IOE academic recognised in New Year Honours
2 January 2018
UCL Institute of Education (IOE) professor Katharine Carruthers has been awarded an OBE (Officer of the Order of the British Empire) for services to education.
![Katharine Carruthers Katharine Carruthers](https://www.ucl.ac.uk/ioe/sites/ioe/files/styles/large_image/public/katharine-carruthers.jpg?itok=Tr9YQvUW)
Professor Carruthers, Director of the Confucius Institute for Schools, plays a leading role in promoting and developing the study of Chinese in schools in England. This work has been made possible by the IOE Confucius Institute and 45 Confucius Classrooms - supported by Hanban in partnership with Peking University (PKU) and Peking University High School.
She is an experienced teacher and examiner of Chinese. She is the series editor of the textbooks for teaching Chinese for 11-16 year olds and wrote the specification for the increasingly popular Cambridge Pre-U Mandarin Chinese. She teaches on the IOE's PGCE Languages course, working with PGCE students training to teach Mandarin Chinese. She is the Strategic Director for UCL's delivery of the Department for Education's Mandarin Excellence Programme.
Her research interests centre around teaching and learning of Chinese as a foreign language in schools, the notion of intercultural competence in Chinese and UK schools and globalisation and language policy.
As Pro-Vice-Provost (East Asia), Professor Carruthers plays an important strategic role as a catalyst for UCL's engagement in the region. She has forged growing links with PKU and last year helped lead UCL's first degree awarding ceremony in China with the UCL President and Provost Michael Arthur with her mastery of the Chinese language proving invaluable.
Of the 1,123 named on the honours list, 551 are women, representing 49%, and around 11% have been recognised for their work in education.
Media contact
Rowan Walker, UCL Media Relations
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