5th International Conference on Professional Doctorates

Keynote Speakers

• Professor Tim Blackman

  Vice-Chancellor, Middlesex University

  • Professional doctorates and the 21st century university

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  Professor Tim Blackman joined Middlesex University as Vice-Chancellor in July 2015, moving from The Open University where he was Acting Vice-Chancellor and Pro Vice-Chancellor for Research, Scholarship and Quality. Tim graduated from Durham University, where he also completed his PhD, returning there after professorial appointments at Teesside and Oxford Brookes Universities. His last position at Durham was Dean of the University’s campus in Stockton, a post he left in 2011 to join the OU. He is a Fellow of the Academy of Social Sciences and served on the Social Work and Social Policy panel for REF 2014. Tim also worked in local government for several years and has held various advisory and consulting roles in urban renewal, health and wellbeing, and research methods, which have been his main teaching and research areas.

• Dr Wilhelm Krull

  Secretary General of the Volkswagen Foundation, Germany

  • Confined to the Formation of Scholars? The changing role of doctoral training in a knowledge-based society

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  Since 1996, Dr. Wilhelm Krull has been running the Volkswagen Foundation – following his studies in German, philosophy, education and politics, an appointment as a DAAD lecturer at the University of Oxford, and leading positions at the Wissenschaftsrat (German Science Council) and at the headquarters of the Max-Planck-Gesellschaft (Max Planck Society). Besides his professional activities in science policy as well as in the promotion and funding of research, he was and still is a member of numerous national, foreign and international committees.

  At present he is the Chairman of the Board of the Foundation Georg-August-Universität Göttingen, a member of the Scientific Advisory Commission of the State of Lower Saxony and of the Board of Regents of the Max Planck Institute for Biophysical Chemistry in Göttingen, the Max Planck Institute for Psychiatry in Munich, the Max Planck Institute for Gravitational Physics in Potsdam and Hanover, as well as further Max Planck Institutes in Potsdam and Radolfzell.

  In 2004/05, he was member of a commission of experts for the evaluation of the Science Foundation Ireland. In 2005, he chaired the founding committee for the new Academy of the Sciences in Hamburg. Together with a commission of leading personalities in the German higher education system, and closely connected with the German Initiative on Excellence to be launched in the same year he formulated a framework for a future-oriented higher education and research system in Germany. Since then Dr. Krull has been chairing several boards and committees in Germany and abroad, among them the Board of the Austrian Science Fund (FWF) in 2010-12, the Evaluation Panel for the Danish National Research Foundation (DNRF) in 2013, and currently the Panel for the Evaluation of the Danish Independent Research Council (DFF). Since 2011 he has been a member of the International Advisory Board of the University of Helsinki, and since 2012 a member of the Research, Innovation, and Enterprise Council (RIEC) of the Prime Minister of Singapore. In 2015, he was appointed a member of the Senior Advisory Group of the European Academies Science Advisory Council (EASAC).

  Wilhelm Krull devotes himself to the furtherance of foundations on the national and international level. From 2003 to 2005, he was Chairman of the Hague Club, an association of some 25 major European Foundations and from 2006 to 2008 he chaired the Governing Council of the European Foundation Centre. From 2008 to 2014, Wilhelm Krull was Chairman of the Bundesverband Deutscher Stiftungen (Association of German Foundations).

  In the recent past, Dr. Krull received the following distinctions: In 2001, he was honored with the Leibniz-Medal of the Academy of Sciences and Literature Mainz, in 2007, he received the Swedish Order of the Polar Star, in 2009, he was appointed Honorary Senator of the University of Konstanz, and in 2010, he received the State Award of Lower Saxony. In June 2012, Dr. Krull was awarded an honorary professorship by the Faculty of Arts & Sciences at Washington University, St. Louis.

• Professor David Imig

  Chairperson of the Board of Directors for the Carnegie Project on the Education Doctorate and Professor of Practice, University of Maryland, USA

  • Innovation and Change in Graduate Education: Using an Outside-In Strategy to Transform the Professional Doctorate in Education in the US

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  David Imig is a Professor of Practice in the College of Education at the University of Maryland. He teaches courses in teacher education policy and practice, school and teacher leadership at the university located between Baltimore and Washington, DC. A founder of the Carnegie Project on Education Doctorate (CPED), a national organization of some 85 graduate schools of education, he is co-leading an effort at Maryland to transform doctoral education to focus on ​“expectations, outcomes and achievements” of four professional cohorts of EdD students in large metropolitan school districts in areas surrounding the campus. Prior to coming to College Park in 2006, Imig was the president and chief executive officer for the Washington, DC-based American Association of Colleges for Teacher Education for twenty-five years. The organization, which has a membership base of more than 850 colleges and schools of education, represents the leaders and faculty of colleges and schools of education in the US. Imig and his colleagues directed numerous initiatives directed at enhancing the preparation and professional development of school personnel. Imig has also served as chair of the NCATE executive committee, the National Policy Board for Educational Administration and the Forum for Education Organization Leaders, as well as the National Society for the Study of Education and conducted program reviews and served on numerous college and university advisory committees in the US and abroad. He holds a life-long service award from the UK-based Universities’ Council for the Education of Teachers (UCET).