Neil Harrison joins the department’s centre for Fostering and Education as Deputy Director

The department is delighted to welcome Neil Harrison as Senior Researcher in Education and Children’s Social Care and Deputy Director  of the Rees Centre for Fostering and Education.

Neil joins the department from the University of the West of England, where he was an Associate Professor in Education Policy, focusing on issues of social justice in secondary and higher education.  He has had a particular interest in children in care and care leavers, dating from his time as a student welfare manager (2000-03).He conceived and directed one of the first projects designed to support care-experienced students in higher education (2004-06) and was a member of the advisory group for the Buttle Trust Quality Mark.  He also served on Bristol’s Corporate Parenting Panel (2007-15) and as a governor of the Bristol ‘virtual school’ (2013-15).

More broadly, he has been engaged in several recent research projects for the Office for Students.  He has published over 30 journal articles and is an Executive Editor ofTeaching in Higher Education journal, and sits as a member of the Governing Council of the Society for Research into Higher Education.

Originally trained as an applied statistician, he now uses an interdisciplinary and mixed methods approach to research from a broadly critical realist perspective.

To find out more about the Rees Centre for Fostering and Education visit: education.ox.ac.uk/rees-centre/