PT
ENIt was with great sadness that we learned of the passing of our esteemed colleague, Rosemary Deem, who had also served, since 2024, as an external adviser to our Centre. Over the years, she developed close professional and personal relationships with our researchers.
Rosemary Deem pursued a distinguished academic career focused on higher education policy, leadership, governance and management in higher education institutions, as well as doctoral education, changing conceptions of the purposes and roles of universities, public service organisations, leadership and change agency, inequalities in educational settings, and notions of the public good in higher education. Her research drew on organisational theory, feminist theory, policy analysis and comparative social science.
Her contribution as an academic was wide-ranging and highly regarded. She served as a member of three UK Research Assessment Exercise Sub-Panels for Education, in 1996, 2001 and 2008. In 2006, she became an Academician of the Academy of Social Sciences and, in 2009, an Honorary Fellow of the Society for Research into Higher Education. In 2013, she was appointed OBE (Officer of the Order of the British Empire) in the Queen’s Birthday Honours List, and in 2014 she was awarded an Honorary DLitt by the University of Leicester.
From 2013, she served as co-editor of the journal Higher Education, published by Springer, and was a member of the Peer Review College of the European Science Foundation. She also served as co-convenor of the Higher Education Network of the European Educational Research Association. Between 2015 and 2018, she was the first woman to chair the UK Council for Graduate Education. She also served on the Editorial Boards of Higher Education Quarterly and Studies in Higher Education.
May she rest in peace.
Centre for Research and Higher Education Policies
