Professor of Digital Education,
University of Edinburgh
I direct the Centre for Research in Digital Education and am based at the Moray House School of Education and the Edinburgh Futures Institute. I am also Assistant Principal Education Futures – all at the University of Edinburgh, Scotland UK.
My research is critical, creative and exploratory, focused on universities, technology, futures and utopias.
The best way to contact me is via email: see my contact page.
New paper: The Social Value of Anonymity on Campus
The new paper from our project on Yik Yak and the social value of anonymity is now out in Learning, Media and Technology. We used the failure of this anonymous social media app to look at the value of anonymity among student communities. We pushed back on the knee...
Posthumanism: a navigation aid for educators
Students and colleagues have often asked me for a brief introduction to what we mean by 'posthumanism', and the implications this body of thought has for education. So I was pleased when Anne Rohstock got in touch to ask if I could publish something in the new...
Near Future Teaching: video edits
Dip in to see how our community at Edinburgh would like to see a sense of wonder, a focus on community, augmentation and ethical approaches to data included in how we think about our digital future.
Speculative futures for higher education #5:
Justice-driven innovation
Unrest arising from acute societal division and unequal access to wealth prompts radical political change, and pressure to develop new economic, social and governance models.
Universities’ ‘third mission’ – to create and share knowledge to address societal challenges – becomes their first mission. In the large research-intensive universities, disciplinary structures give way to radical transdisciplinarity focused on specific social challenge areas: poverty, climate, equality, governance and justice.
Universities collaborate to build their own open learning platforms as there is a mass move away from for-profit, data-extractive big tech infrastructure. This globally-accessible, digital open learning is woven through local, context-specific autonomous ecoversities and there are many strong, activist partnerships between higher education and community-based movements.
