Michelle Ryan Professor Diversity Management

As of 1 May 2009, Michelle Ryan is appointed as professor at the Faculty of Economics ad Business. She will hold the chair in Diversity Management. Ryan also is an associate professor at the University of Exeter, United Kingdom. She is a specialist in the field of diversity, group processes, intergroep relations and organizational behavior. The chair in Diversity Management is positioned in the department of Human Resource Management & Organizational Behavior.

Michelle Ryan obtained her PhD at the National University of Australia where she researched gender differences in selfconcept. In 2003 she left for the School of Psychology at the University of Exeter in the UK, where she was appointed as senior research fellow and later associate professor. In 2007 she held the temporary Jantina Tammes chair at the faculty of Economics and Business. In this position she, together with prof. Janka Stoker en dr. Floor Rink from Groningen, researched the ‘glass cliff’. She uses this methaphor to examine what happens when women and other minority groups take on leadership roles.