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Professor Diane Houston appointed Dean of Kent's new Graduate School

The University is pleased to announce the appointment of Professor Diane Houston to be Dean of Kent's planned new Graduate School. Professor Houston will take up her appointment from 1st July 2008.

The plan for a Graduate School is designed to build on Kent's success in attracting high quality students to its postgraduate programmes. Each year nearly one in five of Kent's student registrations is a graduate student (18.6% in 2007-08). Currently we have 1460 students studying for a postgraduate taught award and 612 students preparing for research degrees. Kent has an excellent record in winning studentship support from the research councils and last year announced the creation of its own 90 fully-funded research studentships at a cost of nearly £1.5m a year. These studentships are available to both home and overseas applicants.

August 2008 will see the completion of the new Virginia Woolf Graduate College. This attractive building at the heart of the Kent University campus will offer ensuite accommodation for 544 graduate students together with a 500 seater lecture theatre and state of the art seminar rooms. Each year 36% of new graduate students come from overseas, the remainder from the UK and EU countries.

The new Dean and Graduate School will build on these successes to offer postgraduates at Kent a distinct graduate experience both intellectually and socially. It is increasingly important that students receive not only the best levels of support from within their chosen subjects, but that they develop knowledge and skills across disciplines. An interdisciplinary experience is one of the key aims of the Graduate School.

Professor Diane Houston is a social psychologist. She has published widely, particularly on culture and cognition, the psychological dimensions of social diversity and on psychological perspectives on work, employment and parenthood. She is Chair of the Social Psychology Section of the British Psychological Society (BPS) and member of the Academy of Social Sciences. In 2003-7 she worked as an advisor to the Ministers for Women and Equality (Patricia Hewitt, Jacqui Smith, Tessa Jowell and Megg Munn) in the Department of Trade and Industry.

Contact: mediaoffice@kent.ac.uk

Story published at 9:48am 25 March 2008