Katie Normington

Professor Katie Normington joined De Montfort University as Vice-Chancellor in 2021 from Royal Holloway, University of London, where she was Deputy Principal (Academic).

Following her arrival at DMU, Katie launched a university-wide consultation to co-create a new strategy to ensure the university remains relevant and continues to meet people’s real needs in the decades ahead. The consultation process involved staff, students, governors, external stakeholders and experts. DMU’s Board of Governors has since approved the ‘strategy on a page’, which will inform further work to develop university plans and supporting strategies.

After an unprecedented year of delivering learning in a blended environment, Katie launched a new project to reframe DMU’s academic offer. Education 2030 considers how the university will provide teaching and learning in the future and aims to produce a structure that can fit learning around the increasingly complex lives of students. The idea at the heart of Education 2030 is to develop a student-centred framework that is robust and future-proofed to best support teaching and learning and deliver a high-quality student experience and student outcomes.

Katie has also successfully extended the university’s term as a United Nations Academic Impact (UNAI) global hub for Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), aimed at transforming lives around the world. DMU is the only university in the world representing the UNAI on Goal 16: Peace, Justice and Strong Institutions, and the only SDG hub based in the UK.

While at Royal Holloway, Professor Normington had responsibility for teaching and learning along with research and enterprise. Katie was previously Dean of Arts and Social Sciences/Vice-Principal (Staffing), overseeing the equality and diversity strategy, including instigating a women’s development programme for which she won a Times Higher Education Leadership and Development Award. Katie joined Royal Holloway as a lecturer from Greenwich University in 1997.

Katie is a Professor of Drama. Her research focuses on theatre history – in particular, medieval English drama and contemporary theatre practice. She has published six books in these areas.

Outside of Royal Holloway, Katie was the founder and director of the Arts and Humanities Research Council (AHRC) doctoral training partnership, Techne. She has been a governor in Further Education, a member of the AHRC Research Careers and Training Advisory Group, and a member of the Supporting Professionalism in Admissions SPA Review Group for UCAS. She served on the expert review panel for the Concordat of Researchers and was a subject panel member for the Teaching Excellence Framework (TEF) pilots.