Meet Our Honorary Life Members

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 has supervised and examined many doctoral students in the fields of Education, Sociology, Management and Gender Studies. 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.

She is still research active and gave a plenary lecture on Doctoral Diversity to the Emerging Researchers Network at the European Conference on Educational Research in Glasgow in August 2023.

Over her career Pam has woven together her interest in the logic of science, a fascination with the human mind, an enthusiasm for adult education, and a love of evocative language. Having previously been an FE lecturer in A Level Chemistry, Biology, Environmental Science and Psychology, these perspectives were embedded in her ESRC-funded Surrey doctorate, exploring the use of figurative language to convey abstract meaning in science education. 

As a chartered constructivist psychologist, she was appointed to contribute to, and eventually lead, a PGCEA (mainly for healthcare and community support professionals) and a distance MA (Teaching and Learning in HE). Her work at Surrey also encompassed academic staff development, frequently abroad for the British Council, and consultancy with the Royal Pharmaceutical Society to develop their distance learning materials and professional registration examination, resulting in Honorary Membership of the Society. Her passion for improving doctoral education had been ignited and she established a multidisciplinary doctoral research methods programme and cross-institutional supervisor training.

Next came a move to the University of Reading to support the development of health and community care staff in engaging with research to obtain doctorates, publish and obtain funding to supervise their own doctoral researchers. In the 1990s she began contributing to and serving on several national and international executive committees, including the UKCGE, ISATT, Vitae, RIN, QAA, the European Personal Construct Association and the SRHE Postgraduate Interest Network. In the 2000s she established and ran a Graduate School, initially for the Social Sciences and Humanities, eventually encompassing all disciplines, and helped found a School of Pharmacy in which she led the Centre for Postgraduate and Professional Education and Training.

As well as publishing widely and providing workshops worldwide for supervisors and examiners, she herself has supervised to successful completion 60+ doctorates and examined over 200. Consequently, her retirement is filled with national and international consultancies on doctoral education, writing articles and books, providing presentations and workshops, editing and contributing to two book series devoted to Higher Education, predominantly Postgraduate Education, for Sage and for Brill, and being the executive editor of an international research methods online programme.

Douglas was Professor of Physics at Durham University where he worked for 31 years before retiring in 2023. He held the posts of Deputy Dean of Science (2002–2005) and Dean of Graduate School (2005–2010). As Dean, he introduced a new code of supervision for research degrees and set up a wide-ranging programme of research skills training. This was recognised by the 2009 THE Award for Outstanding Support for Early Career Researchers. Douglas also provided strategic leadership leading to a 50 per cent growth in the number of doctoral candidates at Durham. 

Douglas then became Director of a Multidisciplinary Centre for Doctoral Training in Energy which he led for ten years. Douglas pioneered new approaches for supporting interdisciplinary PhD projects and co-published research on this with Margaret Kiley from Australian National University. More recently, Douglas was the Director of Durham’s Global Challenges Centre for Doctoral Training with an interdisciplinary cohort of 24 international students from developing countries, each working on a doctoral project aligned with one of the UN Sustainable Development Goals. This was highlighted by the EUA-CDE as an example of best practice of sustainability in doctoral education in Europe. 

Douglas began attending UKCGE meetings in 2003 and was elected as a Trustee of UKCGE in 2011 being re-elected for a further two terms. He held the posts of Honorary Treasurer, Vice-Chair and Chair. Douglas, working with Gill Houston, initiated the highly successful ICDDET conference series with the first conference in Edinburgh in 2013. This is now recognised as a major global conference on doctoral education. During the global Covid-19 pandemic, Douglas and Gill produced the UKCGE guidance on the Impact on Assessments of Research Degrees. Douglas is a Fellow of the Institute of Physics, a Fellow of the Energy Institute, and a Senior Fellow of the Higher Education Academy. 

Dr Gillian Houston is a long standing member of the UK Council for Graduate Education’s governing body, latterly as chair and vice-chair, completing her term of office in July 2021. 

Gill has wide-ranging experience of higher education in the UK and internationally. Latterly she has focused on the assessment of students and postgraduate education, particularly doctorates. 

Having completed her own PhD in 2018, she has recent experience of doctoral supervision from the candidate perspective. Gill continues to publish on the topic of doctoral education and assessment, most recently:

- Houston, G., Lovat, T., Lunt, I., Holbrook, A., & Dally, K. (2023). The viva in doctoral examination: A Habermasian dialogic occasion. In D. Rayson (Ed.), Education, religion, and ethics – A scholarly collection. Springer.

- Houston G (2022) The Role of Supervisors in Preparing Doctoral Researchers for the Final Examination. In M‑L Österlind, P Denicolo and B‑M Apelgren (Eds), Doctoral Education as if People Matter: Critical issues for the future. Leiden, Brill.

- Houston, G (2021) Doctoral examiners’ judgements: do examiners agree on doctoral attributes and how important are professional and personal characteristics? In: A Lee and R Bongaardt (eds.) The Future of Doctoral Research: challenges and opportunities. London: Routledge.

- Houston, G (2019) A Study of the PhD examination: process, attributes and outcomes. DPhil, Oxford University [Online] Available here »

- Clarke, G and Lunt, I (2014) The concept of ​‘originality’ in the PhD: how is it interpreted by examiners? Assessment and Evaluation in Higher Education, 39: 7, 803–820.

- Clarke, G and Lunt, I (2014) International Comparisons in postgraduate education: quality, access and employment outcomes. Higher Education Funding Council for England. Available here »

Stan Taylor has worked in higher education for half a century. He began his career in 1973 at Warwick University where he researched and taught for two decades. Subsequently he moved into roles in academic and researcher development at Warwick and then at the Universities of Newcastle upon Tyne and Durham, where he is currently an Honorary Professor in the School of Education.

He has a long standing interest in doctoral supervision, in particular engaging with supervisors to enhance their practice. He has facilitated workshops with supervisors in over 50 institutions in the UK and many overseas.

In 2016, he was co-opted to the Executive Committee of the UKCGE to oversee the creation of the Research Supervisors’ Network of which he is currently the chair. In 2018–2019, he authored the Good Supervisory Practice Framework on behalf of the UKCGE and led on the development of the Supervisor Recognition programme which was introduced in 2020.

He has also contributed to scholarship in the field, including co-authoring A Handbook for Doctoral Supervisors (Routledge 2018, 2^nd Ed.) and co-editing The Making of Doctoral Supervisors (Routledge 2021), Doctoral Examination: Exploring Practice Across the Globe (Routledge 2022) and a special journal issue on The Changing Landscape of Doctoral Education (Innovations in Education and Teaching International 60(5) 2023). 

He has authored a comprehensive bibliography on research supervision for the Council and is currently working with Margaret Kiley of the Australian National University on a third edition of A Handbook for Doctoral Supervisors.

Professor Burgess, known to all as Bob, was a champion of postgraduate education in the UK.

Bob, a sociologist, received his BA from the University of Durham in 1971 and his PhD from the University of Warwick in 1981. Following his PhD, Bob remained at Warwick as a sociology lecturer, being appointed Professor in 1987 and Senior Pro Vice-Chancellor in 1995. In 1999, Bob was appointed Vice-Chancellor of the University of Leicester until his retirement in 2014.

It was while he was at the University of Warwick, in 1994, that Bob founded the UK Council for Graduate Education. Observing that the postgraduate education sector lacked a representative organisation, the Council created a place where members could share knowledge, emerging practice and experience for the benefit of everyone in the sector. We are proud to continue this work.