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.
The European University of the Future: bold, integrated, open
Our new position paper from the European university alliance UNA Europa Future UniLab describes the future university as built on a clear statement of values, a commitment to sustainability and a re-thinking of the way we understand university space.
15th Annual Drapers lecture: the future of digital education
In the 2020 Annual Drapers’ Lecture, I talked about the future of digital education and how this traumatic last year might shape and change the way universities teach.
UNA Europa Future University Lab
Since Brexit it’s obviously more important than ever to us to keep our connections with our friends and partners in European universities. Michael Gallagher and I have been working as Edinburgh leads on a UNA Europa programme of work called the Future UniLab, tasked with conceptualising a preferable future for Europe’s universities.
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.
