Leesa Wheelahan is Professor Emerita, William G. Davis Chair in Community College Leadership, University of Toronto. Before her retirement in mid-2024, she was Professor and Davis Chair in the Department of Leadership, Higher and Adult Education, at the Ontario Institute for Studies in Education, University of Toronto. Prior to commencing at the University of Toronto in 2014, she was an associate professor of adult and vocational education at the University of Melbourne in Australia. She is a past editor of the Journal of Vocational Education and Training.
Her research interests focus on the role of theoretical knowledge in qualifications; equity and social justice in tertiary education; pathways between the sectors of tertiary education and between tertiary education and the labour market; relations between colleges and universities; and tertiary education policy. In recent years, her research has focused on baccalaureate degrees in colleges; marketisation and privatisation in vocational education and in the college sector; and the role that colleges play in society and in their communities.