News
Professor Jonathan Kydd appointed Dean of University of London International Programmes
Professor Jonathan Kydd has been appointed to the newly-created post of Dean of the University of London International Programmesfrom 17 February 2007, with the remit to provide overall leadership, including academic leadership, to the System. This is an important development, as the External System will, for the first time, have its own full-time academic head. The Dean will facilitate the further academic development of the System building on the extremely successful period of growth over the past decade.
Prior to this Jonathan Kydd was Director of the Distance Learning Programme, Centre for Environmental Policy at Imperial College London, which focuses on international development and poverty reduction, sustainability, environment, biodiversity, economics and agribusiness. On joining the University of London, Jonathan will retain a visiting professorship in the Centre.
Previously he spent eight years researching and teaching at the University of Malawi. He has degrees from Keele and SOAS and a Sussex DPhil, obtained as a part-time student at the Institute of Development Studies.
His research and teaching have been mainly on agricultural, rural and food policy issues in poorer countries, principally Africa but also Asia and Latin America. Additionally, he has been engaged with a wider range of developing country and central European economic development issues though consultancy, advisory and board level activity.
He is a board member of CDC Group plc, a UK Government-owned investment company charged with stimulating private capital flows to poorer countries. He is about to step down from chairing the board of NR International Ltd., a research management company owned by a consortium of universities which, in 2006, won the largest research contract ever let out by the UK's Department for International Development. He has been Special Advisor to the International Development Select Committee of the UK House of Commons, for its report on DFID's Agriculture Policy, 2004 and an expert witness to an earlier enquiry.