Speaker: Dr. Joanna Newman
Chief Executive Officer and Secretary General, The Association of Commonwealth Universities

Date: Monday 25th April 2022
Venue: Main Hall
Time: 11.00 AM

About the speaker

Dr Joanna Newman MBE FRSA is Chief Executive and Secretary General of the Association of Commonwealth Universities (ACU) - an international organisation dedicated to building a better world through higher education.

The ACU has more than 500 member universities in over 50 countries. She is the first female Secretary General of the ACU, and in this role also directs the administration of the UK government's three main international scholarship programmes - Chevening, Commonwealth, and Marshall Scholarships - as well as the multilateral Queen Elizabeth Commonwealth Scholarships.
Dr. Newman's career has been in the service of British and international higher education. Before joining the ACU in 2017, she was Vice-Principal (International) at King's College London, where she was instrumental in forging new international research and teaching collaborations. Her previous roles include Director of the UK Higher Education International Unit (now known as Universities UK International), where she led the development of a UK-wide international education strategy; and
Head of Higher Education at the British Library, where she commissioned the Google Generation report, the first study of Generation Y researchers.
She serves on a number of boards, including the United Nations Sustainable Development Solutions Network's Leadership Council, the High-level Advisory Group for Mission 4.7, and as a lay member of the Council of Cardiff University. She is a Senior Research Fellow in History at King's College London. Her most recent publication is Nearly the New World: The British West Indies and the Flight from Nazism, 1933-1945.
In 2014, Dr. Newman was awarded an MBE in recognition of her work in promoting British higher education internationally.