Professor Kevin Bonnett took up the post of Deputy Vice-Chancellor (Student Experience) in June 2008. His role emphasises the importance the University places on how students experience MMU, particularly in a period where major changes in the student funding regime coincide with dramatic renewal in the University's campuses and buildings, as well as in the portfolio of courses.

He has contributed to this by leading a major change initiative known as EQAL: this has involved the redesign of the whole undergraduate curriculum together with wide-ranging modernisation of student-facing systems and processes and radical improvements to the online learning environment and student portal.

Kevin Bonnett joined MMU from Sheffield Hallam University where he had been Pro-VC for Strategic Planning and Sustainability. Prior to that he was Professor and Director of SHU’s School of Social Sciences and Law and then founding Dean of a large new faculty - Development and Society - with 500 staff and 10,000 students.

His first teaching post in higher education had been as a lecturer in sociology at Anglia Ruskin University in 1975 where he later helped to develop a large modular scheme with 18 disciplines before being appointed Associate Dean of the School of Languages and Social Sciences in 1999.

Professor Bonnett is a sociology graduate of the University of East Anglia and holds an MA in Political Sociology from the University of Essex. A member of the British Sociological Association, he co-wrote the widely-used textbook Introductory Sociology and his research interests in political sociology and political economy are reflected in publications which focus on corporatism, monetarism and the formation of economic policies.