Sandra Kemp

Sandra Kemp (born 10 March 1957) is an academic and curator with a background in English literature. She is a Research Associate at IMAGES&CO,[1] and has held leadership roles in the university and cultural sectors, most recently as Head of College, London College of Communication (LCC) and Director of Research, Royal College of Art (RCA). She curated the Wellcome Trust-sponsored exhibition Future Face: Image, Identity, Innovation at the Science Museum, with a related programme at the National Portrait Gallery, a film festival and a debate on BBC Radio Five Live. She has also published and given public lectures in the fields of fiction, literary theory and cultural studies.[2]

Sandra Kemp
Professor Sandra Kemp, 2010
Born (1957-03-10) 10 March 1957
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NationalityBritish
OccupationAcademic, curator

Career

She has a Bachelor of Arts and DPhil from the University of Oxford. In her early career, she held academic posts in the English Literature departments of UK universities Southampton, Edinburgh, Glasgow, Westminster and had sabbaticals at Sapienza, Brown and Columbia.[2]

In 2001, she moved to a management role, spending eight years as Director of Research at the Royal College of Art, leading the College to two successful RAEs.[3] The 2007 Quality Assurance Agency (QAA) Institution Report cited as good practice the leadership, management and currency of research including research student and supervisor training.[4] In the same year, Research Fortnight noted a 60% increase in the success rate of RCA applications to research councils.[5][6]

From 2008 to 2012, she was Head of College of the London College of Communication, where she led a major restructure of the college's academic portfolio and of its technical, administrative and financial operations.[7]

She has also worked in the cultural sector, holding research fellowships at the National Portrait Gallery, Smithsonian Institution and the National Portrait Gallery, London, and most recently at the Victoria and Albert Museum (V&A). She has been on the advisory and management boards of the British Museum Centre for Visual and Material Culture, and the research centres at the V&A and Natural History Museum.[2]

She has been a panel member of the Higher Education Funding Council for England (HEFCE) Research Assessment Exercise,[8] and the Arts and Humanities Research Council’s Visual Arts and Media Panel.[2]

She has appeared on television in the UK and abroad, including Omnibus and London Tonight, and broadcasts regularly, most recently on the BBC's Night Waves[9] and Woman's Hour[10] and on Chicago Public Radio's Odyssey.[11]

Exhibitions

She has curated a number of exhibitions. The subject of the human face formed the theme of her fellowships at the Smithsonian Institution and the National Portrait Gallery, London, and of the exhibition Future Face: Image, Identity, Innovation, funded by the Wellcome trust at the Science Museum and later in Taiwan and China.[12] It investigated the way images of the face as a barcode of identity have been affected by advances in science and technology,[13] and was accompanied by a special issue of New Scientist,[14] reviewed in Nature[15] and the BMJ[16] and was the subject of radio and television programmes. She is on the curatorial team working on the exhibition The Future - A History at the V&A.[17]

Publications

She has published books, articles and critical editions of modernist fiction, including Virginia Woolf, Henry James, Rudyard Kipling, Wilkie Collins, Charlotte Brontë and the Oxford Companion to Edwardian Fiction (with David Trotter and Charlotte Mitchell). She has also published on feminism and literary theory, including an Oxford Reader with Judith Squires.[18]

Controversy

From 2008 to 2012 at LCC, she led a complete restructuring of the academic portfolio, and also undertook a financial review to eliminate a deficit of £1.4 million in addition to sector-wide substantial reductions in public funding.[19] University proposals to close 16 courses in 2009 and a further 16 in 2012, leading to a significant number of redundant posts, were met with consistent opposition from the trade unions and calls for her resignation.[20][21] A QAA investigation found that the university procedures the College followed were inadequate and that this had a detrimental impact on the courses being closed, though there was no ongoing risk to academic standards and quality.[22] The university continued the restructuring, including further staff redundancies in the reorganisation of technical and administrative services.[23] Widespread media coverage included publication of a leaked resignation letter of LCC Head of Communication Gillian Radcliffe criticising Kemp's management style and practices, on which the university refused to comment, noting the availability of its own grievance and internal procedures.[24][25][26]

In March 2012, the Rector Nigel Carrington announced in an all-staff email published by the Times Higher Education that she had resigned due to "sustained media coverage" making her position untenable. He stated that she had "successfully completed" the first stage of restructuring, "balanced the budgets and in 2011 achieved a significant increase in the College's National Student Survey scores."[27]

References
  1. "Who we are" Archived 2013-07-08 at the Wayback Machine IMAGES&CO website, accessed 30 June 2013
  2. Kunst und Forschung: Konnen Kunstler Forscher sein? (Austria, Springer-Verlag/Wein, 2011), ed Janet Ritterman et al, 254. ISBN 978-3-7091-0752-2; also available at http://www.wissenschaftsrat.ac.at/news/Kemp_Lebenslauf.pdf
  3. "RCA Tops Research Funding Application Ranking" RCA website, accessed 11 January 2012
  4. QAA Institution Report QAA website, accessed 22 July 2012
  5. "Fewer, better proposals: 2007's key to success", Research Fortnight (12 Sept 2007), issue 286, pp. 1; 16
  6. "Research elite spin funding into gold" Times Higher Education 20 July 2007
  7. Letter to All Staff from Heads of Colleges University of the Arts London News and Events Archive, accessed 22 July 2012
  8. RAE Main Panel O, RAE website, accessed 22 July 2012
  9. BBC Radio 3 Night Waves accessed 12 January 2012
  10. "What might we look like in 50 years time?" Woman's Hour History + Science Archive, accessed on 12 January 2012
  11. "The Future of the Human Face" Odyssey Audio Library, accessed on 12 January 2012
  12. "Face of the Future" BBC News Online Magazine 2008, accessed 10 August 2011
  13. "Welcome Trust looks into the Face of the Future" Science Museum website, accessed 11 January 2012
  14. "Facing up to the future" New Scientist, accessed 11 January 2012
  15. Jonathon Cole, "Facial Diversity", Nature (4 Sept 2004), 432, 20
  16. Easton, G. (2004). "Future Face". BMJ. 329 (7470): 863. doi:10.1136/bmj.329.7470.863. PMC 521593.
  17. "V&A Research Department" V&A website, accessed 30 June 2013
  18. Publications by Sandra Kemp in the Oxford Library Collection
  19. "The Universities plan job losses in response to looming public spending cuts", Harriet Swain, The Guardian, 17 November 2009
  20. "Unions call on LCC head to quit over decision to cull 'unviable' courses" - Times Higher Education 19 January 2012
  21. "Controversial head of college suspended" - Times Higher Education 2 March 2012
  22. "Course closures at LCC disrupted studies and harmed students’ chances, QAA rules" - Times Higher Education 17 June 2011, accessed 10 August 2011
  23. "Communication crisis as head and demand fall" - Times Higher Education 15 March 2012
  24. "PR chief's parting shot cites LCC head's 'unfair' management style" - Times Higher Education 15 December 2011
  25. "Public Enemies", Private Eye (27 Jan 2012), 1306, 31
  26. "Spin doctor pays call to ailing LCC" - Times Higher Education 23 February 2012
  27. "So long and thanks for all the restructuring" - Times Higher Education 7 March 2012
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