Michèle Gendreau-Massaloux

Rector Emerita Mrs. Michèle Gendreau-Massaloux, PhD is a member of UoPeople’s President’s Council. She has extensive educational leadership experience including being Rector of the Academy of Paris, Chancellor of the Universities, and Rector of the Agence Universitaire de la Francophonie (AUF) which associates more than 700 Universities around the world.

She is also a University Professor, and a specialist of Spanish literature, of critical theory and of cultural relations between Mediterranean countries. She has written a large number of books and articles about Spanish literature of the Siglo de Oro’ and about Mediterranean cultures and literatures.

Michele’s Rector experience began shortly after teaching at the Sorbonne, where she was elected director of the department of Spanish and Latin American literature and civilization at the University of Limoges. In 1981, she was appointed Rector of the Academy of Orleans-Tours. A French Rector is in charge of secondary and primary schools and is also the Chancellor of the Universities of the region.

She was recruited to become the Technical Adviser for education at the French Presidency of the Republic (1984-85), then Deputy General Secretary of the Presidency and Spokesperson for the President (1985-1988), and member of the National Commission for Communication and Freedom- CNCL- (1988-89).

In 1989 she became the head of education in Paris as Rector of the Academy of Paris and Chancellor of the Universities, for ten years.

Appointed State Councilor in 1998, she was elected to be the Rector of the Agence Universitaire de la Francophonie (AUF), a multilateral agency which associates more than 700 universities all around the world, between 1999 and 2007.

She is now in charge of higher education, research, training programs and health in the French mission to the Union for the Mediterranean, which is in charge of the realization of shared projects of development between 43 European and Mediterranean countries.