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.
Fusion teaching here and there: podcast
A recent podcast episode with Martin Hawksey, Emma McAllister and James Lamb, in which we discuss the Edinburgh Futures Institute ‘fusion’ teaching model, is now out.
Futures for universities: stories and speculations
Jen Ross, Michael Gallagher and I wrote a new set of speculative scenarios and short stories for the futures of universities.
Centre for Research in Digital Education 2022 report is out!
Our 2022 Research Centre report celebrates the diversity of our research and its championing of work addressing educational inequalities, digital and data ethics and education futures.
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.
