Joanna Newman

For the American journalist and author, see Johanna Neuman.

Dr Joanna Newman
At the SOAS Inaugural Lecture Series in 2025
Nationality	British
Alma mater	Middlesex University University College London University of Southampton
Occupation(s)	Academic, journalist and administrator
Title	Secretary general, Association of Commonwealth Universities

Joanna Newman MBE is a British academic, journalist and administrator. She is provost at SOAS University of London, and was previously secretary general of the Association of Commonwealth Universities (ACU). ^[1]

Prior to joining the ACU, Newman was vice-principal (international) of King's College London. Her previous positions include director of the UK Higher Education International Unit (now known as Universities UK International) and head of higher education at the British Library. Newman is a faculty member in the Department of History at King's College London, and has taught history at University College London and the University of Warwick.

Through her work with Adam Habib, the current vice-chancellor of SOAS, she has overseen the suspension and expulsion of multiple students that have been involved in activism, as well as those involved in the criticism of both Adam Habib's leadership and the institution's administration. ^[2]

Honours

• Member of the Order of the British Empire (2014) ^[1]

Selected publications

• Newman, Joanna, Nearly the New World: The British West Indies and the Escape from Nazism, 1933–1945, Berghahn Books, October 2019
• Refugees from Nazism in the British Caribbean, in J.Gerber (Ed.), The Jews in the Caribbean, Littman, Oxford, 2013
• The changing role of library and information services, in R. Andrews, E. Borg, S. Davis, M Domingo, & J. England (Eds.), The SAGE handbook of digital dissertations and theses, SAGE Publications, London, 2012.
• Postgraduate Education in the United Kingdom, (Ed), Higher Education Policy Institute and the British Library, January 2010
• Jews of Jamaica, Jewish Renaissance Magazine, Volume 6, Issue 2, January 2007
• Representations of the Holocaust in Film and Television from 1933, Eds., Joanna Newman & Toby Haggith, Wallflower Press, September 2005
• The Colonial Office and British Refugee Policy in the 1930s, in Administering Empire: The British Colonial Service in Retrospect, University of London Press, 1999.
• Articles for Encyclopaedia of the Holocaust, The Jerusalem Publishing House, Jerusalem, 1997

References

1. "Dr Joanna Newman appointed Secretary General of the Association of Commonwealth Universities". Association of Commonwealth Universities. 10 January 2017. Retrieved 13 April 2017.
2. "Defend University of London SOAS students, targeted for opposing genocide!". World Socialist Web Site. 21 July 2025. Retrieved 27 September 2025.