A lifelong educator with global research interests will take up the position of Head of School and Professor of Education at Charles Darwin University in early 2011.
Dr Peter Kell, currently the Director of the UNESCO-UNEVOC Centre in the Centre for Lifelong Learning Research and Development at the Hong Kong Institute of Education.
Dr Kell’s appointment to CDU will see him come full circle in a professional sense after spending considerable time teaching in the Northern Territory during the 1970s.
“It was a very difference place back then, a frontier town with its reaches ending at Nightcliff. It’s now a city and a gateway to the Asia Pacific.
"I’m extremely excited to be joining a young institution with such a strong reputation like CDU,” he said.
Dr Kell said he hoped to consolidate and build on the great work already under way within the School of Education and leverage off his global research networks to drive the strategic directions of the School.
Dr Kell has extensive experience in primary education, adult and community education and technical education. He has taught in literacy programs in TAFE and the tertiary education sector. He has wide research and teaching experience in the Asia Pacific region and is involved in a range of research projects in China, Hong Kong, Malaysia and Singapore.
Before his appointment in Hong Kong, Dr Kell was an Associate Professor in adult education at the University of Wollongong from 2003-2009, and the Head of Industry, Professional and Adult Education at RMIT from 1989-2003.
Most recently he has been involved in research on global student mobility and has published with Dr Gillian Vogl an edited collection entitled, Global Student Mobility in the Asia Pacific: Mobility, Migration Security and Wellbeing of International Students with Cambridge Scholars publishing. His current research is exploring questions of student mobility in Hong Kong, Malaysia and Singapore.