Sian Bayne profile picture
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.

Some more upcoming talks

These are all in my diary for 2015 now and I'm very much looking forward to them: Keynote for E-MOOCs in Mons, Belgium in May Keynote for CELT annual conference in Galway, June Keynote for EuroCALL 2015 at Universita di Padova, Italy, August  

My inaugural lecture

There's no denying the stressfulness of delivering an inaugural lecture, however now it's done it feels safe to say I enjoyed it (kind of!). Thanks to everyone for all the encouragement, cards, gifts and good feelings. Here's the video:  

Teaching in Higher Education

I'm on the new Executive editorial group of the journal Teaching in Higher Education since last year. Previously, Sue Clegg did an amazing job of leading this journal, and now she's stepped down it's taking 6 of us to fill her shoes. Penny Jane Burke at Roehampton is...

Justice-driven innovation: scenario for the future of higher education

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.

See and download all scenarios here.