science in Queen’s Birthday Honours list in 2013 and was awarded an honorary DLitt for her contribution to the sociology of higher education by Leicester University in summer 2014.

From 2015–2018 she was the first woman to Chair the UK Council for Graduate Education. She is currently Chair of Trustees for the Sociological Review Foundation; this organisation runs events as well as producing digital and other resources for those studying sociology at A level and first degree/​Masters level as well as early career doctoral candidates and postdocs.

Rosemary Deem has supervised and examined many doctoral students in the fields of Education, Sociology, Management and Gender Studies, serving on nearly 100 doctoral committees. Her research interests include leadership, management and governance in higher education (including extensive work on new managerialism), equality in educational settings, universities as organisations and more recently, doctoral education.

Besides active scholarship, research training and management, she has been active in research evaluations and serving on funding and evaluation committees in various European countries. Recently she worked as a Consultant on an EEA funded project for the gender research centre CIEG at Lisbon University Ajuda Campus (ISCSP), on Gender and Higher Education 2020-2023.