Kerstin Tham has been Vice-chancellor of Malmö University since November 2015. She is the head of Malmö University and leads the strategic development of the university. Kerstin Tham is also chair of the university management group and head of the deputy/pro-vice chancellors, university director and the head of university library and the five faculty deans. She also has the overarching responsibility for research questions.

Kerstin Tham is the former deputy-vice-chancellor of the medical university Karolinska Institutet in Stockholm and has a background as a Professor in occupational therapy with a research focus on Aspects of rehabilitation after stroke. Parallel to her leadership positions she has been active as a researcher and teacher and has been the supervisor of 17 PhD students in the field of neurological rehabilitation. She has conducted a series of phenomenological studies, longitudinal studies and a full scale RCT evaluating the effect of a complex intervention aiming to enable agency and participation in everyday life after stroke.