Rate My Professor Aoife Mac Namara

Dr. Aoife Mac Namara serves as Dean of the Faculty of Arts at the University of Calgary, a position she assumed on July 1, 2022, for a renewable five-year term. Originally trained as an artist, she holds a doctorate in art, design and the built environment from the University of Ulster in Belfast, a master’s degree in the social history of art from the University of Leeds, and a master’s in fine art from the Birmingham Institute of Art and Design. She also pursued doctoral studies in art education at Concordia University.

Prior to her appointment at the University of Calgary, Dr. Mac Namara held several senior leadership roles in higher education. These include serving as president of NSCAD University in Halifax, dean of Simon Fraser University’s Faculty of Communication, Art and Technology, and dean of Emily Carr University’s Audain Faculty of Visual Art + Material Practice. In the United Kingdom, she was director of Contemporary Art at the University of the Arts (Wimbledon College of Art) and director of Programmes: Art and Design at Middlesex University. She has championed entrepreneurship, interdisciplinary collaboration, institutional transparency, decolonization and reconciliation, and equity, diversity and inclusion. At NSCAD University, she led the institution’s COVID-19 response and the development of an anti-racist action plan. She also contributed to the Institute for the Study of Canadian Slavery and, as part of Simon Fraser University’s Aboriginal Reconciliation Council, advocated for policies more inclusive of Indigenous pedagogies.