New Heads of Department at Warwick
A number of new academic heads of department and deputy heads of department take up their roles in September. Find out more about these individuals, as well as other heads of department who have started over the course of 2018 or are due to start during the new academic year.
Professor Ema Ushioda
Centre for Applied Linguistics (CAL)
Ema joined Warwick in October 2002. She moved from Trinity College, Dublin, where she obtained her PhD in 1996 and pursued postdoctoral research funded by Atlantic Philanthropies to promote language learner autonomy in Irish secondary schools.
Having worked in language education since 1982, Ema has a longstanding interest in motivational perspectives on learning second or foreign languages, and in their implications for classroom practice. Recent books include International Perspectives on Motivation: Language Learning and Professional Challenges (Palgrave Macmillan, 2013), Teaching and Researching Motivation (Longman, 2011, co-authored by Z. Dörnyei), and Motivation, Language Identity and the L2 Self (Multilingual Matters, 2009, co-edited by Z. Dörnyei). She has also co-edited a special issue of the Modern Language Journal (2017) on ‘Beyond Global English: Motivation to learn languages in a multicultural world’.
Ema has been Director of Graduate Studies and member of CAL’s strategic management group since 2013, and will begin her new role as Head of Department for CAL from September.
Dr Noortje Marres
Centre for Interdisciplinary Methodologies (CIM)
Noortje's work contributes to the interdisciplinary field of Science, Technology and Society (STS) and investigates issues at the intersection of innovation, everyday environments and public life: participation in technological societies; the role of mundane objects and devices in engagement; living experiments; the changing relations between social life and social science in a digital age.
Noortje joined Warwick and CIM in September 2015, having previously held posts at Goldsmiths, University of London, the University of Oxford and the University of Amsterdam. She will begin her new role as Head of Department for CIM from January 2019.
Dr Anne Hollinshead
Centre for Lifelong Learning (CLL)
Anne joined Warwick in September 2017. She moved from the University of Wolverhampton, where she was the Associate Dean in the Faculty of Education, Health & Wellbeing with responsibility for their postgraduate and international portfolios.
Anne's background is in education studies, with particular passion for inclusive practice, inclusive pedagogy, social justice disability and additional needs. Anne's strength is in successfully creating partnerships and brokering collaboration between higher education institutions and the 'real' world. She has extensive experience of developing teaching and consultancy programmes that meet local, national and international development needs. Anne will take up her role as Head of Department for CLL from September 2018, for an interim one-year period.
Professor Zahra Newby
Classics and Ancient History
After studying Classics (Literae Humaniores) at Oxford, Zahra went to the Courtauld Institute of Art, London, to study for a Masters in Ancient Art. She stayed at the Courtauld for her doctorate, focused on Art in the Second Sophistic, and took up her post at Warwick in 2000.
Zahra's research interests lie in art of the Roman empire in its widest cultural contexts, including art in the provinces of the Greek east, the Roman response to Greek culture, ancient funerary art, ancient athletics, festival culture and the relationships between art and text. She has acted as external examiner for Birkbeck College, London; Glasgow University and Royal Holloway, University of London. Zahra takes up her role as Head of Department for Classics from September 2018.
Professor Emma Mason
English and Comparative Literary Studies
Emma works on late eighteenth and early nineteenth-century literature and religion, with a focus on poetry, and is broadly interested in religion and ecology, affect theory, and philosophy and literature. Her book, Christina Rossetti: Poetry, Ecology, Faith, was published in 2018 with Oxford University Press, and she's currently writing Weird Faith in Nineteenth-Century Literature: Theologies at Work with Mark Knight.
Emma will be the Head of Department for English and Comparative Literary Studies from September 2018.
Professor Rebecca Earle
History
Rebecca is a historian of food, and of the cultural history of Spanish America and early modern Europe. She is interested in how ordinary, everyday cultural practices such as eating or dressing, or even using postage stamps, shape how we think about the world. Rebecca's early work was rooted in a very specific part of the world (southern Colombia) - these days she tends to study the movement of ideas and practices across larger geographies.
Rebecca begins her role as Deputy Head of Department in September 2018, before taking up the position of Head of Department from September 2019.
Professor Lorenzo Pericolo
History of Art
After seven years at the Scuola Normale Superiore, Pisa, Lorenzo entered the École Pratique des Hautes Études, Sorbonne, Paris, where he finished his PhD on the French painter Charles Le Brun. He taught the history of early modern art in various universities in France and Canada, and was a 'boursier' at the École Normale Supérieure, Paris; a fellow of the Alexander von Humboldt Stiftung, Humboldt Universität, Berlin; Ailsa Mellon Bruce Senior Fellow, Center for the Advanced Study in the Visual Arts, Washington DC; Scholar in Residence at the Getty Research Institute, Los Angeles (2007-08); the recipient of a three-year grant from the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada (2007-2010); and Robert H. Smith Senior Research Associate at the Center for Advanced Study in the Visual Arts, Washington DC (2010-11).
Lorenzo will be the Head of Department for History of Art from September 2018, for an interim one-year period.
Dr Jonathan Heron
Institute for Advanced Teaching and Learning (IATL)
Jonathan is an interdisciplinary academic with a background in theatre and performance practice, who established the Student Ensemble at the CAPITAL Centre and the Emerge Festival with Warwick Arts Centre. He co-founded the Samuel Beckett Laboratory at Trinity College Dublin and co-convened the Performance-as-Research Working Group (IFTR, 2013-16).
Jonathan regularly publishes within theatre studies, critical pedagogy and medical humanities. He takes up the role of Head of Department for IATL from August 2018.
Dr Juanita Elias
Politics and International Studies (PAIS)
Juanita takes up the role of Head of Department for PAIS from August 2018, after joining in 2014 from Griffith University, Australia, where she held an Australian Research Council Future Fellowship. Previously, she was employed as a senior Lecturer in International Politics at the University of Adelaide, as a Lecturer in International Relations at the University of Manchester, and as a Research Associate at the ESRC Centre for Business Relationships Accountability Sustainability and Society.
Juanita has published her work in journals such as Journal of Contemporary Asia, Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies, International Feminist Journal of Politics and The Pacific Review. She is the author of Fashioning Inequality: The Multinational Firm and Gendered Employment in a Globalising World (Ashgate 2004) and co-author of the textbook International Relations: The Basics (2007).
Find out more about Juanita and her work
Learn more about Warwick's Politics and International Studies department
Professor Barbel Finkenstadt
Statistics
Barbel's area of research is broadly at the interface between life sciences and statistics, where she is interested in developing scientific models alongside Bayesian statistical methodologies that allow us to infer these from (increasingly large) spatio-temporal and/or longitudinal time series data.
Barbel begins her role as Head of Department for Statistics from September 2018, for an interim one-year period.
Professor Ranko Lazic
Computer Science
Ranko's research interests are in theoretical computer science, particularly logic and algorithms. Applications of his work include formal verification for cyber security, but he also researches questions about the fundamental limits of what logical formalisms can be efficiently analysed by computers. He is currently a Leverhulme Research Fellow, working on the project 'Petri net reachability conjecture'.
Ranko started as Head of Department for Computer Science in January this year, and is expected to continue in the role until September 2021.
Professor Virinder Kalra
Sociology
Virinder's three main areas of research are: racism and ethnicity in relation to popular culture and policy; theoretical engagements with diaspora and postcolonialism; and popular culture in South Asia. He has made significant and consistent impact in these arenas, influencing and shaping academic and public debate.
Virinder's most recent publication, Poetic Politics From Ghadar to the Indian Workers Association, in Routledge Handbook of the Indian Diaspora, was published in 2017. He took on the role of Head of Department for Sociology in April 2018.
Professor John Greenlees
Mathematics
John was awarded his PhD by the University of Cambridge (1985). After a year as a Senior Rouse Ball Student at Trinity College, he spent 1986-89 at the National University of Singapore and 1989-90 at the University of Chicago. He moved to Sheffield in 1990, being awarded a Personal Chair in 1995, and has held visiting positions at the University of Chicago and the Isaac Newton Institute. He was Research Professor at MSRI (Berkeley) in 2014, and Visiting Researcher in CRM (Barcelona) and HIM (Bonn) in 2015.
John has been Vice President of the London Mathematical Society since 2009, was a member of the REF2014 Mathematical Sciences Subpanel, and is an editor of five journals and a book series. He took on the role of Head of Department for Mathematics in April 2018.
What does a head of department do?
The role of head of department at Warwick is critical to the University’s success, where individuals provide academic leadership for all departmental activities.
They set the strategic direction for the department, and have responsibility for planning and resourcing academic and support functions, for ensuring an excellent environment for students, and for ensuring a positive environment in which colleagues can perform strongly and promote both research and teaching excellence.
Reporting to the Provost Christine Ennew, they work collaboratively with Faculty Chairs and members of the University Executive Board, as well as the wider University community.
They represent the department to public and private audiences - nationally and internationally, and develop networks to promote the work of the department.
These roles are typically appointed on a fixed term basis of three years, with the majority of appointments being made from existing faculty.