Xin Xu (许心) is a Departmental Lecturer in Higher/Tertiary Education. Xin teaches on the MSc in Education (Higher Education) programme, and supervises DPhil and MSc dissertations. She is a Fellow of the Higher Education Academy (FHEA).
Xin’s research concentrates on higher/tertiary education and research, including:
- Tertiary education and research policy, governance, and assessment;
- Global dynamics and internationalisation of tertiary education and research, including cross-border academic and knowledge mobility;
- Other areas of research on research, including research culture, value and ethics.
Xin is co-editor of Handbook of Meta-Research (with Alis Oancea, Gemma Derrick, Nuzha Nuseibeh; Edward Elgar, 2024) and Changing Higher Education in East Asia (with Simon Marginson; Bloomsbury, 2022) and author of journal articles and book chapters on the themes noted above. She serves on the editorial board of the International Journal of Educational Research, and on the Research Management Committee of the Centre for Global Higher Education (CGHE). She also convenes the agenda committee of CGHE Oxford.
Projects she currently works on include the ESRC-funded CGHE project ‘Research on Research: the research function and mission of higher education’, SRHE-funded project ‘International academics in mainland China’, and BAICE-funded project ‘Ethical research in international and comparative education during Covid-19’.
In general, Xin’s research aims to:
- Contribute to critical, impactful, cross-cultural and cross-disciplinary research on tertiary education and research;
- Advance conceptualisations of and empirical works on intersectional injustice and inequity in tertiary education, particularly in the changing global context;
- Contribute to cultivating equitable, ethical, collaborative, and resilient futures of tertiary education.
Xin was previously an ESRC Postdoctoral Research Fellow at the University of Oxford. She holds a BA in English Language and Literature from Tsinghua University (First-Class Honours, one-year exchange study at Heidelberg University), MA in Higher Education from Peking University (Distinction), and DPhil in Education from the University of Oxford (Clarendon Scholar, Emerald/HETL Outstanding Doctoral Research Award winner, CIES Globalization & Education SIG Dissertation Award winner).
