Biography

For the last 15 years Vanessa Lemm has led organisations through transformation. With a deep commitment to positive change, Vanessa brings ambition, strategy, creativity and energy to problems faced by organisations and communities.

Vanessa is passionate about tackling the global challenges of our time. Informed by an international perspective, knowledge and hands-on experience, she has a vision for the role of universities and industries in understanding and addressing the economic, social and political problems our societies face today.

A values-driven leader, Vanessa is inspired by working with teams who share her ambition to create meaningful change and solve complex problems with creativity and innovation. Bringing together her academic expertise and leadership experience, Vanessa is interested in how large organisations can create positive change through focused action on the environmental, social and governance aspects of their operations.

Vanessa has a thoroughly international profile. She completed her PhD in Philosophy at the New School of Social Research in New York, MA at King’s College University of London and DEA at the University of Paris, Paris I - Panthéon-Sorbonne. She held positions in the US, Germany and Chile. She was a Guest Professor funded by the Deutsche Akademische Austauschdienst (DAAD) and is a Fellow of the Royal Society of New South Wales. She is a Honorary Professorial Fellow at the Faculty of Arts, University of Melbourne, and a researcher at the research group Body, Language and Politics at the Faculty of Philosophy, Complutense University Madrid.

She is currently Deputy Vice-Chancellor and Provost at the University of Greenwich, London. Previously, she was the Pro-Vice Chancellor and Executive Dean, Faculty of Liberal Arts and Science at the University of Greenwich (2023-2024), Executive Dean, Faculty of Arts and Education at Deakin University (2021-2022), inaugural Vice President and Executive Dean of the College of Humanities, Arts and Social Sciences at Flinders University (2018-2021) and Head of School of Humanities and Languages at the University of New South Wales (2012-2018). Prior to her appointment as Head of School she was the Director of the Institute of Humanities at Diego Portales University in Santiago de Chile (2008-2012).

She is a globally recognised philosopher and editor of Nietzsche-Studien and associated De Gruyter book series, two premier publication venues shaping the field of Nietzsche studies world-wide. She is the co-editor of the newly launched Contemporary Nietzsche Studies book series at Edinburgh University Press, with Professor Daniel Conway. She researches the relevance of Nietzsche’s philosophy for contemporary debates in biopolitics, posthumanism and animal and critical plant studies. She recently published Homo Natura: Nietzsche, Philosophical Anthropology and Biopolitics(EUP 2020) forthcoming in Spanish with Herder (2024). Her work has been translated into 6 languages.