Photo: Prof. Andrew Azzopardi. Inset: Dr Sandra Scicluna.

The University of Malta would like to thank Prof. Andrew Azzopardi who has served as Dean of the Faculty for Social Wellbeing for the past 8 years, since 2016.

Under his helm, the Faculty "managed to top 1000 students, offer more than 60 different course programmes, increase our resident academics to 60, our researchers from nil to 11, over 20 administrative staff members, circa 150 causal lecturers, and over 100 Ph.D. candidates (who are at different stages in their studies)," Azzopardi expressed in a recent article published on Newspoint.

Growing up, his appointment as Dean would have not been anywhere on his horizons, as the professor admitted to nearly dropping out of school had it not been for the constant support of his parents, after which he managed to achieve one goal after the other, all the way to leading such a prestigious faculty at the University of Malta.

Replacing and continuing on building on the legacy of Prof. Azzopardi as from 1 August 2024 is Dr Sandra Scicluna who since 2020, has been heading the Department of Criminology housed within the same Faculty. Some of Dr Scicluna's research interests include areas related to probation, prisons, juvenile justice, and criminal justice, while also having a wide and varied lecturing portfolio appended to her name. Across the years Dr Scicluna had been involved as the author of various publications whilst also featuring as co-author in other ones.

We wish both academics the very best for their future endeavours!