New MLC Director appointed

The Faculty of Arts & Humanities is delighted to announce, following a formal selection process, the appointment of Dr Ana de Medeiros as the new Director of the Modern Language Centre. She will be responsible for leading the Centre’s staff in delivering high-quality education in modern languages to a wide range of internal and external learners, and she will champion the Centre’s entrepreneurial activity, identifying new markets and developing new approaches.

Dr de Medeiros is currently Reader in French at the University of Kent and Academic Director of the University of Kent at Paris. She will take up her new post in mid-August; in the meantime, Ms Nelly Mars will continue as Acting Director of the Modern Language Centre.

Commenting on this appointment, Professor Russell Goulbourne, Dean of the Faculty of Arts & Humanities, said: ‘I am delighted that we have appointed Dr Ana de Medeiros to this key leadership role in the Faculty, and I am very much looking forward to working with her in the years ahead. She will bring to the role a deep understanding of the place of language study in Higher Education as well as the entrepreneurial skills that she has demonstrated with such flair in leading the University of Kent at Paris and that will be fundamental to the ongoing success of the Modern Language Centre, one of the Faculty’s – and, indeed, the university’s – most outward-looking constituent departments. Following the retirement earlier this year of Ms Dominique Borel, Ms Nelly Mars has been Acting Director of the Modern Language Centre, and I am particularly grateful to her for her ongoing work in this capacity.’