Executive Board

Professor Adam Habib is an academic, researcher, activist, administrator, and well-known public intellectual. A Professor of Political Science, Habib has over 30 years of academic, research and administration expertise, spanning five universities and multiple local and international institutions.

Prior to his appointment as Director of SOAS, he was Vice-Chancellor and Principal of the University of the Witwatersrand (Wits) in Johannesburg, South Africa since 2013. Under his leadership, Wits did incredibly well – research output has increased, it has expanded its footprint in international journals and it has graduated more students than ever before. The university’s finances are stable and it has strong, independent governance structures in place. Habib’s commitment to excellence and transformation has left Wits in a far stronger position, and one of the best universities in Africa at which to study and conduct world-class research.

He joined the University of Johannesburg as the Deputy Vice-Chancellor for Research, Innovation, Advancement and Library in 2007, during which time he oversaw a doubling of research output, and the dramatic expansion in the training of a new generation of scholars.

He is one of the co-founders of the African Research Universities Alliance, an affiliation of research-intensive universities on the continent.

Habib has published numerous edited books, book chapters and journal articles over the last three decades in the thematic areas of democratisation and its consolidation in South Africa, contemporary social movements, philanthropy, inequality, giving and its impact on poverty alleviation and development, institutional reform, changing identities and their evolution in the post-apartheid era, and South Africa's role in Africa and beyond. He is a well-known public figure in South Africa whose opinions are often sought by the media.

Habib’s academic contributions resulted in his election to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, in addition to serving as a fellow of both the African Academy of Science and the Academy of Science of South Africa.

Habib holds qualifications in Political Science from three universities, including the University of Natal and Wits. He earned his masters and doctoral qualifications from the Graduate School of the City University of New York.

Professor Joanna Newman MBE FSRA joined SOAS as Deputy Director and Provost in September 2023. In her role she provides academic and strategic leadership to support the School’s overall strategy and lead on its Education Strategy 2021-26 that sits at the heart of the Strategic Plan 2021. 

Prior to joining SOAS, Joanna became the first female Secretary General of the Association of Commonwealth Universities, an international organisation dedicated to building a better world through higher education, with more than 500 member universities in over 50 countries. In that role she directed the administration of the UK government’s three main international scholarship programmes – Chevening, Commonwealth, and Marshall Scholarships – as well as the multilateral Queen Elizabeth Commonwealth Scholarships. 

Her previous roles include serving as the Vice-Principal (International) at King’s College London, where she was instrumental in forging new international research and teaching collaborations; the Director of the UK Higher Education International Unit (now known as Universities UK International), where she led the development of a UK-wide international education strategy; and Head of Higher Education at the British Library.  

Joanna serves on a number of boards, including the United Nations Sustainable Development Solutions Network’s Leadership Council, the High-level Advisory Group for Mission 4.7, CARA (the Council for displaced academics) and the QS Global Advisory Committee. She is a Senior Research Fellow in History at King’s College London and contributes to the MA in transnational History. Her most recent publication is Nearly the New World: The British West Indies and the Flight from Nazism, 1933-1945. In 2014, Joanna was awarded an MBE in recognition of her work promoting British higher education internationally. 

Khadir Meer was appointed to the role of Chief Operating Officer and Registrar in July 2021. In this role, Khadir works with the Board of Trustees as Clerk to the Board and his Executive colleagues in overseeing the governance, strategy implementation, financial and operational management of the University.

A seasoned Chief Operating Officer, Khadir brings to SOAS a long history of public service work and values driven leadership. Khadir joined SOAS from the London Ambulance Service where as the Chief Operating Officer and Deputy CEO, he led significant organisation wide digitalisation and transformation, alongside meeting the challenges of leading a largest Emergency Ambulance Service in the world through a global pandemic with annual spend of in excess of half a billion pounds.

Prior to the London Ambulance Service, Khadir served for a number of years as the Chief Operating Officer for the National Health Service in London, where he was responsible for discharging statutory responsibilities for the planning, commissioning, and regulatory oversight of all health services for London’s 9 million residents and visitors with an annual spend of in excess of £14b.

Khadir’s leadership approach is values driven with a strong commitment to social justice and public service. Consequently, removing systemic barriers that inhibit the participation and representation of people of colour in public life is key to how he approaches organisational management and the delivery of strategic objectives.

Professor Laura Hammond is Professor of Development Studies and Co-Director of the Centre of Migration and Diaspora Studies at SOAS. She has been conducting research on conflict, food security, migration and diasporas in and from the Horn of Africa since the early 1990s.

She lived in Ethiopia from 1993-2000, conducting research and working for the UN Emergencies Unit for Ethiopia (the precursor to UNOCHA). Among her research activities, she is Co-Director of the Work Package on Poverty and Inequalities for the Migration for Development and Equality (MIDEQ) Research Hub on South-South Migration.

She is Team Leader of the EU Trust Fund’s Research and Evidence Facility on migration and conflict in the Horn of Africa, and Team Leader of the London International Development Centre's Migration Leadership Team. She has done consultancy for a wide range of development and humanitarian organizations, including UNDP, USAID, Oxfam, Medécins Sans Frontières, the International Committee of the Red Cross, and the World Food Programme.

She is the author of ‘This Place Will Become Home: Refugee Repatriation to Ethiopia’ (Cornell University Press: 2004), editor (with Christopher Cramer and Johan Pottier of Researching Violence in Africa: Ethical and Methodological Challenges [Brill 2011] and several book and journal articles.

Graeme Earl is an archaeologist and digital humanist whose research and educational innovation have had a broad international impact, including on the archaeology of the Mediterranean, East Africa and East Asia.

He has been a visiting professor both at Keio University in Tokyo, focused on interaction design in cultural heritage, and at the Australian National University in Canberra. He co-directed fieldwork at Portus, the sea port of Rome, and at sites across the Roman Mediterranean and is currently a visiting professor at the University of Cambridge. His work across the Mediterranean has also involved close collaboration with the British School at Rome.

Graeme has worked with and for creative organisations in broadcast media, architecture, games and immersive technologies, enabling them to draw on the past as inspiration. For example, as co-director of National Gallery X he enabled a series of artist-led partnerships in creative research and development, with the aim of inspiring new work in and with cultural and creative organisations, through co-production.

Elisa Van Waeyenberge is a development economist with a longstanding interest in the way in which development policy paradigms emerge, including through the influence of International Financial Institutions. Her work on the rise of private finance in development is recognised internationally. 

She has established multiple collaborations with academic and non-academic institutions across Global North and South, while acting as principal and co-investigator on a range of research projects. These include, among other, a GCRF funded research network on Equalities in Public Private Partnerships, an ESRC funded project on Trajectories of Infrastructure Finance as well as a European funded project on Financialisation, Economy, Society and Sustainable Development.  

Justin Smith joined SOAS in March 2022. As Director of Finance & Procurement he oversees core financial operations, treasury & investments, tax, relations with auditors and regulators, financial planning and budgeting, business partnering, procurement and insurance matters.

Justin originally trained as a geologist, with an MA from Oxford University and an MSc from the University of Toronto, Canada.  He then gained an International MBA at Manchester Business School and was hired in 1992 by Procter & Gamble who trained him as a CIMA-qualified accountant.

Justin is an experienced CFO / Director of Corporate Services, whose career has spanned 20 years in multinational corporations, 10 years in large charities (including FD/CFO of Save the Children UK, and Director of Corporate Services at the Royal College of Physicians), and 2 years (so far) in the UK Higher Education sector with SOAS.

In addition to his functional responsibilities, Justin is a member of the SOAS ED&I Committee, and the Access, Participation and Student Success Steering Group.  He also chairs the Data & Digital Programme Board which plays its part in the delivery of the SOAS IT Strategy.