Professorial appointments
Tue, 13 Oct 2015 17:20:00 BST
The title of professor has been conferred on Dr Philip Thomas, Dr Pete Sanderson and Dr Kevin Orr
The University is pleased to announce the conferment of professorships on three members of staff. The recipients are Dr Philip Thomas from the School of Music, Humanities and Media and Dr Pete Sanderson and Dr Kevin Orr from the School of Education and Professional Development.
The position of professor is conferred on an academic when that person’s research is considered to be “substantial, innovative and of high quality, and is acknowledged nationally and internationally for its importance by fellow academics”.
Professor Pete Sanderson
Professor of Education and Social Justice, Dr Pete Sanderson, is the Dean of the School of Education and Professional Development and is currently working on issues related to the expert knowledge of providers on legal advice and transformations being brought about by changing technologies and divisions of labour in the advice field. Professor Sanderson is leading a bid for external research funding to look into changing landscapes of advice provision and recently worked as co-investigator, with Professor Paul Thomas, on a local authority-funded action research project around community perceptions of community cohesion and of the impacts of policy work around cohesion in Kirklees, West Yorkshire.
Professor Kevin Orr
Professor of Work and Learning, Dr Kevin Orr, is the School of Education and Professional Development’s Director of Graduate Education and he recently received a National Teaching Fellowship from the Higher Education Academy for his work around vocational education. Currently, Professor Orr is leading a major £350,000 research project, funded by the Gatsby Foundation, which will research, implement and assess an intervention for initial teacher education for science, engineering and technology teachers working in Further Education colleges. Professor Orr has recently co-edited the book Further Education and the Twelve Dancing Princesses, which speaks up for the benefits of colleges and his continuing research on the professional education of architects has most recently been published in a co-authored article, Architectural students' year-out training experience in architectural offices in the UK.
Professor Philip Thomas
Dr Philip Thomas, from the School of Music, Humanities and Media, has been appointed as Professor of Performance. A pianist, who has played around the world, Professor Thomas specialises in performing new and experimental music, including both notated and improvised music. He is currently Principal Investigator of a three-year funded research project, by the Arts and Humanities Research Council, entitled John Cage and the Concert for piano and orchestra. The result will be a book, performances and recordings, conference and a unique interactive website which will allow users to make an infinite number of performing and audio versions of the work. He has performed with the Merce Cunningham Dance Company, Quatuor Bozzini, in duos with Mark Knoop, Ian Pace and John Tilbury – piano duet and two pianos – and is a regular pianist with leading experimental music group Apartment House.
