by Louise Morley
Rosemary Deem was a great feminist scholar, friend, colleague, and mentor, known and respected worldwide for her major contributions to the field of higher education studies, her service in national and international agencies, and her extensive senior management experience at Royal Holloway, University of London, where she was Dean of History/Social Science (2009–11); Vice-Principal, Education (2011–17); Vice-Principal for Teaching Innovation & Equality/Diversity (2017–2019); and Doctoral School Dean (2014–19).
Rosemary’s long and extremely productive career in higher education began with her BA in Sociology at the University of Leicester from 1968-72, followed by an MPhil in Education. She was awarded a PhD by the Open University in 1990 for her thesis: Women and Leisure: A Sociological Investigation. During her career she held academic posts at North Staffordshire Polytechnic, Loughborough University, the University of York, the Open University, the University of Lancaster, and the University of Bristol, as well as Royal Holloway. Her first highly influential book in gender studies, Women and Schooling, was published in 1978. She initially researched women and leisure and educational governance and went on to develop significant expertise and experience in equality, diversity and inclusion, doctoral education, higher education management, qualitative research, and the sociology of power and policy in education. Her work on neoliberalism continues to lead the field and her ongoing and relentless commitment to research, scholarship, and peer review resulted in over 100 publications.
Known and respected widely, Rosemary had national and international professional networks. A regular participant in conferences globally, she learned the Portuguese language and became an external adviser to the Centre for Research in Higher Education Policies (CIPES) in 2024 at the Universities of Aveiro and Porto. She supervised and examined many doctoral students in Education, Sociology, Management, and Gender Studies and regularly supported her colleagues and students when they presented conference papers and seminars around the globe. She was a loyal and active participant and speaker in the Centre for Higher Education and Equity Research’s events (CHEER) at the University of Sussex, and always offered incisive and informed feedback.
Rosemary was a formidable influence at national level. She was elected three times to the Research Assessment Exercise panel in 1996, 2001 and 2008. From 2013, she served as co-editor of the journal Higher Education, published by Springer, and was a member of the Peer Review College of the European Science Foundation. She also served as co-convenor of the Higher Education Network of the European Educational Research Association. Between 2015 and 2018, she was the first woman to chair the UK Council for Graduate Education. She also served on the Editorial Boards of Higher Education Quarterly and Studies in Higher Education.
Rosemary played a significant role in the Society for Research into Higher Education and embodied the very essence of good citizenship. She was a member of the Governing Council (from 1999), the Research and Development Committee (from 2001), and chair of the Publications Committee (2003-6), leading the negotiation of contracts with publishers which re-established the financial stability of the Society. Rosemary was Vice-Chair of the Society from 2007-9, was elected Fellow of the Society in 2010, and was a keynote speaker at the 2016 SRHE Conference ‘International Contexts and Collaboration: The Implications and Impact of Brexit’. She even found time to deliver several Professional Development Programme sessions for SRHE including Peer Review: How to do it and get it right: Building confidence in your peer reviewing skills (June 2018) and Peer Review – a workshop for newer researchers (March 2015).
Her intellectual generosity meant Rosemary freely shared her substantial knowledge with colleagues and mentees. She was a critical friend on various SRHE funded research projects: in 2011 – Assessing the impact of development in research policy for research on higher education. An exploratory study by Carole Leathwood (London Metropolitan University) and Barbara Read (Roehampton); in 2023 – Towards a Community-Informed Model for PhD research? A place-based exploration of attitudes to doctoral research programmes in Nottingham by Rachel Handforth (Nottingham Trent University); in 2024 – Navigating Microaggressions and EDI Initiatives: Lived Experiences of Chinese International Academics in England by Ming Cheng (Sheffield Hallam University).
She was elected as a Fellow of the UK Academy of Social Sciences in 2006. Her extensive services to Higher Education and Social Science were further recognised in 2013 when she was awarded an OBE in the Queen’s Birthday Honours List.This was celebrated with a wonderful party at Royal Holloway attended by friends and colleagues from across the globe.We all reconvened six years later to celebrate her joyful 70th birthday. Her alma mater, the University of Leicester, recognised her work in the sociology of higher education by awarding her an honorary DLitt in 2014 and the University’s College of Social Sciences, Arts and Humanities bestows the annual Rosemary Deem Awards for Social Science Doctoral Researchers in her honour.
Rosemary’s husband since 1985, Professor Kevin Brehony, died in 2013. This was a tremendous loss for Rosemary as they had shared such an intellectually and socially rich life together. I knew Kevin before I knew Rosemary, as we worked together for 10 years at the University of Reading. Kevin was so proud of Rosemary and talked extensively about her and the happy times they shared travelling, cycling, camping, cooking, and of course, debating!
While Rosemary was a serious, committed and abundantly respected professional, she will also be remembered for her tremendous wry sense of fun, her kindness, energy, and joie de vivre. Her wit, wisdom and dry sense of humour could transform any situation into unbridled joy: we always laughed a lot whenever Rosemary was present. She will be hugely missed.
Emerita Professor Louise Morley, University of Sussex
