Announcement: Dean, Faculty of Arts
Following an outstanding four-year tenure, Professor Katie Stevenson has indicated she will step down from her position as Dean, Faculty of Arts, on 31 July 2026. Professor Stevenson will take up a fixed-term position as University Senior Professorial Research Fellow, before pursuing the next stage of her senior university leadership career.
A historian of medieval Europe, Professor Stevenson joined Monash University in 2022 from the University of St Andrews, where she held a series of academic and senior leadership roles, latterly as Vice-Principal (Deputy Vice-Chancellor) Collections and Digital. She is an elected Fellow of the Royal Historical Society and has been the recipient of a number of accolades including the Royal Society of Edinburgh’s Thomas Reid Medal for outstanding research in the humanities and social sciences.
Professor Stevenson is a respected thought leader in university strategy and transformation. In 2024 she was named an Australian Financial Review Woman to Watch and in 2023 she undertook the Advance HE Top Management Program for Higher Education, which grows forward-thinking and innovative university leaders. She will spend time during her University Fellowship building on her track record of leadership to guide and inform AI transitions for the higher education sector globally. This work is already advancing with her current participation in Adobe’s ANZ Higher Education Leadership in Silicon Valley, Google’s Higher Education Leader Asia Pacific Series, and Deloitte’s Future-Ready Universities thought-leaders programs.
Throughout her career at Monash, Professor Stevenson has been a prominent university-wide leader helping to shape strategy across education, research, global engagement, and interdisciplinary collaboration. Through her leadership of university-wide initiatives, Professor Stevenson has been recognised across the institution for her strategic judgement, collaborative leadership, and ability to bring diverse communities together around ambitious institutional goals. She has served numerous university committees and projects, including the Monash AI Institute Board; the Board of Governors of Monash Indonesia; the Advisory Board of Monash Prato; the steering committee of the Provost’s Optimising Academic Achievement project; the Caulfield Campus Pre-Masterplanning Group; and the Board of Monash University Publishing. She has been a key champion and stakeholder in cross-institutional initiatives and oversight groups in health futures and environmental research.
As leader of the Faculty of Arts, Professor Stevenson has provided invaluable strategic direction to advance the reputation and performance of one of the world’s leading faculties of social sciences, humanities and performing arts. Her tenure has focused on driving research excellence, modernising the Arts degree suite, student experience and cohort and community building, enhancing industry integration, and positioning the humanities as core to solutions to contemporary global challenges.
A passionate advocate for Monash’s global outlook, Professor Stevenson positioned the Faculty to work across the Monash International Campus Network in both education and research. Hallmarks of her time as Dean have been the active foregrounding of Indigenous cultures, histories, research methodologies, and practices; the building of structures to support equity, diversity and inclusion in student representation and participation; and the prioritisation of culture and community to accelerate collaborations and partnerships to create the best environment in Australia in which to undertake humanities and social science research. Championing a global approach, Professor Stevenson has delivered new initiatives in double and joint degrees with international partners, new transnational education programs, diversified and refocused the Arts global study tour offer, and supported the development of new on-country immersion programs for students.
Professor Stevenson embedded and championed a robust research ecosystem – deeply connected to the principles of research-led education – resulting in rapidly accelerating and sustained success since 2022 in competitive research funding, higher degree by research completions, high-impact community partnerships, new research centres and hubs directed towards solving complex societal problems, and an increasing number of university, national and international awards won by Arts academics in the environment she has built to support their success. The high-performance culture she has embedded has resulted in numerous firsts for the Faculty of Arts – including the first grant funding through the Monash University European Research Foundation in 2023, and the award of the first Horizon Europe grant at Monash earlier this year.
Across all measures – academic excellence, enrolments, student experience, research quality, impact and translation, workplace culture, equity, diversity and inclusion, operational systems and processes, and financial performance – the Faculty of Arts has enjoyed sustained success under Professor Stevenson’s leadership. Collectively, these achievements have strengthened Monash's standing in research competitiveness, educational innovation and financial sustainability, while contributing to the University’s global reputation.
We thank Professor Stevenson for her exceptional contributions as Dean, Faculty of Arts, and look forward to seeing her continue to make a significant contribution to higher education through senior leadership and sector engagement nationally and internationally.