Deirdre Hughes to join the symposium

You might have heard that one of our symposium presenters, Jenny Bimrose, had an unfortunate accident that led to a fractured hip, meaning that Jenny sadly will not be able to join us in Sydney.

We wish her well for a speedy recovery and thank her for her outstanding contribution to the symposium.

We are extremely lucky that we have been able to secure an outstanding replacement for Jenny - Dr Deirdre Hughes OBE, Associate Fellow at the Warwick Institute for Employment Research.

Please see a short biography of Deidre below:

Dr Deirdre Hughes

Deirdre Hughes is a Commissioner and Non-Executive Board Director at the UK Commission for Employment & Skills (UKCES) and Chair of the National Careers Council for England . She was awarded an OBE for services to career guidance in the 2012 New Year Honours List. Deirdre provides strategic leadership and expert advice on the UK, EU and international evidence-base for careers policy, research and practice. She is a lead expert consultant on the European Lifelong Guidance Policy Network (ELGPN) on quality assurance and evidence-base for policy and systems development. She has a distinguished record as a leading academic, trainer and consultant in careers work.

Deirdre is an Associate Fellow at the Institute for Employment Research (IER), Warwi
ck University, where she works alongside academic colleagues on careers policy, research projects, including: ‘Adult Career Progression and Advancement: a five-year study of the effectiveness of guidance’, the role of career adaptability and skills supply, the use of labour market intelligence and information (LMI), social networking, social bookmarking and wiki technology to create new ‘communities of knowledge and practice’. She is also an Associate Consultant at the Edinburgh University Centre for Educational Sociology exploring the impact of careers websites. In 2004, she was awarded a University Readership in Guidance Studies at Derby University, where she then worked as Founding Director of the International Centre for Guidance Studies (iCeGS, 1998-2008). She is currently Director of  ‘DMH Associates’ which was established in 2008 to deliver high quality training and development work on careers policy, research and practice activities.

You can find an updated symposium program to reflect the change here. We are excited to be able to welcome Deidre in Sydney and are looking forward to her contribution to the conference.