Terry Threadgold

Terry Threadgold is Professor of Communication and Cultural Studies, Cardiff School of Journalism, Media and Cultural Studies (JOMEC), and Pro Vice Chancellor Staff and Diversity, Cardiff University. She was appointed to Cardiff in 1999 as a research professor in the run- up to the 2001 RAE. She became head of JOMEC in 2003.

Terry was an undergraduate and a postgraduate student at Sydney University before being appointed to her first lectureship in the English Department in 1970. She was awarded the University Medal and First Class Honours for her Masters Thesis on the linguistic structure of Anglo-Saxon and English Augustan Poetry. While at Sydney she worked with others to set up the Centres for Womens’ Studies and Performance Studies. She was Head of the Department of Early English Literature and Language within the English Department, before she left Sydney for Monash in 1993.

She went to Monash as Professor and Head of the Department of English. Later, she was Deputy Dean Graduate Studies, Director, Graduate School (1997-98), and Acting Dean (1988-89), Faculty of Arts at Monash University, Victoria, Australia. While at Monash, she won the Monash Postgraduate Association Supervisor of the Year Award in 1996, the Vice Chancellor’s Award for Excellence in Supervision in 1997, and was named in a national Campus Review Independent Survey (1996) as ‘most respected teacher in English’ with the English Department at Monash the most popular Department in which to study English. From 1995-99 she was elected by the professors of the university to membership of the Monash Council.

Her funded Australian research included work on women and ageing, and on risk, communication and injecting drug use, both projects with a strong media element. Her book, Feminist Poetics: Poeisis, Performance, Histories (Routledge 1997), a study of race, nation and identity in Australia, remains a key text in the field of feminist cultural studies and critical discourse analysis.

From 200-2003 she was Director, The Tom Hopkinson Centre for Media Research, Cardiff School of Journalism, Media and Cultural Studies. She was Director of the Race, Nation and Identity research Group before the last Research Assessment Exercise. She stepped down as Head of JOMEC in September 2007 after five years as head of school. In September 2007 JOMEC was named in a UK national survey as the best place to study journalism in the UK. The school was ranked third in the UK in the 2008 RAE.

She continues to publish widely. Since 2003, she has carried out extensive research into Media Coverage of Refugees and Asylum Seekers in the UK. Her most recent book, with Justin Lewis, Nick Mosdell and Rod Brookes is Shoot First and Ask Questions Later: Media Coverage of the 2003 Iraq War (Peter Lang 2006). She completed a large Joseph Rowntree Foundation funded project on MIgration and Social Cohesion in South-East Wales in 2009.

She worked in 2005 – 6 with the Welsh Refugee Council and Welsh Assembly Government on research towards an inclusion policy for refugees in Wales. She is a Trustee for the Welsh Refugee Council (2005- present), was a member of advisory boards for the AHRB Centre for Law and Sexuality and for the Joseph Rowntree Foundation Poverty and Migration and Cohesion research Programmes, as well as acting as external examiner and assessor for universities and research councils in the UK, Australia, Singapore, Malaysia and Canada. She is a member of Cardiff University Council.

In her current position as Pro Vice Chancellor she has taken a lead role in moving the whole university towards achieving Investors in People Status (2011), the first Russell Group University in the UK to achieve this. She has worked at university level and with Science, engineering and Technology Schools (SET) to achieve bronze and silver Athena Swan Awards for support for women in these disciplines (2009, 2010), and she has worked with others to have Cardiff University named as a top 100 Stonewall Employer(2010) for its support for lesbian and gay staff. Cardiff's leadership and management training for Principal Investigators on research teams won the Time HIgher Award in 2010.