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Aliya teaches on the Comparative and International Education MSc programme at our Department. She is also a Junior Research Fellow at Lady Margaret Hall. Her research focuses on young people and families’ experiences of education in turbulent times.

For example, educational challenges and rehabilitation during COVID-19 and after the 2022 floods in Pakistan. Her current geographical focus includes ethnically diverse communities (Pakistani and Bangladeshi) in England as well as marginalised communities in Pakistan.

Aliya’s PhD explored the complexities of gender and international education, and her current work focuses on decolonising educational research practices and the experience of Southern-ness globally. Aliya’s specialist areas are parental, mothers’ and young people’s perspectives of and aspirations for education, and their own modalities of agency to fulfil their dreams.

Aliya publishes on the topics of Southern epistemologies and methodologies and teaches on related topics of decolonisation of knowledge production and the politics of representation. She is currently leading multiple projects in England and Pakistan focusing on girls’ education, gender experiences of education, mothers’ perspectives on educating their children, teacher educators, displaced peoples experiences in England and Pakistan.

Aliya is accepting DPhil students interested in these areas:

  • Southern epistemologies and methodologies
  • The capability approach and social justice
  • Negative capability
  • Deconstruction of the silence/violence binary
  • Marginalised peoples’ perspectives
  • Intersectional experiences of marginalisation including those related with gender, race, ethnicity, indigeneity, queerness, disability, class and caste (among others)
  • Decolonisation of knowledge production and representation of the South
  • Qualitative methodologies
  • Theorising from the margins
  • Area focus South Asia particularly Pakistan and Afghanistan
  • Internal displacement

Aliya is the acting Deputy Chair of the United Kingdom Forum for International Education and Training (UKFIET) conference 2023.

Gates Cambridge Biography

 

Research Group Membership

 

Research Projects

1. ‘Understanding the impact of COVID-19 on learning experiences of secondary school going age children among Bangladeshi and Pakistani ethnic minority families’
Funder: Cambridge Humanities Research Grants Scheme
Research team: Professor Nidhi Singal and Dr Aliya Khalid
Status: Complete

2. Gendered Inequalities in Education and Capability Spaces for Women/Girls (and others) in Pakistan: Education and reconstruction after 2022 floods in Pakistan
Funder: British Association for International and Comparative Education (BAICE) Seedcorn Fund
Research team: Aliya Khalid, Soufia Siddiqui, Aditi Chidambaram, Indrani Sigamany
Status: Ongoing

3. Bridging the Local and Global: Women’s Spaces and Collectives’: On becoming caregivers and teachers: Immigrant mothers’ identities and philosophies of education in England during COVID
Team members: Aliya Khalid, Jane Rooney and Ruth Houghton, Lavinia Kamphausen, Kate spencer-Bennet, Alana Farrel
Funder: The British Academy
Status: Complete

4. Collaborative development of faculty for Pakistan undergraduate Teacher Education Colleges: Durbeen and Oxford knowledge exchange project
Team members: Aliya Khalid, Ann Childs, Trevor Mutton, Ian Thompson, Jenni Ingram and Katharine Burn
Funder: Malala Fund
Status: Ongoing

Dr Karen Skilling is an Associate Professor at the Department of Education at the University of Oxford. Karen is currently the Deputy Director of Doctoral Research, Lead of the PGCE mathematics education at the Department of Education, and co-ordinates the Doctoral Teaching Fellows for teacher education. In 2020, Karen established the STEM Discussion Group and also convenes the Subject Pedagogy Group seminars.

Karen’s research interests include: student engagement and motivation in mathematics; integrated STEM learning and project-based STEM activities; and vignette methods. Karen currently sits on the Executive Committee of BSRLM, and is a journal Editor for the Teaching Education Journal (TEJ) and Research in Mathematics Education (RME). Karen has also been co-Editor for several special issues, and a topic study co-lead at the Congress of the European Society for Research in Mathematics Education (CERME). Karen is a Visiting Fellow at King’s College London and been an HEA Fellow since 2016.

Awards include: Australian Postgraduate Award (Industry) (APAI): funded PhD role attached to MYTEAM Project awarded by Australian Research Council (2008 –2012); Postdoctoral Research Fellowship: Department of Education, University of Oxford (2013-14); and nominations for Most Outstanding Contribution to Student Experience at King’s College London (2015, 2016, 2017).

David Mills is an Associate Professor and Director of the Centre for Global Higher Education (CGHE).

His current research focuses on the political economy of the global science system, and its impact on institutional research and publishing cultures in African universities. His most recent book is ‘Who Counts: Ghanaian Academic Publishing and Global Science’, co-written with colleagues from the University of Ghana and Oxford, and available open access from African Minds:  https://www.africanminds.co.za/who-counts/

Trained in Anthropology, and with inter-disciplinary research interests, David uses ethnographic methods to study the inequalities created by global higher education. He is particularly interested in African university research cultures and the role of diamond Open Access scholarly journals within knowledge ecosystems.

He welcomes enquiries from potential doctoral students interested in studying African Higher Education, as well as research and publishing cultures.

Liam Francis Gearon (BA, Hons, MA, MPhil, Cert He, PhD, FHEA, FRSA, Docent) is Associate Professor in Religious Education in the Department of Education, Senior Research Fellow at Harris Manchester College, University of Oxford; Docent, University of Helsinki, Finland; Honorary Senior Research Fellow at the School of Education, University of Birmingham, UK; Conjoint Professor at Newcastle University, Australia; Visiting Professor at the Irish Centre for Catholic Studies, MIC, Limerick, Ireland; Extraordinary Professor, North-West University, South Africa.

Liam Francis Gearon is Founder-Convenor of the Philosophy, Religion, Education Research Group, providing  a unique interdisciplinary contribution to the research culture of the Department of Education at the University of Oxford. The Philosophy, religion and education Research Group specifically forges theoretical and empirical interconnections between the arts, humanities, philosophy and the social sciences through the common focus of education. Contributions of this research group have been made to matters such as: theories of research policy and impact; the cultural value of research in the arts and humanities; research ethics; the intersection of epistemological and ethical domains in research in schools; religion, radicalisation and counter-terrorism in schools and universities; and the creation of distinctive sub-field of study at the interface of education, security and intelligence studies.

A specialist in the interdisciplinary study of religion in education, and particularly noted for the systematic philosophical and history of ideas analysis on the epistemological foundations of religious education, his framing of the paradigms of religion in education – scriptural-theological; phenomenological; psychological-experiential; philosophical-conceptual; social-cultural; political-historical – has contributed new insights to secularisation theory in numerous, some award-winning, monographs, such as MasterClass in Religious Education (Gearon, 2013); On Holy Ground (Gearon, 2015) [2016 Society of Education Studies Book Prize]; Religious Authority and the Arts: Conversations in Political Theology (Gearon, 2015); and State Religious Education and the State of the Religious Life (Gearon and Prud’homme, 2018).

His theorisations of the politicisation and securitisation of religion in education have been the subject of intense international debate for several years. Landmark publications on security in education – ‘The Counter-Terrorist Classroom’ (2013); ‘The Counter-Terrorist Classroom’ (2017); ‘Terrorism and Counter-Terrorism Policy and Research in UK Universities’ (2018): ‘Research Ethics in the Securitised University’ (Gearon and Parsons, 2019) and ‘The Kill Chain’ (Gearon, 2020) – have enabled empirical, methodological and theoretical advances on elites’ theory, the ethics of security and radicalisation research (Gearon and Kuusisto, 2018; Kuusisto and Gearon, 2017; Benjamin, Gearon, Kuusisto, Koirikivi, 2021).

With cognate research interests in security across all phases of education, Liam has over a decade collaboratively developed an interdisciplinary sub-field at the boundary of universities, security and intelligence studies, including research ethics in the securitised university (Gearon and Parsons, 2019). One of the defining outcomes here is Liam’s quarter of a million-word edited collection arising from the international Colloquium at Oriel College he convened in 2017, the Routledge International Handbook of Universities, Security and Intelligence Studies (Gearon, 2019). Interdisciplinary and inter-agency work in this area has included the Nuffield Foundation funded Universities and National Security: Research and Policy Collaborations 2019-2020, with a cross-disciplinary research team of 14 distinguished Co-Investigators.

With a significant Academy of Finland research grant (2018-2022) with Arniika Kuusisto (Stockholm/Helsinki/ Oxford), we oversee the research of two highly productive early career, post-doctoral researchers on radicalisation. This includes notable social and policy impacts such as the development of a national strategy around extremism through education for the Ministry of Justice in Finland (Activities | Growing up radical? | University of Helsinki). With substantial quantitative and qualitative data gathered, the project has already produced a substantial number of quality research outputs (Publications | Growing up radical? | University of Helsinki).

With a doctorate in English literature, Liam has also drawn on arts and humanities theoretical knowledge and methodological approaches to advance what are now intense cross-disciplinary debates around ‘decolonising the curriculum’ in religious education. From a series of foundational papers addressing the relationship between religious education and postcolonial theory – Gearon (2001a) ‘The Imagined Other: Postcolonial Theory and Religious Education’; Gearon (2001b) ‘A Spirituality of Dissent: Religion, Culture and Postcolonial Criticism’; Gearon (2002a) ‘Human Rights and Religious Education: Some Postcolonial Perspectives’ – he has recently led an international team (UK, Finland, Sweden, South Africa) as Guest Editor of the British Journal of Religious Education, for a high profile special issue on religion and education in postcolonial context (Gearon, Kuusisto, Matemba, Benjamin, Du Preez, Koirikivi, and Simmonds, 2020).

As Principal Investigator, Liam has led funded research projects with the Academy of Finland, the Arts and Humanities Research Council, the British Academy, the Leverhulme Trust, the Nuffield Foundation, the Philosophy of Education Society of Great Britain, and the Society for Educational Studies, a career total of funding exceeding £5,000,000, including a £4.5 million grant to establish a centre for citizenship and human rights at the University of Surrey Roehampton.

Doctoral supervision and Graduate teaching

 PGCE Religious Education (Subject lead)

  • Masters in Learning and Teaching (Subject lead)
  • Comparative and International Education

EXTERNAL POSTS

2020- Docent, Helsinki University, Finland

2020- Extraordinary Professor, Faculty of Education, North-West University, South Africa

2019-2021 Visiting Professor, Irish Institute of Catholic Studies, MIC, Limerick, Ireland

2012-2020 Conjoint Professor, Newcastle University, Australia

2019-2023 Honorary Senior Research Fellow, School of Education, University of Birmingham

 

PREVIOUS EXTERNAL POSTS

2011-2018, Adjunct Professor, Australian Catholic University, Australia

2010-2011, Visiting Professor, Faculty of Education, University of Plymouth

2008-2010, Research Professor, Faculty of Education, University of Plymouth

2006-2008, Professor of Education, University of Roehampton

2000-2006, Reader in Education, University of Surrey Roehampton

2006-2008, Senior Fellow, Centre of Excellence in Human Rights, University of Surrey Roehampton

2005-2008, Vice-President, International Human Rights Education Consortium, New York, USA

2001-2005, Director, Centre for Research in Human Rights, University of Surrey, Roehampton

1996-2000, Senior Lecturer, Faculty of Education, Roehampton, London

 

UK RESEARCH COUNCIL PEER REVIEW COLLEGES

AHRC Expert Group on Covid Research Group and Research Grant Panel ‘Introducer’

AHRC Peer Review College (2019 Gold Standard award, for ‘Recognition of significant contributions to the AHRC Peer Review College’)

ESRC Peer Review College

Universities UK Peer Review College Global Challenges Research Fund (GCRF)

 

INTERNATIONAL RESEARCH COUNCIL PEER REVIEWER

Academy of Finland

Austrian Science Fund (FWF)

EU 7th Framework Program for Research
Hong Kong Research Grants Council’s Public Policy Research Fund (PPR)

Irish Research Council

John Templeton Foundation

National Research Foundation, South Africa

 

PROFESSIONAL AND RESEARCH ASSOCIATIONS

Association of University Lecturers in Religion and Education (AULRE, co-founder and former Chair)

British Educational Research Association (BERA)

European Educational Research Association (EERA)

International Seminar on Religious Education and Values (ISREV)

Philosophy of Education Society of Great Britain (PESGB)

Society for Research in Higher Education (SRHE)
Society for Educational Studies (SES)

Also:

Executive (2019-2022) Oxford Intelligence Group, Nuffield College, University of Oxford

Fellow, Higher Education Academy (FHEA)

Fellow, Royal Society of Arts (FRSA)

Cambridge Intelligence Seminar

 

OTHER ADMINISTRATIVE ROLES AT OXFORD

Elected by Congregation to the University of Oxford Prevent Steering Group

Social Sciences Divisional representative of the Permanent Private Halls Supervisory Committee (PPHSC), a senior committee of the University of Oxford overseeing governance of Blackfriars; Campion Hall; Regent’s Park College; St Benet’s; St Stephen’s House; Wycliffe Hall.

Member, Central University Research Ethics Committee (CUREC)

Chair, Department of Education Research Ethics Committee (DREC)

Member, Inter-Divisional Social Sciences and Humanities Research Ethics Committee (IDREC)

Chair, Bodleian Library Education Committee

Member and occasional Chair Social Sciences Divisional Library Committee

Education Advisory Group, Christ Church College, Oxford

 

EDITORSHIP OF INTERNATIONAL JOURNALS

Gearon, L. (Guest editor) (2021) Literature and Security, Special Issue, Text Matters: A Journal of Literature, Theory and Culture, with a planned formal launch at Lodz, Poland.

Gearon, L., (Lead Guest Editor with editorial team) Kuusisto, A., Matemba, Y., Benjamin, S., Du Preez, P., Koirikivi, P., Simmonds, S. (2020) Decolonising the Religious Education Curriculum: International Perspectives in Theory, Research, and Practice, Special Issue, British Journal of Religious Education.

Gearon, L. (Guest Editor) (2019) Special Issue of Religions 10 (1) on Religion, Security, Education.

Gearon, L. and Williams, E. (Guest Editors) (2019) Special Issue of the British Journal of Educational Studies, Writers and their Education, 67 (3), 283–289.

Gearon, L. and Williams, E. (Guest Editors) (2018) Special Issue of Journal of Philosophy of Education on Philosophy, Literature and Education, 52 (4), 577-777.

Gearon, L. (Guest Editor) (2015) British Journal of Educational Studies, Special Issue, Education, Security and Intelligence Studies, 63 (3) 263-411.

Tirri, K., (Finland) Campbell, E. (Canada), Gearon, L. (UK), Lovat, T. (Australia) (Guest Editors) (2012) The Moral Core of Teaching, Education Research International.

Gearon, L. (Guest Editor) (2008) Citizenship, Human Rights and Religion, British Journal of Religious Education, 30 (2) 93-108.

Gearon, L. (Guest Editor) (2006) Children’s Spirituality and Children’s Rights, International Journal of Children’s Spirituality, 11 (2) 193-310.

Simon Marginson is  Emeritus Professor of Higher Education at the University of Oxford, Director of the ESRC/RE Centre for Global Higher Education (CGHE), and Editor-in-Chief of the journal Higher Education.

Simon led the ESRC Centre for Global Higher Education between November 2015 and April 2024. His research is focused primarily on global and international higher education, higher education in East Asia, the public and social contributions of higher education, and higher education and social equality. He is currently preparing an integrated theorisation of higher education. His scholarship is widely published and cited (Google h-index 67 in September 2019). Books include Higher Education and the Common Good (Melbourne University Publishing, 2016); High Participation Systems of Higher Education, edited with Brendan Cantwell and Anna Smolentseva (Oxford University Press, 2018); Changing Higher Education in East Asia, edited with Xin Xu (Bloomsbury, 2022) and Assessing the Contributions of Higher Education, edited with Brendan Cantwell, Daria Platonova and Anna Smolentseva (Edward Elgar, 2023).

Selected Publications
Books
  • Marginson, S. (2016).The Dream is Over: The crisis of Clark Kerr’s California Idea of higher education. Berkeley: University of California Press.
  • Marginson, S. (2016).Higher Education and the Common Good. Melbourne: Melbourne University Publishing.
  • Tran, L. & Marginson, S. (eds.). (2018).Internationalisation of Vietnamese Higher Education. Dordrecht: Springer Nature.
  • Carnoy, M., Froumin, I., Leshukov, O. & Marginson, S. (eds.). (2018) Higher Education in Federal Countries. New Delhi: Sage.
  • Cantwell, B., Marginson, S. & Smolentseva, A. (eds.). (2018) High Participation Systems of Higher Education. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
  • Callender, C., Locke, W. & Marginson, S. (eds.) (2020). Changing Higher Education for a Changing World. London: Bloomsbury.
  • Chattopadhyay, S., Marginson, S. & Varghese, N.V. (eds.) (2021). Changing Higher Education in India. London: Bloomsbury.
  • Marginson, S. & Xu, X. (eds.) (2022). Changing Higher Education in East Asia. (2022). London: Bloomsbury.
  • Marginson, S., Cantwell, B., Platonova, D. & Smolentseva, A. (eds.) (2023). Assessing the contributions of higher education. Cheltenham: Edward Elgar.
Recent Journal Papers
  • Marginson, S. (2016). The worldwide trend to high participation higher education: Dynamics of social stratification in inclusive systems. Higher Education, 72 (4), 413-435.
  • Marginson, S. (2018). Private/public in higher education: A synthesis of economic and political approaches. Studies in Higher Education, 43 (2), 322-337
  • Marginson, S. (2018) Global trends in higher education financing: The United Kingdom. International J. Educational Development, 58, 26-36
  • Marginson, S. (2018) National/global synergy in the development of higher education and science in China since 1978. Frontiers of Education in China, 13 (4), 486–512
  • Marginson, S. (2019) Limitations of human capital theory. Studies in Higher Education, 44 (2), 287-301
  • Marginson, S. and Yang, L. (2022). Individual and collective outcomes of higher education: A comparison of Anglo-American and Chinese approaches. Globalisation, Societies and Education, 20 (1), 1-32.
  • Marginson, S. (2022). ‘All things are in flux’: China in global science. Higher Education, 83 (4), 881-910.
  • Marginson, S. (2022). What drives global science? The four competing narratives. Studies in Higher Education, 47 (8), 1566-1584.
  • Marginson, S. (2022). Global science and national comparisons: Beyond bibliometrics and scientometrics. Comparative Education, 58 (2), 125-146.
  • Marginson, S. (2022). What is global higher education? Oxford Review of Education, 48 (4), 492-517.
  • Marginson S. (2022). Space and scale in higher education: The glonacal heuristic revisited. Higher Education, 84 (6),1365-1395.
  • Marginson, S. & Xu, X. (2023). Hegemony and inequality in global science: Problems of the center-periphery model. Comparative Education Review, 67 (1). https://doi.org/10.1086/722760
  • Marginson, S. (2023). Student self-formation: An emerging paradigm in higher education. Studies in Higher Education, https://doi.org/10.1080/03075079.2023.2252826 (2023).
  • Marginson, S. (2023). Limitations of the leading definition of ‘internationalisation’ of higher education: Is the idea wrong or is the fault in reality? Globalisation, Societies and Education, https://doi.org/10.1080/14767724.2023.2264223
  • Marginson, S. and Yang ,L. (2023). Has the public good been emptied out of higher education in England? Higher Education. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10734-023-01117-6

Maia Chankseliani is Associate Professor of Comparative and International Education at the University of Oxford where she leads a flagship master’s course in Comparative and International Education. She convenes the Comparative and International Education Research Group at the Department of Education.

Within comparative and international education, Maia Chankseliani works at the intersection of tertiary education and development. She researches societal, institutional, and policy forces that shape tertiary education and the potential of tertiary education and research for transforming societies.

Methodologically, she utilises both qualitative and quantitative methods. Her work often combines secondary data analysis with insights gathered through semi-structured interviews and contextualised case studies.

Maia Chankseliani has published four books in the field of comparative and international education: What Happened to the Soviet University? (2022), Building Research Capacity at Universities: Insights from Post-Soviet Countries (2022), Comparing Post-Socialist Transformations: Purposes, Policies, and Practices in Education (2018), and Fairness in Access to Higher Education in a Global Perspective: Reconciling Excellence, Efficiency, and Justice (2013).

She currently leads a major research project examining the impact of international mobility on world development (funded by the U.S. Department of State). Maia Chankseliani has worked on a number of externally funded research projects and consultancies involving the UK Government agencies responsible for education and skills, UKRI/ESRC, British Council, World Bank, Qatar Foundation, the European Commission.

With a background in education research, teaching, policy-making, leadership, and consultancy, Maia Chankseliani brings to her role extensive experience in diverse international settings. This breadth of experience informs her research and enables her to bridge theory and practice.

Maia Chankseliani engages with governments and gives academic and policy-relevant talks nationally and internationally. Her research regularly features in national and international media.

She holds a BA in Philology from Tbilisi State University (Georgia), an Ed. M in International Education Policy from Harvard University (USA), and a PhD in Education from the University of Cambridge (UK).

Maia Chankseliani serves as the Editor-in-Chief of the International Journal of Educational Research.

Aliya teaches on the Comparative and International Education MSc programme at our Department. She is also a Junior Research Fellow at Lady Margaret Hall. Her research focuses on young people and families’ experiences of education in turbulent times.

For example, educational challenges and rehabilitation during COVID-19 and after the 2022 floods in Pakistan. Her current geographical focus includes ethnically diverse communities (Pakistani and Bangladeshi) in England as well as marginalised communities in Pakistan.

Aliya’s PhD explored the complexities of gender and international education, and her current work focuses on decolonising educational research practices and the experience of Southern-ness globally. Aliya’s specialist areas are parental, mothers’ and young people’s perspectives of and aspirations for education, and their own modalities of agency to fulfil their dreams.

Aliya publishes on the topics of Southern epistemologies and methodologies and teaches on related topics of decolonisation of knowledge production and the politics of representation. She is currently leading multiple projects in England and Pakistan focusing on girls’ education, gender experiences of education, mothers’ perspectives on educating their children, teacher educators, displaced peoples experiences in England and Pakistan.

Aliya is accepting DPhil students interested in these areas:

  • Southern epistemologies and methodologies
  • The capability approach and social justice
  • Negative capability
  • Deconstruction of the silence/violence binary
  • Marginalised peoples’ perspectives
  • Intersectional experiences of marginalisation including those related with gender, race, ethnicity, indigeneity, queerness, disability, class and caste (among others)
  • Decolonisation of knowledge production and representation of the South
  • Qualitative methodologies
  • Theorising from the margins
  • Area focus South Asia particularly Pakistan and Afghanistan
  • Internal displacement

Aliya is the acting Deputy Chair of the United Kingdom Forum for International Education and Training (UKFIET) conference 2023.

Gates Cambridge Biography

 

Research Group Membership

 

Research Projects

1. ‘Understanding the impact of COVID-19 on learning experiences of secondary school going age children among Bangladeshi and Pakistani ethnic minority families’
Funder: Cambridge Humanities Research Grants Scheme
Research team: Professor Nidhi Singal and Dr Aliya Khalid
Status: Complete

2. Gendered Inequalities in Education and Capability Spaces for Women/Girls (and others) in Pakistan: Education and reconstruction after 2022 floods in Pakistan
Funder: British Association for International and Comparative Education (BAICE) Seedcorn Fund
Research team: Aliya Khalid, Soufia Siddiqui, Aditi Chidambaram, Indrani Sigamany
Status: Ongoing

3. Bridging the Local and Global: Women’s Spaces and Collectives’: On becoming caregivers and teachers: Immigrant mothers’ identities and philosophies of education in England during COVID
Team members: Aliya Khalid, Jane Rooney and Ruth Houghton, Lavinia Kamphausen, Kate spencer-Bennet, Alana Farrel
Funder: The British Academy
Status: Complete

4. Collaborative development of faculty for Pakistan undergraduate Teacher Education Colleges: Durbeen and Oxford knowledge exchange project
Team members: Aliya Khalid, Ann Childs, Trevor Mutton, Ian Thompson, Jenni Ingram and Katharine Burn
Funder: Malala Fund
Status: Ongoing

Dr Karen Skilling is an Associate Professor at the Department of Education at the University of Oxford. Karen is currently the Deputy Director of Doctoral Research, Lead of the PGCE mathematics education at the Department of Education, and co-ordinates the Doctoral Teaching Fellows for teacher education. In 2020, Karen established the STEM Discussion Group and also convenes the Subject Pedagogy Group seminars.

Karen’s research interests include: student engagement and motivation in mathematics; integrated STEM learning and project-based STEM activities; and vignette methods. Karen currently sits on the Executive Committee of BSRLM, and is a journal Editor for the Teaching Education Journal (TEJ) and Research in Mathematics Education (RME). Karen has also been co-Editor for several special issues, and a topic study co-lead at the Congress of the European Society for Research in Mathematics Education (CERME). Karen is a Visiting Fellow at King’s College London and been an HEA Fellow since 2016.

Awards include: Australian Postgraduate Award (Industry) (APAI): funded PhD role attached to MYTEAM Project awarded by Australian Research Council (2008 –2012); Postdoctoral Research Fellowship: Department of Education, University of Oxford (2013-14); and nominations for Most Outstanding Contribution to Student Experience at King’s College London (2015, 2016, 2017).

David Mills is an Associate Professor and Director of the Centre for Global Higher Education (CGHE).

His current research focuses on the political economy of the global science system, and its impact on institutional research and publishing cultures in African universities. His most recent book is ‘Who Counts: Ghanaian Academic Publishing and Global Science’, co-written with colleagues from the University of Ghana and Oxford, and available open access from African Minds:  https://www.africanminds.co.za/who-counts/

Trained in Anthropology, and with inter-disciplinary research interests, David uses ethnographic methods to study the inequalities created by global higher education. He is particularly interested in African university research cultures and the role of diamond Open Access scholarly journals within knowledge ecosystems.

He welcomes enquiries from potential doctoral students interested in studying African Higher Education, as well as research and publishing cultures.

Liam Francis Gearon (BA, Hons, MA, MPhil, Cert He, PhD, FHEA, FRSA, Docent) is Associate Professor in Religious Education in the Department of Education, Senior Research Fellow at Harris Manchester College, University of Oxford; Docent, University of Helsinki, Finland; Honorary Senior Research Fellow at the School of Education, University of Birmingham, UK; Conjoint Professor at Newcastle University, Australia; Visiting Professor at the Irish Centre for Catholic Studies, MIC, Limerick, Ireland; Extraordinary Professor, North-West University, South Africa.

Liam Francis Gearon is Founder-Convenor of the Philosophy, Religion, Education Research Group, providing  a unique interdisciplinary contribution to the research culture of the Department of Education at the University of Oxford. The Philosophy, religion and education Research Group specifically forges theoretical and empirical interconnections between the arts, humanities, philosophy and the social sciences through the common focus of education. Contributions of this research group have been made to matters such as: theories of research policy and impact; the cultural value of research in the arts and humanities; research ethics; the intersection of epistemological and ethical domains in research in schools; religion, radicalisation and counter-terrorism in schools and universities; and the creation of distinctive sub-field of study at the interface of education, security and intelligence studies.

A specialist in the interdisciplinary study of religion in education, and particularly noted for the systematic philosophical and history of ideas analysis on the epistemological foundations of religious education, his framing of the paradigms of religion in education – scriptural-theological; phenomenological; psychological-experiential; philosophical-conceptual; social-cultural; political-historical – has contributed new insights to secularisation theory in numerous, some award-winning, monographs, such as MasterClass in Religious Education (Gearon, 2013); On Holy Ground (Gearon, 2015) [2016 Society of Education Studies Book Prize]; Religious Authority and the Arts: Conversations in Political Theology (Gearon, 2015); and State Religious Education and the State of the Religious Life (Gearon and Prud’homme, 2018).

His theorisations of the politicisation and securitisation of religion in education have been the subject of intense international debate for several years. Landmark publications on security in education – ‘The Counter-Terrorist Classroom’ (2013); ‘The Counter-Terrorist Classroom’ (2017); ‘Terrorism and Counter-Terrorism Policy and Research in UK Universities’ (2018): ‘Research Ethics in the Securitised University’ (Gearon and Parsons, 2019) and ‘The Kill Chain’ (Gearon, 2020) – have enabled empirical, methodological and theoretical advances on elites’ theory, the ethics of security and radicalisation research (Gearon and Kuusisto, 2018; Kuusisto and Gearon, 2017; Benjamin, Gearon, Kuusisto, Koirikivi, 2021).

With cognate research interests in security across all phases of education, Liam has over a decade collaboratively developed an interdisciplinary sub-field at the boundary of universities, security and intelligence studies, including research ethics in the securitised university (Gearon and Parsons, 2019). One of the defining outcomes here is Liam’s quarter of a million-word edited collection arising from the international Colloquium at Oriel College he convened in 2017, the Routledge International Handbook of Universities, Security and Intelligence Studies (Gearon, 2019). Interdisciplinary and inter-agency work in this area has included the Nuffield Foundation funded Universities and National Security: Research and Policy Collaborations 2019-2020, with a cross-disciplinary research team of 14 distinguished Co-Investigators.

With a significant Academy of Finland research grant (2018-2022) with Arniika Kuusisto (Stockholm/Helsinki/ Oxford), we oversee the research of two highly productive early career, post-doctoral researchers on radicalisation. This includes notable social and policy impacts such as the development of a national strategy around extremism through education for the Ministry of Justice in Finland (Activities | Growing up radical? | University of Helsinki). With substantial quantitative and qualitative data gathered, the project has already produced a substantial number of quality research outputs (Publications | Growing up radical? | University of Helsinki).

With a doctorate in English literature, Liam has also drawn on arts and humanities theoretical knowledge and methodological approaches to advance what are now intense cross-disciplinary debates around ‘decolonising the curriculum’ in religious education. From a series of foundational papers addressing the relationship between religious education and postcolonial theory – Gearon (2001a) ‘The Imagined Other: Postcolonial Theory and Religious Education’; Gearon (2001b) ‘A Spirituality of Dissent: Religion, Culture and Postcolonial Criticism’; Gearon (2002a) ‘Human Rights and Religious Education: Some Postcolonial Perspectives’ – he has recently led an international team (UK, Finland, Sweden, South Africa) as Guest Editor of the British Journal of Religious Education, for a high profile special issue on religion and education in postcolonial context (Gearon, Kuusisto, Matemba, Benjamin, Du Preez, Koirikivi, and Simmonds, 2020).

As Principal Investigator, Liam has led funded research projects with the Academy of Finland, the Arts and Humanities Research Council, the British Academy, the Leverhulme Trust, the Nuffield Foundation, the Philosophy of Education Society of Great Britain, and the Society for Educational Studies, a career total of funding exceeding £5,000,000, including a £4.5 million grant to establish a centre for citizenship and human rights at the University of Surrey Roehampton.

Doctoral supervision and Graduate teaching

 PGCE Religious Education (Subject lead)

  • Masters in Learning and Teaching (Subject lead)
  • Comparative and International Education

EXTERNAL POSTS

2020- Docent, Helsinki University, Finland

2020- Extraordinary Professor, Faculty of Education, North-West University, South Africa

2019-2021 Visiting Professor, Irish Institute of Catholic Studies, MIC, Limerick, Ireland

2012-2020 Conjoint Professor, Newcastle University, Australia

2019-2023 Honorary Senior Research Fellow, School of Education, University of Birmingham

 

PREVIOUS EXTERNAL POSTS

2011-2018, Adjunct Professor, Australian Catholic University, Australia

2010-2011, Visiting Professor, Faculty of Education, University of Plymouth

2008-2010, Research Professor, Faculty of Education, University of Plymouth

2006-2008, Professor of Education, University of Roehampton

2000-2006, Reader in Education, University of Surrey Roehampton

2006-2008, Senior Fellow, Centre of Excellence in Human Rights, University of Surrey Roehampton

2005-2008, Vice-President, International Human Rights Education Consortium, New York, USA

2001-2005, Director, Centre for Research in Human Rights, University of Surrey, Roehampton

1996-2000, Senior Lecturer, Faculty of Education, Roehampton, London

 

UK RESEARCH COUNCIL PEER REVIEW COLLEGES

AHRC Expert Group on Covid Research Group and Research Grant Panel ‘Introducer’

AHRC Peer Review College (2019 Gold Standard award, for ‘Recognition of significant contributions to the AHRC Peer Review College’)

ESRC Peer Review College

Universities UK Peer Review College Global Challenges Research Fund (GCRF)

 

INTERNATIONAL RESEARCH COUNCIL PEER REVIEWER

Academy of Finland

Austrian Science Fund (FWF)

EU 7th Framework Program for Research
Hong Kong Research Grants Council’s Public Policy Research Fund (PPR)

Irish Research Council

John Templeton Foundation

National Research Foundation, South Africa

 

PROFESSIONAL AND RESEARCH ASSOCIATIONS

Association of University Lecturers in Religion and Education (AULRE, co-founder and former Chair)

British Educational Research Association (BERA)

European Educational Research Association (EERA)

International Seminar on Religious Education and Values (ISREV)

Philosophy of Education Society of Great Britain (PESGB)

Society for Research in Higher Education (SRHE)
Society for Educational Studies (SES)

Also:

Executive (2019-2022) Oxford Intelligence Group, Nuffield College, University of Oxford

Fellow, Higher Education Academy (FHEA)

Fellow, Royal Society of Arts (FRSA)

Cambridge Intelligence Seminar

 

OTHER ADMINISTRATIVE ROLES AT OXFORD

Elected by Congregation to the University of Oxford Prevent Steering Group

Social Sciences Divisional representative of the Permanent Private Halls Supervisory Committee (PPHSC), a senior committee of the University of Oxford overseeing governance of Blackfriars; Campion Hall; Regent’s Park College; St Benet’s; St Stephen’s House; Wycliffe Hall.

Member, Central University Research Ethics Committee (CUREC)

Chair, Department of Education Research Ethics Committee (DREC)

Member, Inter-Divisional Social Sciences and Humanities Research Ethics Committee (IDREC)

Chair, Bodleian Library Education Committee

Member and occasional Chair Social Sciences Divisional Library Committee

Education Advisory Group, Christ Church College, Oxford

 

EDITORSHIP OF INTERNATIONAL JOURNALS

Gearon, L. (Guest editor) (2021) Literature and Security, Special Issue, Text Matters: A Journal of Literature, Theory and Culture, with a planned formal launch at Lodz, Poland.

Gearon, L., (Lead Guest Editor with editorial team) Kuusisto, A., Matemba, Y., Benjamin, S., Du Preez, P., Koirikivi, P., Simmonds, S. (2020) Decolonising the Religious Education Curriculum: International Perspectives in Theory, Research, and Practice, Special Issue, British Journal of Religious Education.

Gearon, L. (Guest Editor) (2019) Special Issue of Religions 10 (1) on Religion, Security, Education.

Gearon, L. and Williams, E. (Guest Editors) (2019) Special Issue of the British Journal of Educational Studies, Writers and their Education, 67 (3), 283–289.

Gearon, L. and Williams, E. (Guest Editors) (2018) Special Issue of Journal of Philosophy of Education on Philosophy, Literature and Education, 52 (4), 577-777.

Gearon, L. (Guest Editor) (2015) British Journal of Educational Studies, Special Issue, Education, Security and Intelligence Studies, 63 (3) 263-411.

Tirri, K., (Finland) Campbell, E. (Canada), Gearon, L. (UK), Lovat, T. (Australia) (Guest Editors) (2012) The Moral Core of Teaching, Education Research International.

Gearon, L. (Guest Editor) (2008) Citizenship, Human Rights and Religion, British Journal of Religious Education, 30 (2) 93-108.

Gearon, L. (Guest Editor) (2006) Children’s Spirituality and Children’s Rights, International Journal of Children’s Spirituality, 11 (2) 193-310.

Simon Marginson is  Emeritus Professor of Higher Education at the University of Oxford, Director of the ESRC/RE Centre for Global Higher Education (CGHE), and Editor-in-Chief of the journal Higher Education.

Simon led the ESRC Centre for Global Higher Education between November 2015 and April 2024. His research is focused primarily on global and international higher education, higher education in East Asia, the public and social contributions of higher education, and higher education and social equality. He is currently preparing an integrated theorisation of higher education. His scholarship is widely published and cited (Google h-index 67 in September 2019). Books include Higher Education and the Common Good (Melbourne University Publishing, 2016); High Participation Systems of Higher Education, edited with Brendan Cantwell and Anna Smolentseva (Oxford University Press, 2018); Changing Higher Education in East Asia, edited with Xin Xu (Bloomsbury, 2022) and Assessing the Contributions of Higher Education, edited with Brendan Cantwell, Daria Platonova and Anna Smolentseva (Edward Elgar, 2023).

Selected Publications
Books
  • Marginson, S. (2016).The Dream is Over: The crisis of Clark Kerr’s California Idea of higher education. Berkeley: University of California Press.
  • Marginson, S. (2016).Higher Education and the Common Good. Melbourne: Melbourne University Publishing.
  • Tran, L. & Marginson, S. (eds.). (2018).Internationalisation of Vietnamese Higher Education. Dordrecht: Springer Nature.
  • Carnoy, M., Froumin, I., Leshukov, O. & Marginson, S. (eds.). (2018) Higher Education in Federal Countries. New Delhi: Sage.
  • Cantwell, B., Marginson, S. & Smolentseva, A. (eds.). (2018) High Participation Systems of Higher Education. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
  • Callender, C., Locke, W. & Marginson, S. (eds.) (2020). Changing Higher Education for a Changing World. London: Bloomsbury.
  • Chattopadhyay, S., Marginson, S. & Varghese, N.V. (eds.) (2021). Changing Higher Education in India. London: Bloomsbury.
  • Marginson, S. & Xu, X. (eds.) (2022). Changing Higher Education in East Asia. (2022). London: Bloomsbury.
  • Marginson, S., Cantwell, B., Platonova, D. & Smolentseva, A. (eds.) (2023). Assessing the contributions of higher education. Cheltenham: Edward Elgar.
Recent Journal Papers
  • Marginson, S. (2016). The worldwide trend to high participation higher education: Dynamics of social stratification in inclusive systems. Higher Education, 72 (4), 413-435.
  • Marginson, S. (2018). Private/public in higher education: A synthesis of economic and political approaches. Studies in Higher Education, 43 (2), 322-337
  • Marginson, S. (2018) Global trends in higher education financing: The United Kingdom. International J. Educational Development, 58, 26-36
  • Marginson, S. (2018) National/global synergy in the development of higher education and science in China since 1978. Frontiers of Education in China, 13 (4), 486–512
  • Marginson, S. (2019) Limitations of human capital theory. Studies in Higher Education, 44 (2), 287-301
  • Marginson, S. and Yang, L. (2022). Individual and collective outcomes of higher education: A comparison of Anglo-American and Chinese approaches. Globalisation, Societies and Education, 20 (1), 1-32.
  • Marginson, S. (2022). ‘All things are in flux’: China in global science. Higher Education, 83 (4), 881-910.
  • Marginson, S. (2022). What drives global science? The four competing narratives. Studies in Higher Education, 47 (8), 1566-1584.
  • Marginson, S. (2022). Global science and national comparisons: Beyond bibliometrics and scientometrics. Comparative Education, 58 (2), 125-146.
  • Marginson, S. (2022). What is global higher education? Oxford Review of Education, 48 (4), 492-517.
  • Marginson S. (2022). Space and scale in higher education: The glonacal heuristic revisited. Higher Education, 84 (6),1365-1395.
  • Marginson, S. & Xu, X. (2023). Hegemony and inequality in global science: Problems of the center-periphery model. Comparative Education Review, 67 (1). https://doi.org/10.1086/722760
  • Marginson, S. (2023). Student self-formation: An emerging paradigm in higher education. Studies in Higher Education, https://doi.org/10.1080/03075079.2023.2252826 (2023).
  • Marginson, S. (2023). Limitations of the leading definition of ‘internationalisation’ of higher education: Is the idea wrong or is the fault in reality? Globalisation, Societies and Education, https://doi.org/10.1080/14767724.2023.2264223
  • Marginson, S. and Yang ,L. (2023). Has the public good been emptied out of higher education in England? Higher Education. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10734-023-01117-6

Maia Chankseliani is Associate Professor of Comparative and International Education at the University of Oxford where she leads a flagship master’s course in Comparative and International Education. She convenes the Comparative and International Education Research Group at the Department of Education.

Within comparative and international education, Maia Chankseliani works at the intersection of tertiary education and development. She researches societal, institutional, and policy forces that shape tertiary education and the potential of tertiary education and research for transforming societies.

Methodologically, she utilises both qualitative and quantitative methods. Her work often combines secondary data analysis with insights gathered through semi-structured interviews and contextualised case studies.

Maia Chankseliani has published four books in the field of comparative and international education: What Happened to the Soviet University? (2022), Building Research Capacity at Universities: Insights from Post-Soviet Countries (2022), Comparing Post-Socialist Transformations: Purposes, Policies, and Practices in Education (2018), and Fairness in Access to Higher Education in a Global Perspective: Reconciling Excellence, Efficiency, and Justice (2013).

She currently leads a major research project examining the impact of international mobility on world development (funded by the U.S. Department of State). Maia Chankseliani has worked on a number of externally funded research projects and consultancies involving the UK Government agencies responsible for education and skills, UKRI/ESRC, British Council, World Bank, Qatar Foundation, the European Commission.

With a background in education research, teaching, policy-making, leadership, and consultancy, Maia Chankseliani brings to her role extensive experience in diverse international settings. This breadth of experience informs her research and enables her to bridge theory and practice.

Maia Chankseliani engages with governments and gives academic and policy-relevant talks nationally and internationally. Her research regularly features in national and international media.

She holds a BA in Philology from Tbilisi State University (Georgia), an Ed. M in International Education Policy from Harvard University (USA), and a PhD in Education from the University of Cambridge (UK).

Maia Chankseliani serves as the Editor-in-Chief of the International Journal of Educational Research.

Aliya teaches on the Comparative and International Education MSc programme at our Department. She is also a Junior Research Fellow at Lady Margaret Hall. Her research focuses on young people and families’ experiences of education in turbulent times.

For example, educational challenges and rehabilitation during COVID-19 and after the 2022 floods in Pakistan. Her current geographical focus includes ethnically diverse communities (Pakistani and Bangladeshi) in England as well as marginalised communities in Pakistan.

Aliya’s PhD explored the complexities of gender and international education, and her current work focuses on decolonising educational research practices and the experience of Southern-ness globally. Aliya’s specialist areas are parental, mothers’ and young people’s perspectives of and aspirations for education, and their own modalities of agency to fulfil their dreams.

Aliya publishes on the topics of Southern epistemologies and methodologies and teaches on related topics of decolonisation of knowledge production and the politics of representation. She is currently leading multiple projects in England and Pakistan focusing on girls’ education, gender experiences of education, mothers’ perspectives on educating their children, teacher educators, displaced peoples experiences in England and Pakistan.

Aliya is accepting DPhil students interested in these areas:

  • Southern epistemologies and methodologies
  • The capability approach and social justice
  • Negative capability
  • Deconstruction of the silence/violence binary
  • Marginalised peoples’ perspectives
  • Intersectional experiences of marginalisation including those related with gender, race, ethnicity, indigeneity, queerness, disability, class and caste (among others)
  • Decolonisation of knowledge production and representation of the South
  • Qualitative methodologies
  • Theorising from the margins
  • Area focus South Asia particularly Pakistan and Afghanistan
  • Internal displacement

Aliya is the acting Deputy Chair of the United Kingdom Forum for International Education and Training (UKFIET) conference 2023.

Gates Cambridge Biography

 

Research Group Membership

 

Research Projects

1. ‘Understanding the impact of COVID-19 on learning experiences of secondary school going age children among Bangladeshi and Pakistani ethnic minority families’
Funder: Cambridge Humanities Research Grants Scheme
Research team: Professor Nidhi Singal and Dr Aliya Khalid
Status: Complete

2. Gendered Inequalities in Education and Capability Spaces for Women/Girls (and others) in Pakistan: Education and reconstruction after 2022 floods in Pakistan
Funder: British Association for International and Comparative Education (BAICE) Seedcorn Fund
Research team: Aliya Khalid, Soufia Siddiqui, Aditi Chidambaram, Indrani Sigamany
Status: Ongoing

3. Bridging the Local and Global: Women’s Spaces and Collectives’: On becoming caregivers and teachers: Immigrant mothers’ identities and philosophies of education in England during COVID
Team members: Aliya Khalid, Jane Rooney and Ruth Houghton, Lavinia Kamphausen, Kate spencer-Bennet, Alana Farrel
Funder: The British Academy
Status: Complete

4. Collaborative development of faculty for Pakistan undergraduate Teacher Education Colleges: Durbeen and Oxford knowledge exchange project
Team members: Aliya Khalid, Ann Childs, Trevor Mutton, Ian Thompson, Jenni Ingram and Katharine Burn
Funder: Malala Fund
Status: Ongoing

Dr Karen Skilling is an Associate Professor at the Department of Education at the University of Oxford. Karen is currently the Deputy Director of Doctoral Research, Lead of the PGCE mathematics education at the Department of Education, and co-ordinates the Doctoral Teaching Fellows for teacher education. In 2020, Karen established the STEM Discussion Group and also convenes the Subject Pedagogy Group seminars.

Karen’s research interests include: student engagement and motivation in mathematics; integrated STEM learning and project-based STEM activities; and vignette methods. Karen currently sits on the Executive Committee of BSRLM, and is a journal Editor for the Teaching Education Journal (TEJ) and Research in Mathematics Education (RME). Karen has also been co-Editor for several special issues, and a topic study co-lead at the Congress of the European Society for Research in Mathematics Education (CERME). Karen is a Visiting Fellow at King’s College London and been an HEA Fellow since 2016.

Awards include: Australian Postgraduate Award (Industry) (APAI): funded PhD role attached to MYTEAM Project awarded by Australian Research Council (2008 –2012); Postdoctoral Research Fellowship: Department of Education, University of Oxford (2013-14); and nominations for Most Outstanding Contribution to Student Experience at King’s College London (2015, 2016, 2017).

David Mills is an Associate Professor and Director of the Centre for Global Higher Education (CGHE).

His current research focuses on the political economy of the global science system, and its impact on institutional research and publishing cultures in African universities. His most recent book is ‘Who Counts: Ghanaian Academic Publishing and Global Science’, co-written with colleagues from the University of Ghana and Oxford, and available open access from African Minds:  https://www.africanminds.co.za/who-counts/

Trained in Anthropology, and with inter-disciplinary research interests, David uses ethnographic methods to study the inequalities created by global higher education. He is particularly interested in African university research cultures and the role of diamond Open Access scholarly journals within knowledge ecosystems.

He welcomes enquiries from potential doctoral students interested in studying African Higher Education, as well as research and publishing cultures.

Liam Francis Gearon (BA, Hons, MA, MPhil, Cert He, PhD, FHEA, FRSA, Docent) is Associate Professor in Religious Education in the Department of Education, Senior Research Fellow at Harris Manchester College, University of Oxford; Docent, University of Helsinki, Finland; Honorary Senior Research Fellow at the School of Education, University of Birmingham, UK; Conjoint Professor at Newcastle University, Australia; Visiting Professor at the Irish Centre for Catholic Studies, MIC, Limerick, Ireland; Extraordinary Professor, North-West University, South Africa.

Liam Francis Gearon is Founder-Convenor of the Philosophy, Religion, Education Research Group, providing  a unique interdisciplinary contribution to the research culture of the Department of Education at the University of Oxford. The Philosophy, religion and education Research Group specifically forges theoretical and empirical interconnections between the arts, humanities, philosophy and the social sciences through the common focus of education. Contributions of this research group have been made to matters such as: theories of research policy and impact; the cultural value of research in the arts and humanities; research ethics; the intersection of epistemological and ethical domains in research in schools; religion, radicalisation and counter-terrorism in schools and universities; and the creation of distinctive sub-field of study at the interface of education, security and intelligence studies.

A specialist in the interdisciplinary study of religion in education, and particularly noted for the systematic philosophical and history of ideas analysis on the epistemological foundations of religious education, his framing of the paradigms of religion in education – scriptural-theological; phenomenological; psychological-experiential; philosophical-conceptual; social-cultural; political-historical – has contributed new insights to secularisation theory in numerous, some award-winning, monographs, such as MasterClass in Religious Education (Gearon, 2013); On Holy Ground (Gearon, 2015) [2016 Society of Education Studies Book Prize]; Religious Authority and the Arts: Conversations in Political Theology (Gearon, 2015); and State Religious Education and the State of the Religious Life (Gearon and Prud’homme, 2018).

His theorisations of the politicisation and securitisation of religion in education have been the subject of intense international debate for several years. Landmark publications on security in education – ‘The Counter-Terrorist Classroom’ (2013); ‘The Counter-Terrorist Classroom’ (2017); ‘Terrorism and Counter-Terrorism Policy and Research in UK Universities’ (2018): ‘Research Ethics in the Securitised University’ (Gearon and Parsons, 2019) and ‘The Kill Chain’ (Gearon, 2020) – have enabled empirical, methodological and theoretical advances on elites’ theory, the ethics of security and radicalisation research (Gearon and Kuusisto, 2018; Kuusisto and Gearon, 2017; Benjamin, Gearon, Kuusisto, Koirikivi, 2021).

With cognate research interests in security across all phases of education, Liam has over a decade collaboratively developed an interdisciplinary sub-field at the boundary of universities, security and intelligence studies, including research ethics in the securitised university (Gearon and Parsons, 2019). One of the defining outcomes here is Liam’s quarter of a million-word edited collection arising from the international Colloquium at Oriel College he convened in 2017, the Routledge International Handbook of Universities, Security and Intelligence Studies (Gearon, 2019). Interdisciplinary and inter-agency work in this area has included the Nuffield Foundation funded Universities and National Security: Research and Policy Collaborations 2019-2020, with a cross-disciplinary research team of 14 distinguished Co-Investigators.

With a significant Academy of Finland research grant (2018-2022) with Arniika Kuusisto (Stockholm/Helsinki/ Oxford), we oversee the research of two highly productive early career, post-doctoral researchers on radicalisation. This includes notable social and policy impacts such as the development of a national strategy around extremism through education for the Ministry of Justice in Finland (Activities | Growing up radical? | University of Helsinki). With substantial quantitative and qualitative data gathered, the project has already produced a substantial number of quality research outputs (Publications | Growing up radical? | University of Helsinki).

With a doctorate in English literature, Liam has also drawn on arts and humanities theoretical knowledge and methodological approaches to advance what are now intense cross-disciplinary debates around ‘decolonising the curriculum’ in religious education. From a series of foundational papers addressing the relationship between religious education and postcolonial theory – Gearon (2001a) ‘The Imagined Other: Postcolonial Theory and Religious Education’; Gearon (2001b) ‘A Spirituality of Dissent: Religion, Culture and Postcolonial Criticism’; Gearon (2002a) ‘Human Rights and Religious Education: Some Postcolonial Perspectives’ – he has recently led an international team (UK, Finland, Sweden, South Africa) as Guest Editor of the British Journal of Religious Education, for a high profile special issue on religion and education in postcolonial context (Gearon, Kuusisto, Matemba, Benjamin, Du Preez, Koirikivi, and Simmonds, 2020).

As Principal Investigator, Liam has led funded research projects with the Academy of Finland, the Arts and Humanities Research Council, the British Academy, the Leverhulme Trust, the Nuffield Foundation, the Philosophy of Education Society of Great Britain, and the Society for Educational Studies, a career total of funding exceeding £5,000,000, including a £4.5 million grant to establish a centre for citizenship and human rights at the University of Surrey Roehampton.

Doctoral supervision and Graduate teaching

 PGCE Religious Education (Subject lead)

  • Masters in Learning and Teaching (Subject lead)
  • Comparative and International Education

EXTERNAL POSTS

2020- Docent, Helsinki University, Finland

2020- Extraordinary Professor, Faculty of Education, North-West University, South Africa

2019-2021 Visiting Professor, Irish Institute of Catholic Studies, MIC, Limerick, Ireland

2012-2020 Conjoint Professor, Newcastle University, Australia

2019-2023 Honorary Senior Research Fellow, School of Education, University of Birmingham

 

PREVIOUS EXTERNAL POSTS

2011-2018, Adjunct Professor, Australian Catholic University, Australia

2010-2011, Visiting Professor, Faculty of Education, University of Plymouth

2008-2010, Research Professor, Faculty of Education, University of Plymouth

2006-2008, Professor of Education, University of Roehampton

2000-2006, Reader in Education, University of Surrey Roehampton

2006-2008, Senior Fellow, Centre of Excellence in Human Rights, University of Surrey Roehampton

2005-2008, Vice-President, International Human Rights Education Consortium, New York, USA

2001-2005, Director, Centre for Research in Human Rights, University of Surrey, Roehampton

1996-2000, Senior Lecturer, Faculty of Education, Roehampton, London

 

UK RESEARCH COUNCIL PEER REVIEW COLLEGES

AHRC Expert Group on Covid Research Group and Research Grant Panel ‘Introducer’

AHRC Peer Review College (2019 Gold Standard award, for ‘Recognition of significant contributions to the AHRC Peer Review College’)

ESRC Peer Review College

Universities UK Peer Review College Global Challenges Research Fund (GCRF)

 

INTERNATIONAL RESEARCH COUNCIL PEER REVIEWER

Academy of Finland

Austrian Science Fund (FWF)

EU 7th Framework Program for Research
Hong Kong Research Grants Council’s Public Policy Research Fund (PPR)

Irish Research Council

John Templeton Foundation

National Research Foundation, South Africa

 

PROFESSIONAL AND RESEARCH ASSOCIATIONS

Association of University Lecturers in Religion and Education (AULRE, co-founder and former Chair)

British Educational Research Association (BERA)

European Educational Research Association (EERA)

International Seminar on Religious Education and Values (ISREV)

Philosophy of Education Society of Great Britain (PESGB)

Society for Research in Higher Education (SRHE)
Society for Educational Studies (SES)

Also:

Executive (2019-2022) Oxford Intelligence Group, Nuffield College, University of Oxford

Fellow, Higher Education Academy (FHEA)

Fellow, Royal Society of Arts (FRSA)

Cambridge Intelligence Seminar

 

OTHER ADMINISTRATIVE ROLES AT OXFORD

Elected by Congregation to the University of Oxford Prevent Steering Group

Social Sciences Divisional representative of the Permanent Private Halls Supervisory Committee (PPHSC), a senior committee of the University of Oxford overseeing governance of Blackfriars; Campion Hall; Regent’s Park College; St Benet’s; St Stephen’s House; Wycliffe Hall.

Member, Central University Research Ethics Committee (CUREC)

Chair, Department of Education Research Ethics Committee (DREC)

Member, Inter-Divisional Social Sciences and Humanities Research Ethics Committee (IDREC)

Chair, Bodleian Library Education Committee

Member and occasional Chair Social Sciences Divisional Library Committee

Education Advisory Group, Christ Church College, Oxford

 

EDITORSHIP OF INTERNATIONAL JOURNALS

Gearon, L. (Guest editor) (2021) Literature and Security, Special Issue, Text Matters: A Journal of Literature, Theory and Culture, with a planned formal launch at Lodz, Poland.

Gearon, L., (Lead Guest Editor with editorial team) Kuusisto, A., Matemba, Y., Benjamin, S., Du Preez, P., Koirikivi, P., Simmonds, S. (2020) Decolonising the Religious Education Curriculum: International Perspectives in Theory, Research, and Practice, Special Issue, British Journal of Religious Education.

Gearon, L. (Guest Editor) (2019) Special Issue of Religions 10 (1) on Religion, Security, Education.

Gearon, L. and Williams, E. (Guest Editors) (2019) Special Issue of the British Journal of Educational Studies, Writers and their Education, 67 (3), 283–289.

Gearon, L. and Williams, E. (Guest Editors) (2018) Special Issue of Journal of Philosophy of Education on Philosophy, Literature and Education, 52 (4), 577-777.

Gearon, L. (Guest Editor) (2015) British Journal of Educational Studies, Special Issue, Education, Security and Intelligence Studies, 63 (3) 263-411.

Tirri, K., (Finland) Campbell, E. (Canada), Gearon, L. (UK), Lovat, T. (Australia) (Guest Editors) (2012) The Moral Core of Teaching, Education Research International.

Gearon, L. (Guest Editor) (2008) Citizenship, Human Rights and Religion, British Journal of Religious Education, 30 (2) 93-108.

Gearon, L. (Guest Editor) (2006) Children’s Spirituality and Children’s Rights, International Journal of Children’s Spirituality, 11 (2) 193-310.

Simon Marginson is  Emeritus Professor of Higher Education at the University of Oxford, Director of the ESRC/RE Centre for Global Higher Education (CGHE), and Editor-in-Chief of the journal Higher Education.

Simon led the ESRC Centre for Global Higher Education between November 2015 and April 2024. His research is focused primarily on global and international higher education, higher education in East Asia, the public and social contributions of higher education, and higher education and social equality. He is currently preparing an integrated theorisation of higher education. His scholarship is widely published and cited (Google h-index 67 in September 2019). Books include Higher Education and the Common Good (Melbourne University Publishing, 2016); High Participation Systems of Higher Education, edited with Brendan Cantwell and Anna Smolentseva (Oxford University Press, 2018); Changing Higher Education in East Asia, edited with Xin Xu (Bloomsbury, 2022) and Assessing the Contributions of Higher Education, edited with Brendan Cantwell, Daria Platonova and Anna Smolentseva (Edward Elgar, 2023).

Selected Publications
Books
  • Marginson, S. (2016).The Dream is Over: The crisis of Clark Kerr’s California Idea of higher education. Berkeley: University of California Press.
  • Marginson, S. (2016).Higher Education and the Common Good. Melbourne: Melbourne University Publishing.
  • Tran, L. & Marginson, S. (eds.). (2018).Internationalisation of Vietnamese Higher Education. Dordrecht: Springer Nature.
  • Carnoy, M., Froumin, I., Leshukov, O. & Marginson, S. (eds.). (2018) Higher Education in Federal Countries. New Delhi: Sage.
  • Cantwell, B., Marginson, S. & Smolentseva, A. (eds.). (2018) High Participation Systems of Higher Education. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
  • Callender, C., Locke, W. & Marginson, S. (eds.) (2020). Changing Higher Education for a Changing World. London: Bloomsbury.
  • Chattopadhyay, S., Marginson, S. & Varghese, N.V. (eds.) (2021). Changing Higher Education in India. London: Bloomsbury.
  • Marginson, S. & Xu, X. (eds.) (2022). Changing Higher Education in East Asia. (2022). London: Bloomsbury.
  • Marginson, S., Cantwell, B., Platonova, D. & Smolentseva, A. (eds.) (2023). Assessing the contributions of higher education. Cheltenham: Edward Elgar.
Recent Journal Papers
  • Marginson, S. (2016). The worldwide trend to high participation higher education: Dynamics of social stratification in inclusive systems. Higher Education, 72 (4), 413-435.
  • Marginson, S. (2018). Private/public in higher education: A synthesis of economic and political approaches. Studies in Higher Education, 43 (2), 322-337
  • Marginson, S. (2018) Global trends in higher education financing: The United Kingdom. International J. Educational Development, 58, 26-36
  • Marginson, S. (2018) National/global synergy in the development of higher education and science in China since 1978. Frontiers of Education in China, 13 (4), 486–512
  • Marginson, S. (2019) Limitations of human capital theory. Studies in Higher Education, 44 (2), 287-301
  • Marginson, S. and Yang, L. (2022). Individual and collective outcomes of higher education: A comparison of Anglo-American and Chinese approaches. Globalisation, Societies and Education, 20 (1), 1-32.
  • Marginson, S. (2022). ‘All things are in flux’: China in global science. Higher Education, 83 (4), 881-910.
  • Marginson, S. (2022). What drives global science? The four competing narratives. Studies in Higher Education, 47 (8), 1566-1584.
  • Marginson, S. (2022). Global science and national comparisons: Beyond bibliometrics and scientometrics. Comparative Education, 58 (2), 125-146.
  • Marginson, S. (2022). What is global higher education? Oxford Review of Education, 48 (4), 492-517.
  • Marginson S. (2022). Space and scale in higher education: The glonacal heuristic revisited. Higher Education, 84 (6),1365-1395.
  • Marginson, S. & Xu, X. (2023). Hegemony and inequality in global science: Problems of the center-periphery model. Comparative Education Review, 67 (1). https://doi.org/10.1086/722760
  • Marginson, S. (2023). Student self-formation: An emerging paradigm in higher education. Studies in Higher Education, https://doi.org/10.1080/03075079.2023.2252826 (2023).
  • Marginson, S. (2023). Limitations of the leading definition of ‘internationalisation’ of higher education: Is the idea wrong or is the fault in reality? Globalisation, Societies and Education, https://doi.org/10.1080/14767724.2023.2264223
  • Marginson, S. and Yang ,L. (2023). Has the public good been emptied out of higher education in England? Higher Education. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10734-023-01117-6

Maia Chankseliani is Associate Professor of Comparative and International Education at the University of Oxford where she leads a flagship master’s course in Comparative and International Education. She convenes the Comparative and International Education Research Group at the Department of Education.

Within comparative and international education, Maia Chankseliani works at the intersection of tertiary education and development. She researches societal, institutional, and policy forces that shape tertiary education and the potential of tertiary education and research for transforming societies.

Methodologically, she utilises both qualitative and quantitative methods. Her work often combines secondary data analysis with insights gathered through semi-structured interviews and contextualised case studies.

Maia Chankseliani has published four books in the field of comparative and international education: What Happened to the Soviet University? (2022), Building Research Capacity at Universities: Insights from Post-Soviet Countries (2022), Comparing Post-Socialist Transformations: Purposes, Policies, and Practices in Education (2018), and Fairness in Access to Higher Education in a Global Perspective: Reconciling Excellence, Efficiency, and Justice (2013).

She currently leads a major research project examining the impact of international mobility on world development (funded by the U.S. Department of State). Maia Chankseliani has worked on a number of externally funded research projects and consultancies involving the UK Government agencies responsible for education and skills, UKRI/ESRC, British Council, World Bank, Qatar Foundation, the European Commission.

With a background in education research, teaching, policy-making, leadership, and consultancy, Maia Chankseliani brings to her role extensive experience in diverse international settings. This breadth of experience informs her research and enables her to bridge theory and practice.

Maia Chankseliani engages with governments and gives academic and policy-relevant talks nationally and internationally. Her research regularly features in national and international media.

She holds a BA in Philology from Tbilisi State University (Georgia), an Ed. M in International Education Policy from Harvard University (USA), and a PhD in Education from the University of Cambridge (UK).

Maia Chankseliani serves as the Editor-in-Chief of the International Journal of Educational Research.

Aliya teaches on the Comparative and International Education MSc programme at our Department. She is also a Junior Research Fellow at Lady Margaret Hall. Her research focuses on young people and families’ experiences of education in turbulent times.

For example, educational challenges and rehabilitation during COVID-19 and after the 2022 floods in Pakistan. Her current geographical focus includes ethnically diverse communities (Pakistani and Bangladeshi) in England as well as marginalised communities in Pakistan.

Aliya’s PhD explored the complexities of gender and international education, and her current work focuses on decolonising educational research practices and the experience of Southern-ness globally. Aliya’s specialist areas are parental, mothers’ and young people’s perspectives of and aspirations for education, and their own modalities of agency to fulfil their dreams.

Aliya publishes on the topics of Southern epistemologies and methodologies and teaches on related topics of decolonisation of knowledge production and the politics of representation. She is currently leading multiple projects in England and Pakistan focusing on girls’ education, gender experiences of education, mothers’ perspectives on educating their children, teacher educators, displaced peoples experiences in England and Pakistan.

Aliya is accepting DPhil students interested in these areas:

  • Southern epistemologies and methodologies
  • The capability approach and social justice
  • Negative capability
  • Deconstruction of the silence/violence binary
  • Marginalised peoples’ perspectives
  • Intersectional experiences of marginalisation including those related with gender, race, ethnicity, indigeneity, queerness, disability, class and caste (among others)
  • Decolonisation of knowledge production and representation of the South
  • Qualitative methodologies
  • Theorising from the margins
  • Area focus South Asia particularly Pakistan and Afghanistan
  • Internal displacement

Aliya is the acting Deputy Chair of the United Kingdom Forum for International Education and Training (UKFIET) conference 2023.

Gates Cambridge Biography

 

Research Group Membership

 

Research Projects

1. ‘Understanding the impact of COVID-19 on learning experiences of secondary school going age children among Bangladeshi and Pakistani ethnic minority families’
Funder: Cambridge Humanities Research Grants Scheme
Research team: Professor Nidhi Singal and Dr Aliya Khalid
Status: Complete

2. Gendered Inequalities in Education and Capability Spaces for Women/Girls (and others) in Pakistan: Education and reconstruction after 2022 floods in Pakistan
Funder: British Association for International and Comparative Education (BAICE) Seedcorn Fund
Research team: Aliya Khalid, Soufia Siddiqui, Aditi Chidambaram, Indrani Sigamany
Status: Ongoing

3. Bridging the Local and Global: Women’s Spaces and Collectives’: On becoming caregivers and teachers: Immigrant mothers’ identities and philosophies of education in England during COVID
Team members: Aliya Khalid, Jane Rooney and Ruth Houghton, Lavinia Kamphausen, Kate spencer-Bennet, Alana Farrel
Funder: The British Academy
Status: Complete

4. Collaborative development of faculty for Pakistan undergraduate Teacher Education Colleges: Durbeen and Oxford knowledge exchange project
Team members: Aliya Khalid, Ann Childs, Trevor Mutton, Ian Thompson, Jenni Ingram and Katharine Burn
Funder: Malala Fund
Status: Ongoing

Dr Karen Skilling is an Associate Professor at the Department of Education at the University of Oxford. Karen is currently the Deputy Director of Doctoral Research, Lead of the PGCE mathematics education at the Department of Education, and co-ordinates the Doctoral Teaching Fellows for teacher education. In 2020, Karen established the STEM Discussion Group and also convenes the Subject Pedagogy Group seminars.

Karen’s research interests include: student engagement and motivation in mathematics; integrated STEM learning and project-based STEM activities; and vignette methods. Karen currently sits on the Executive Committee of BSRLM, and is a journal Editor for the Teaching Education Journal (TEJ) and Research in Mathematics Education (RME). Karen has also been co-Editor for several special issues, and a topic study co-lead at the Congress of the European Society for Research in Mathematics Education (CERME). Karen is a Visiting Fellow at King’s College London and been an HEA Fellow since 2016.

Awards include: Australian Postgraduate Award (Industry) (APAI): funded PhD role attached to MYTEAM Project awarded by Australian Research Council (2008 –2012); Postdoctoral Research Fellowship: Department of Education, University of Oxford (2013-14); and nominations for Most Outstanding Contribution to Student Experience at King’s College London (2015, 2016, 2017).

David Mills is an Associate Professor and Director of the Centre for Global Higher Education (CGHE).

His current research focuses on the political economy of the global science system, and its impact on institutional research and publishing cultures in African universities. His most recent book is ‘Who Counts: Ghanaian Academic Publishing and Global Science’, co-written with colleagues from the University of Ghana and Oxford, and available open access from African Minds:  https://www.africanminds.co.za/who-counts/

Trained in Anthropology, and with inter-disciplinary research interests, David uses ethnographic methods to study the inequalities created by global higher education. He is particularly interested in African university research cultures and the role of diamond Open Access scholarly journals within knowledge ecosystems.

He welcomes enquiries from potential doctoral students interested in studying African Higher Education, as well as research and publishing cultures.

Liam Francis Gearon (BA, Hons, MA, MPhil, Cert He, PhD, FHEA, FRSA, Docent) is Associate Professor in Religious Education in the Department of Education, Senior Research Fellow at Harris Manchester College, University of Oxford; Docent, University of Helsinki, Finland; Honorary Senior Research Fellow at the School of Education, University of Birmingham, UK; Conjoint Professor at Newcastle University, Australia; Visiting Professor at the Irish Centre for Catholic Studies, MIC, Limerick, Ireland; Extraordinary Professor, North-West University, South Africa.

Liam Francis Gearon is Founder-Convenor of the Philosophy, Religion, Education Research Group, providing  a unique interdisciplinary contribution to the research culture of the Department of Education at the University of Oxford. The Philosophy, religion and education Research Group specifically forges theoretical and empirical interconnections between the arts, humanities, philosophy and the social sciences through the common focus of education. Contributions of this research group have been made to matters such as: theories of research policy and impact; the cultural value of research in the arts and humanities; research ethics; the intersection of epistemological and ethical domains in research in schools; religion, radicalisation and counter-terrorism in schools and universities; and the creation of distinctive sub-field of study at the interface of education, security and intelligence studies.

A specialist in the interdisciplinary study of religion in education, and particularly noted for the systematic philosophical and history of ideas analysis on the epistemological foundations of religious education, his framing of the paradigms of religion in education – scriptural-theological; phenomenological; psychological-experiential; philosophical-conceptual; social-cultural; political-historical – has contributed new insights to secularisation theory in numerous, some award-winning, monographs, such as MasterClass in Religious Education (Gearon, 2013); On Holy Ground (Gearon, 2015) [2016 Society of Education Studies Book Prize]; Religious Authority and the Arts: Conversations in Political Theology (Gearon, 2015); and State Religious Education and the State of the Religious Life (Gearon and Prud’homme, 2018).

His theorisations of the politicisation and securitisation of religion in education have been the subject of intense international debate for several years. Landmark publications on security in education – ‘The Counter-Terrorist Classroom’ (2013); ‘The Counter-Terrorist Classroom’ (2017); ‘Terrorism and Counter-Terrorism Policy and Research in UK Universities’ (2018): ‘Research Ethics in the Securitised University’ (Gearon and Parsons, 2019) and ‘The Kill Chain’ (Gearon, 2020) – have enabled empirical, methodological and theoretical advances on elites’ theory, the ethics of security and radicalisation research (Gearon and Kuusisto, 2018; Kuusisto and Gearon, 2017; Benjamin, Gearon, Kuusisto, Koirikivi, 2021).

With cognate research interests in security across all phases of education, Liam has over a decade collaboratively developed an interdisciplinary sub-field at the boundary of universities, security and intelligence studies, including research ethics in the securitised university (Gearon and Parsons, 2019). One of the defining outcomes here is Liam’s quarter of a million-word edited collection arising from the international Colloquium at Oriel College he convened in 2017, the Routledge International Handbook of Universities, Security and Intelligence Studies (Gearon, 2019). Interdisciplinary and inter-agency work in this area has included the Nuffield Foundation funded Universities and National Security: Research and Policy Collaborations 2019-2020, with a cross-disciplinary research team of 14 distinguished Co-Investigators.

With a significant Academy of Finland research grant (2018-2022) with Arniika Kuusisto (Stockholm/Helsinki/ Oxford), we oversee the research of two highly productive early career, post-doctoral researchers on radicalisation. This includes notable social and policy impacts such as the development of a national strategy around extremism through education for the Ministry of Justice in Finland (Activities | Growing up radical? | University of Helsinki). With substantial quantitative and qualitative data gathered, the project has already produced a substantial number of quality research outputs (Publications | Growing up radical? | University of Helsinki).

With a doctorate in English literature, Liam has also drawn on arts and humanities theoretical knowledge and methodological approaches to advance what are now intense cross-disciplinary debates around ‘decolonising the curriculum’ in religious education. From a series of foundational papers addressing the relationship between religious education and postcolonial theory – Gearon (2001a) ‘The Imagined Other: Postcolonial Theory and Religious Education’; Gearon (2001b) ‘A Spirituality of Dissent: Religion, Culture and Postcolonial Criticism’; Gearon (2002a) ‘Human Rights and Religious Education: Some Postcolonial Perspectives’ – he has recently led an international team (UK, Finland, Sweden, South Africa) as Guest Editor of the British Journal of Religious Education, for a high profile special issue on religion and education in postcolonial context (Gearon, Kuusisto, Matemba, Benjamin, Du Preez, Koirikivi, and Simmonds, 2020).

As Principal Investigator, Liam has led funded research projects with the Academy of Finland, the Arts and Humanities Research Council, the British Academy, the Leverhulme Trust, the Nuffield Foundation, the Philosophy of Education Society of Great Britain, and the Society for Educational Studies, a career total of funding exceeding £5,000,000, including a £4.5 million grant to establish a centre for citizenship and human rights at the University of Surrey Roehampton.

Doctoral supervision and Graduate teaching

 PGCE Religious Education (Subject lead)

  • Masters in Learning and Teaching (Subject lead)
  • Comparative and International Education

EXTERNAL POSTS

2020- Docent, Helsinki University, Finland

2020- Extraordinary Professor, Faculty of Education, North-West University, South Africa

2019-2021 Visiting Professor, Irish Institute of Catholic Studies, MIC, Limerick, Ireland

2012-2020 Conjoint Professor, Newcastle University, Australia

2019-2023 Honorary Senior Research Fellow, School of Education, University of Birmingham

 

PREVIOUS EXTERNAL POSTS

2011-2018, Adjunct Professor, Australian Catholic University, Australia

2010-2011, Visiting Professor, Faculty of Education, University of Plymouth

2008-2010, Research Professor, Faculty of Education, University of Plymouth

2006-2008, Professor of Education, University of Roehampton

2000-2006, Reader in Education, University of Surrey Roehampton

2006-2008, Senior Fellow, Centre of Excellence in Human Rights, University of Surrey Roehampton

2005-2008, Vice-President, International Human Rights Education Consortium, New York, USA

2001-2005, Director, Centre for Research in Human Rights, University of Surrey, Roehampton

1996-2000, Senior Lecturer, Faculty of Education, Roehampton, London

 

UK RESEARCH COUNCIL PEER REVIEW COLLEGES

AHRC Expert Group on Covid Research Group and Research Grant Panel ‘Introducer’

AHRC Peer Review College (2019 Gold Standard award, for ‘Recognition of significant contributions to the AHRC Peer Review College’)

ESRC Peer Review College

Universities UK Peer Review College Global Challenges Research Fund (GCRF)

 

INTERNATIONAL RESEARCH COUNCIL PEER REVIEWER

Academy of Finland

Austrian Science Fund (FWF)

EU 7th Framework Program for Research
Hong Kong Research Grants Council’s Public Policy Research Fund (PPR)

Irish Research Council

John Templeton Foundation

National Research Foundation, South Africa

 

PROFESSIONAL AND RESEARCH ASSOCIATIONS

Association of University Lecturers in Religion and Education (AULRE, co-founder and former Chair)

British Educational Research Association (BERA)

European Educational Research Association (EERA)

International Seminar on Religious Education and Values (ISREV)

Philosophy of Education Society of Great Britain (PESGB)

Society for Research in Higher Education (SRHE)
Society for Educational Studies (SES)

Also:

Executive (2019-2022) Oxford Intelligence Group, Nuffield College, University of Oxford

Fellow, Higher Education Academy (FHEA)

Fellow, Royal Society of Arts (FRSA)

Cambridge Intelligence Seminar

 

OTHER ADMINISTRATIVE ROLES AT OXFORD

Elected by Congregation to the University of Oxford Prevent Steering Group

Social Sciences Divisional representative of the Permanent Private Halls Supervisory Committee (PPHSC), a senior committee of the University of Oxford overseeing governance of Blackfriars; Campion Hall; Regent’s Park College; St Benet’s; St Stephen’s House; Wycliffe Hall.

Member, Central University Research Ethics Committee (CUREC)

Chair, Department of Education Research Ethics Committee (DREC)

Member, Inter-Divisional Social Sciences and Humanities Research Ethics Committee (IDREC)

Chair, Bodleian Library Education Committee

Member and occasional Chair Social Sciences Divisional Library Committee

Education Advisory Group, Christ Church College, Oxford

 

EDITORSHIP OF INTERNATIONAL JOURNALS

Gearon, L. (Guest editor) (2021) Literature and Security, Special Issue, Text Matters: A Journal of Literature, Theory and Culture, with a planned formal launch at Lodz, Poland.

Gearon, L., (Lead Guest Editor with editorial team) Kuusisto, A., Matemba, Y., Benjamin, S., Du Preez, P., Koirikivi, P., Simmonds, S. (2020) Decolonising the Religious Education Curriculum: International Perspectives in Theory, Research, and Practice, Special Issue, British Journal of Religious Education.

Gearon, L. (Guest Editor) (2019) Special Issue of Religions 10 (1) on Religion, Security, Education.

Gearon, L. and Williams, E. (Guest Editors) (2019) Special Issue of the British Journal of Educational Studies, Writers and their Education, 67 (3), 283–289.

Gearon, L. and Williams, E. (Guest Editors) (2018) Special Issue of Journal of Philosophy of Education on Philosophy, Literature and Education, 52 (4), 577-777.

Gearon, L. (Guest Editor) (2015) British Journal of Educational Studies, Special Issue, Education, Security and Intelligence Studies, 63 (3) 263-411.

Tirri, K., (Finland) Campbell, E. (Canada), Gearon, L. (UK), Lovat, T. (Australia) (Guest Editors) (2012) The Moral Core of Teaching, Education Research International.

Gearon, L. (Guest Editor) (2008) Citizenship, Human Rights and Religion, British Journal of Religious Education, 30 (2) 93-108.

Gearon, L. (Guest Editor) (2006) Children’s Spirituality and Children’s Rights, International Journal of Children’s Spirituality, 11 (2) 193-310.

Simon Marginson is  Emeritus Professor of Higher Education at the University of Oxford, Director of the ESRC/RE Centre for Global Higher Education (CGHE), and Editor-in-Chief of the journal Higher Education.

Simon led the ESRC Centre for Global Higher Education between November 2015 and April 2024. His research is focused primarily on global and international higher education, higher education in East Asia, the public and social contributions of higher education, and higher education and social equality. He is currently preparing an integrated theorisation of higher education. His scholarship is widely published and cited (Google h-index 67 in September 2019). Books include Higher Education and the Common Good (Melbourne University Publishing, 2016); High Participation Systems of Higher Education, edited with Brendan Cantwell and Anna Smolentseva (Oxford University Press, 2018); Changing Higher Education in East Asia, edited with Xin Xu (Bloomsbury, 2022) and Assessing the Contributions of Higher Education, edited with Brendan Cantwell, Daria Platonova and Anna Smolentseva (Edward Elgar, 2023).

Selected Publications
Books
  • Marginson, S. (2016).The Dream is Over: The crisis of Clark Kerr’s California Idea of higher education. Berkeley: University of California Press.
  • Marginson, S. (2016).Higher Education and the Common Good. Melbourne: Melbourne University Publishing.
  • Tran, L. & Marginson, S. (eds.). (2018).Internationalisation of Vietnamese Higher Education. Dordrecht: Springer Nature.
  • Carnoy, M., Froumin, I., Leshukov, O. & Marginson, S. (eds.). (2018) Higher Education in Federal Countries. New Delhi: Sage.
  • Cantwell, B., Marginson, S. & Smolentseva, A. (eds.). (2018) High Participation Systems of Higher Education. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
  • Callender, C., Locke, W. & Marginson, S. (eds.) (2020). Changing Higher Education for a Changing World. London: Bloomsbury.
  • Chattopadhyay, S., Marginson, S. & Varghese, N.V. (eds.) (2021). Changing Higher Education in India. London: Bloomsbury.
  • Marginson, S. & Xu, X. (eds.) (2022). Changing Higher Education in East Asia. (2022). London: Bloomsbury.
  • Marginson, S., Cantwell, B., Platonova, D. & Smolentseva, A. (eds.) (2023). Assessing the contributions of higher education. Cheltenham: Edward Elgar.
Recent Journal Papers
  • Marginson, S. (2016). The worldwide trend to high participation higher education: Dynamics of social stratification in inclusive systems. Higher Education, 72 (4), 413-435.
  • Marginson, S. (2018). Private/public in higher education: A synthesis of economic and political approaches. Studies in Higher Education, 43 (2), 322-337
  • Marginson, S. (2018) Global trends in higher education financing: The United Kingdom. International J. Educational Development, 58, 26-36
  • Marginson, S. (2018) National/global synergy in the development of higher education and science in China since 1978. Frontiers of Education in China, 13 (4), 486–512
  • Marginson, S. (2019) Limitations of human capital theory. Studies in Higher Education, 44 (2), 287-301
  • Marginson, S. and Yang, L. (2022). Individual and collective outcomes of higher education: A comparison of Anglo-American and Chinese approaches. Globalisation, Societies and Education, 20 (1), 1-32.
  • Marginson, S. (2022). ‘All things are in flux’: China in global science. Higher Education, 83 (4), 881-910.
  • Marginson, S. (2022). What drives global science? The four competing narratives. Studies in Higher Education, 47 (8), 1566-1584.
  • Marginson, S. (2022). Global science and national comparisons: Beyond bibliometrics and scientometrics. Comparative Education, 58 (2), 125-146.
  • Marginson, S. (2022). What is global higher education? Oxford Review of Education, 48 (4), 492-517.
  • Marginson S. (2022). Space and scale in higher education: The glonacal heuristic revisited. Higher Education, 84 (6),1365-1395.
  • Marginson, S. & Xu, X. (2023). Hegemony and inequality in global science: Problems of the center-periphery model. Comparative Education Review, 67 (1). https://doi.org/10.1086/722760
  • Marginson, S. (2023). Student self-formation: An emerging paradigm in higher education. Studies in Higher Education, https://doi.org/10.1080/03075079.2023.2252826 (2023).
  • Marginson, S. (2023). Limitations of the leading definition of ‘internationalisation’ of higher education: Is the idea wrong or is the fault in reality? Globalisation, Societies and Education, https://doi.org/10.1080/14767724.2023.2264223
  • Marginson, S. and Yang ,L. (2023). Has the public good been emptied out of higher education in England? Higher Education. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10734-023-01117-6

Maia Chankseliani is Associate Professor of Comparative and International Education at the University of Oxford where she leads a flagship master’s course in Comparative and International Education. She convenes the Comparative and International Education Research Group at the Department of Education.

Within comparative and international education, Maia Chankseliani works at the intersection of tertiary education and development. She researches societal, institutional, and policy forces that shape tertiary education and the potential of tertiary education and research for transforming societies.

Methodologically, she utilises both qualitative and quantitative methods. Her work often combines secondary data analysis with insights gathered through semi-structured interviews and contextualised case studies.

Maia Chankseliani has published four books in the field of comparative and international education: What Happened to the Soviet University? (2022), Building Research Capacity at Universities: Insights from Post-Soviet Countries (2022), Comparing Post-Socialist Transformations: Purposes, Policies, and Practices in Education (2018), and Fairness in Access to Higher Education in a Global Perspective: Reconciling Excellence, Efficiency, and Justice (2013).

She currently leads a major research project examining the impact of international mobility on world development (funded by the U.S. Department of State). Maia Chankseliani has worked on a number of externally funded research projects and consultancies involving the UK Government agencies responsible for education and skills, UKRI/ESRC, British Council, World Bank, Qatar Foundation, the European Commission.

With a background in education research, teaching, policy-making, leadership, and consultancy, Maia Chankseliani brings to her role extensive experience in diverse international settings. This breadth of experience informs her research and enables her to bridge theory and practice.

Maia Chankseliani engages with governments and gives academic and policy-relevant talks nationally and internationally. Her research regularly features in national and international media.

She holds a BA in Philology from Tbilisi State University (Georgia), an Ed. M in International Education Policy from Harvard University (USA), and a PhD in Education from the University of Cambridge (UK).

Maia Chankseliani serves as the Editor-in-Chief of the International Journal of Educational Research.

Aliya teaches on the Comparative and International Education MSc programme at our Department. She is also a Junior Research Fellow at Lady Margaret Hall. Her research focuses on young people and families’ experiences of education in turbulent times.

For example, educational challenges and rehabilitation during COVID-19 and after the 2022 floods in Pakistan. Her current geographical focus includes ethnically diverse communities (Pakistani and Bangladeshi) in England as well as marginalised communities in Pakistan.

Aliya’s PhD explored the complexities of gender and international education, and her current work focuses on decolonising educational research practices and the experience of Southern-ness globally. Aliya’s specialist areas are parental, mothers’ and young people’s perspectives of and aspirations for education, and their own modalities of agency to fulfil their dreams.

Aliya publishes on the topics of Southern epistemologies and methodologies and teaches on related topics of decolonisation of knowledge production and the politics of representation. She is currently leading multiple projects in England and Pakistan focusing on girls’ education, gender experiences of education, mothers’ perspectives on educating their children, teacher educators, displaced peoples experiences in England and Pakistan.

Aliya is accepting DPhil students interested in these areas:

  • Southern epistemologies and methodologies
  • The capability approach and social justice
  • Negative capability
  • Deconstruction of the silence/violence binary
  • Marginalised peoples’ perspectives
  • Intersectional experiences of marginalisation including those related with gender, race, ethnicity, indigeneity, queerness, disability, class and caste (among others)
  • Decolonisation of knowledge production and representation of the South
  • Qualitative methodologies
  • Theorising from the margins
  • Area focus South Asia particularly Pakistan and Afghanistan
  • Internal displacement

Aliya is the acting Deputy Chair of the United Kingdom Forum for International Education and Training (UKFIET) conference 2023.

Gates Cambridge Biography

 

Research Group Membership

 

Research Projects

1. ‘Understanding the impact of COVID-19 on learning experiences of secondary school going age children among Bangladeshi and Pakistani ethnic minority families’
Funder: Cambridge Humanities Research Grants Scheme
Research team: Professor Nidhi Singal and Dr Aliya Khalid
Status: Complete

2. Gendered Inequalities in Education and Capability Spaces for Women/Girls (and others) in Pakistan: Education and reconstruction after 2022 floods in Pakistan
Funder: British Association for International and Comparative Education (BAICE) Seedcorn Fund
Research team: Aliya Khalid, Soufia Siddiqui, Aditi Chidambaram, Indrani Sigamany
Status: Ongoing

3. Bridging the Local and Global: Women’s Spaces and Collectives’: On becoming caregivers and teachers: Immigrant mothers’ identities and philosophies of education in England during COVID
Team members: Aliya Khalid, Jane Rooney and Ruth Houghton, Lavinia Kamphausen, Kate spencer-Bennet, Alana Farrel
Funder: The British Academy
Status: Complete

4. Collaborative development of faculty for Pakistan undergraduate Teacher Education Colleges: Durbeen and Oxford knowledge exchange project
Team members: Aliya Khalid, Ann Childs, Trevor Mutton, Ian Thompson, Jenni Ingram and Katharine Burn
Funder: Malala Fund
Status: Ongoing

Dr Karen Skilling is an Associate Professor at the Department of Education at the University of Oxford. Karen is currently the Deputy Director of Doctoral Research, Lead of the PGCE mathematics education at the Department of Education, and co-ordinates the Doctoral Teaching Fellows for teacher education. In 2020, Karen established the STEM Discussion Group and also convenes the Subject Pedagogy Group seminars.

Karen’s research interests include: student engagement and motivation in mathematics; integrated STEM learning and project-based STEM activities; and vignette methods. Karen currently sits on the Executive Committee of BSRLM, and is a journal Editor for the Teaching Education Journal (TEJ) and Research in Mathematics Education (RME). Karen has also been co-Editor for several special issues, and a topic study co-lead at the Congress of the European Society for Research in Mathematics Education (CERME). Karen is a Visiting Fellow at King’s College London and been an HEA Fellow since 2016.

Awards include: Australian Postgraduate Award (Industry) (APAI): funded PhD role attached to MYTEAM Project awarded by Australian Research Council (2008 –2012); Postdoctoral Research Fellowship: Department of Education, University of Oxford (2013-14); and nominations for Most Outstanding Contribution to Student Experience at King’s College London (2015, 2016, 2017).

David Mills is an Associate Professor and Director of the Centre for Global Higher Education (CGHE).

His current research focuses on the political economy of the global science system, and its impact on institutional research and publishing cultures in African universities. His most recent book is ‘Who Counts: Ghanaian Academic Publishing and Global Science’, co-written with colleagues from the University of Ghana and Oxford, and available open access from African Minds:  https://www.africanminds.co.za/who-counts/

Trained in Anthropology, and with inter-disciplinary research interests, David uses ethnographic methods to study the inequalities created by global higher education. He is particularly interested in African university research cultures and the role of diamond Open Access scholarly journals within knowledge ecosystems.

He welcomes enquiries from potential doctoral students interested in studying African Higher Education, as well as research and publishing cultures.

Liam Francis Gearon (BA, Hons, MA, MPhil, Cert He, PhD, FHEA, FRSA, Docent) is Associate Professor in Religious Education in the Department of Education, Senior Research Fellow at Harris Manchester College, University of Oxford; Docent, University of Helsinki, Finland; Honorary Senior Research Fellow at the School of Education, University of Birmingham, UK; Conjoint Professor at Newcastle University, Australia; Visiting Professor at the Irish Centre for Catholic Studies, MIC, Limerick, Ireland; Extraordinary Professor, North-West University, South Africa.

Liam Francis Gearon is Founder-Convenor of the Philosophy, Religion, Education Research Group, providing  a unique interdisciplinary contribution to the research culture of the Department of Education at the University of Oxford. The Philosophy, religion and education Research Group specifically forges theoretical and empirical interconnections between the arts, humanities, philosophy and the social sciences through the common focus of education. Contributions of this research group have been made to matters such as: theories of research policy and impact; the cultural value of research in the arts and humanities; research ethics; the intersection of epistemological and ethical domains in research in schools; religion, radicalisation and counter-terrorism in schools and universities; and the creation of distinctive sub-field of study at the interface of education, security and intelligence studies.

A specialist in the interdisciplinary study of religion in education, and particularly noted for the systematic philosophical and history of ideas analysis on the epistemological foundations of religious education, his framing of the paradigms of religion in education – scriptural-theological; phenomenological; psychological-experiential; philosophical-conceptual; social-cultural; political-historical – has contributed new insights to secularisation theory in numerous, some award-winning, monographs, such as MasterClass in Religious Education (Gearon, 2013); On Holy Ground (Gearon, 2015) [2016 Society of Education Studies Book Prize]; Religious Authority and the Arts: Conversations in Political Theology (Gearon, 2015); and State Religious Education and the State of the Religious Life (Gearon and Prud’homme, 2018).

His theorisations of the politicisation and securitisation of religion in education have been the subject of intense international debate for several years. Landmark publications on security in education – ‘The Counter-Terrorist Classroom’ (2013); ‘The Counter-Terrorist Classroom’ (2017); ‘Terrorism and Counter-Terrorism Policy and Research in UK Universities’ (2018): ‘Research Ethics in the Securitised University’ (Gearon and Parsons, 2019) and ‘The Kill Chain’ (Gearon, 2020) – have enabled empirical, methodological and theoretical advances on elites’ theory, the ethics of security and radicalisation research (Gearon and Kuusisto, 2018; Kuusisto and Gearon, 2017; Benjamin, Gearon, Kuusisto, Koirikivi, 2021).

With cognate research interests in security across all phases of education, Liam has over a decade collaboratively developed an interdisciplinary sub-field at the boundary of universities, security and intelligence studies, including research ethics in the securitised university (Gearon and Parsons, 2019). One of the defining outcomes here is Liam’s quarter of a million-word edited collection arising from the international Colloquium at Oriel College he convened in 2017, the Routledge International Handbook of Universities, Security and Intelligence Studies (Gearon, 2019). Interdisciplinary and inter-agency work in this area has included the Nuffield Foundation funded Universities and National Security: Research and Policy Collaborations 2019-2020, with a cross-disciplinary research team of 14 distinguished Co-Investigators.

With a significant Academy of Finland research grant (2018-2022) with Arniika Kuusisto (Stockholm/Helsinki/ Oxford), we oversee the research of two highly productive early career, post-doctoral researchers on radicalisation. This includes notable social and policy impacts such as the development of a national strategy around extremism through education for the Ministry of Justice in Finland (Activities | Growing up radical? | University of Helsinki). With substantial quantitative and qualitative data gathered, the project has already produced a substantial number of quality research outputs (Publications | Growing up radical? | University of Helsinki).

With a doctorate in English literature, Liam has also drawn on arts and humanities theoretical knowledge and methodological approaches to advance what are now intense cross-disciplinary debates around ‘decolonising the curriculum’ in religious education. From a series of foundational papers addressing the relationship between religious education and postcolonial theory – Gearon (2001a) ‘The Imagined Other: Postcolonial Theory and Religious Education’; Gearon (2001b) ‘A Spirituality of Dissent: Religion, Culture and Postcolonial Criticism’; Gearon (2002a) ‘Human Rights and Religious Education: Some Postcolonial Perspectives’ – he has recently led an international team (UK, Finland, Sweden, South Africa) as Guest Editor of the British Journal of Religious Education, for a high profile special issue on religion and education in postcolonial context (Gearon, Kuusisto, Matemba, Benjamin, Du Preez, Koirikivi, and Simmonds, 2020).

As Principal Investigator, Liam has led funded research projects with the Academy of Finland, the Arts and Humanities Research Council, the British Academy, the Leverhulme Trust, the Nuffield Foundation, the Philosophy of Education Society of Great Britain, and the Society for Educational Studies, a career total of funding exceeding £5,000,000, including a £4.5 million grant to establish a centre for citizenship and human rights at the University of Surrey Roehampton.

Doctoral supervision and Graduate teaching

 PGCE Religious Education (Subject lead)

  • Masters in Learning and Teaching (Subject lead)
  • Comparative and International Education

EXTERNAL POSTS

2020- Docent, Helsinki University, Finland

2020- Extraordinary Professor, Faculty of Education, North-West University, South Africa

2019-2021 Visiting Professor, Irish Institute of Catholic Studies, MIC, Limerick, Ireland

2012-2020 Conjoint Professor, Newcastle University, Australia

2019-2023 Honorary Senior Research Fellow, School of Education, University of Birmingham

 

PREVIOUS EXTERNAL POSTS

2011-2018, Adjunct Professor, Australian Catholic University, Australia

2010-2011, Visiting Professor, Faculty of Education, University of Plymouth

2008-2010, Research Professor, Faculty of Education, University of Plymouth

2006-2008, Professor of Education, University of Roehampton

2000-2006, Reader in Education, University of Surrey Roehampton

2006-2008, Senior Fellow, Centre of Excellence in Human Rights, University of Surrey Roehampton

2005-2008, Vice-President, International Human Rights Education Consortium, New York, USA

2001-2005, Director, Centre for Research in Human Rights, University of Surrey, Roehampton

1996-2000, Senior Lecturer, Faculty of Education, Roehampton, London

 

UK RESEARCH COUNCIL PEER REVIEW COLLEGES

AHRC Expert Group on Covid Research Group and Research Grant Panel ‘Introducer’

AHRC Peer Review College (2019 Gold Standard award, for ‘Recognition of significant contributions to the AHRC Peer Review College’)

ESRC Peer Review College

Universities UK Peer Review College Global Challenges Research Fund (GCRF)

 

INTERNATIONAL RESEARCH COUNCIL PEER REVIEWER

Academy of Finland

Austrian Science Fund (FWF)

EU 7th Framework Program for Research
Hong Kong Research Grants Council’s Public Policy Research Fund (PPR)

Irish Research Council

John Templeton Foundation

National Research Foundation, South Africa

 

PROFESSIONAL AND RESEARCH ASSOCIATIONS

Association of University Lecturers in Religion and Education (AULRE, co-founder and former Chair)

British Educational Research Association (BERA)

European Educational Research Association (EERA)

International Seminar on Religious Education and Values (ISREV)

Philosophy of Education Society of Great Britain (PESGB)

Society for Research in Higher Education (SRHE)
Society for Educational Studies (SES)

Also:

Executive (2019-2022) Oxford Intelligence Group, Nuffield College, University of Oxford

Fellow, Higher Education Academy (FHEA)

Fellow, Royal Society of Arts (FRSA)

Cambridge Intelligence Seminar

 

OTHER ADMINISTRATIVE ROLES AT OXFORD

Elected by Congregation to the University of Oxford Prevent Steering Group

Social Sciences Divisional representative of the Permanent Private Halls Supervisory Committee (PPHSC), a senior committee of the University of Oxford overseeing governance of Blackfriars; Campion Hall; Regent’s Park College; St Benet’s; St Stephen’s House; Wycliffe Hall.

Member, Central University Research Ethics Committee (CUREC)

Chair, Department of Education Research Ethics Committee (DREC)

Member, Inter-Divisional Social Sciences and Humanities Research Ethics Committee (IDREC)

Chair, Bodleian Library Education Committee

Member and occasional Chair Social Sciences Divisional Library Committee

Education Advisory Group, Christ Church College, Oxford

 

EDITORSHIP OF INTERNATIONAL JOURNALS

Gearon, L. (Guest editor) (2021) Literature and Security, Special Issue, Text Matters: A Journal of Literature, Theory and Culture, with a planned formal launch at Lodz, Poland.

Gearon, L., (Lead Guest Editor with editorial team) Kuusisto, A., Matemba, Y., Benjamin, S., Du Preez, P., Koirikivi, P., Simmonds, S. (2020) Decolonising the Religious Education Curriculum: International Perspectives in Theory, Research, and Practice, Special Issue, British Journal of Religious Education.

Gearon, L. (Guest Editor) (2019) Special Issue of Religions 10 (1) on Religion, Security, Education.

Gearon, L. and Williams, E. (Guest Editors) (2019) Special Issue of the British Journal of Educational Studies, Writers and their Education, 67 (3), 283–289.

Gearon, L. and Williams, E. (Guest Editors) (2018) Special Issue of Journal of Philosophy of Education on Philosophy, Literature and Education, 52 (4), 577-777.

Gearon, L. (Guest Editor) (2015) British Journal of Educational Studies, Special Issue, Education, Security and Intelligence Studies, 63 (3) 263-411.

Tirri, K., (Finland) Campbell, E. (Canada), Gearon, L. (UK), Lovat, T. (Australia) (Guest Editors) (2012) The Moral Core of Teaching, Education Research International.

Gearon, L. (Guest Editor) (2008) Citizenship, Human Rights and Religion, British Journal of Religious Education, 30 (2) 93-108.

Gearon, L. (Guest Editor) (2006) Children’s Spirituality and Children’s Rights, International Journal of Children’s Spirituality, 11 (2) 193-310.

Simon Marginson is  Emeritus Professor of Higher Education at the University of Oxford, Director of the ESRC/RE Centre for Global Higher Education (CGHE), and Editor-in-Chief of the journal Higher Education.

Simon led the ESRC Centre for Global Higher Education between November 2015 and April 2024. His research is focused primarily on global and international higher education, higher education in East Asia, the public and social contributions of higher education, and higher education and social equality. He is currently preparing an integrated theorisation of higher education. His scholarship is widely published and cited (Google h-index 67 in September 2019). Books include Higher Education and the Common Good (Melbourne University Publishing, 2016); High Participation Systems of Higher Education, edited with Brendan Cantwell and Anna Smolentseva (Oxford University Press, 2018); Changing Higher Education in East Asia, edited with Xin Xu (Bloomsbury, 2022) and Assessing the Contributions of Higher Education, edited with Brendan Cantwell, Daria Platonova and Anna Smolentseva (Edward Elgar, 2023).

Selected Publications
Books
  • Marginson, S. (2016).The Dream is Over: The crisis of Clark Kerr’s California Idea of higher education. Berkeley: University of California Press.
  • Marginson, S. (2016).Higher Education and the Common Good. Melbourne: Melbourne University Publishing.
  • Tran, L. & Marginson, S. (eds.). (2018).Internationalisation of Vietnamese Higher Education. Dordrecht: Springer Nature.
  • Carnoy, M., Froumin, I., Leshukov, O. & Marginson, S. (eds.). (2018) Higher Education in Federal Countries. New Delhi: Sage.
  • Cantwell, B., Marginson, S. & Smolentseva, A. (eds.). (2018) High Participation Systems of Higher Education. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
  • Callender, C., Locke, W. & Marginson, S. (eds.) (2020). Changing Higher Education for a Changing World. London: Bloomsbury.
  • Chattopadhyay, S., Marginson, S. & Varghese, N.V. (eds.) (2021). Changing Higher Education in India. London: Bloomsbury.
  • Marginson, S. & Xu, X. (eds.) (2022). Changing Higher Education in East Asia. (2022). London: Bloomsbury.
  • Marginson, S., Cantwell, B., Platonova, D. & Smolentseva, A. (eds.) (2023). Assessing the contributions of higher education. Cheltenham: Edward Elgar.
Recent Journal Papers
  • Marginson, S. (2016). The worldwide trend to high participation higher education: Dynamics of social stratification in inclusive systems. Higher Education, 72 (4), 413-435.
  • Marginson, S. (2018). Private/public in higher education: A synthesis of economic and political approaches. Studies in Higher Education, 43 (2), 322-337
  • Marginson, S. (2018) Global trends in higher education financing: The United Kingdom. International J. Educational Development, 58, 26-36
  • Marginson, S. (2018) National/global synergy in the development of higher education and science in China since 1978. Frontiers of Education in China, 13 (4), 486–512
  • Marginson, S. (2019) Limitations of human capital theory. Studies in Higher Education, 44 (2), 287-301
  • Marginson, S. and Yang, L. (2022). Individual and collective outcomes of higher education: A comparison of Anglo-American and Chinese approaches. Globalisation, Societies and Education, 20 (1), 1-32.
  • Marginson, S. (2022). ‘All things are in flux’: China in global science. Higher Education, 83 (4), 881-910.
  • Marginson, S. (2022). What drives global science? The four competing narratives. Studies in Higher Education, 47 (8), 1566-1584.
  • Marginson, S. (2022). Global science and national comparisons: Beyond bibliometrics and scientometrics. Comparative Education, 58 (2), 125-146.
  • Marginson, S. (2022). What is global higher education? Oxford Review of Education, 48 (4), 492-517.
  • Marginson S. (2022). Space and scale in higher education: The glonacal heuristic revisited. Higher Education, 84 (6),1365-1395.
  • Marginson, S. & Xu, X. (2023). Hegemony and inequality in global science: Problems of the center-periphery model. Comparative Education Review, 67 (1). https://doi.org/10.1086/722760
  • Marginson, S. (2023). Student self-formation: An emerging paradigm in higher education. Studies in Higher Education, https://doi.org/10.1080/03075079.2023.2252826 (2023).
  • Marginson, S. (2023). Limitations of the leading definition of ‘internationalisation’ of higher education: Is the idea wrong or is the fault in reality? Globalisation, Societies and Education, https://doi.org/10.1080/14767724.2023.2264223
  • Marginson, S. and Yang ,L. (2023). Has the public good been emptied out of higher education in England? Higher Education. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10734-023-01117-6

Maia Chankseliani is Associate Professor of Comparative and International Education at the University of Oxford where she leads a flagship master’s course in Comparative and International Education. She convenes the Comparative and International Education Research Group at the Department of Education.

Within comparative and international education, Maia Chankseliani works at the intersection of tertiary education and development. She researches societal, institutional, and policy forces that shape tertiary education and the potential of tertiary education and research for transforming societies.

Methodologically, she utilises both qualitative and quantitative methods. Her work often combines secondary data analysis with insights gathered through semi-structured interviews and contextualised case studies.

Maia Chankseliani has published four books in the field of comparative and international education: What Happened to the Soviet University? (2022), Building Research Capacity at Universities: Insights from Post-Soviet Countries (2022), Comparing Post-Socialist Transformations: Purposes, Policies, and Practices in Education (2018), and Fairness in Access to Higher Education in a Global Perspective: Reconciling Excellence, Efficiency, and Justice (2013).

She currently leads a major research project examining the impact of international mobility on world development (funded by the U.S. Department of State). Maia Chankseliani has worked on a number of externally funded research projects and consultancies involving the UK Government agencies responsible for education and skills, UKRI/ESRC, British Council, World Bank, Qatar Foundation, the European Commission.

With a background in education research, teaching, policy-making, leadership, and consultancy, Maia Chankseliani brings to her role extensive experience in diverse international settings. This breadth of experience informs her research and enables her to bridge theory and practice.

Maia Chankseliani engages with governments and gives academic and policy-relevant talks nationally and internationally. Her research regularly features in national and international media.

She holds a BA in Philology from Tbilisi State University (Georgia), an Ed. M in International Education Policy from Harvard University (USA), and a PhD in Education from the University of Cambridge (UK).

Maia Chankseliani serves as the Editor-in-Chief of the International Journal of Educational Research.

Aliya teaches on the Comparative and International Education MSc programme at our Department. She is also a Junior Research Fellow at Lady Margaret Hall. Her research focuses on young people and families’ experiences of education in turbulent times.

For example, educational challenges and rehabilitation during COVID-19 and after the 2022 floods in Pakistan. Her current geographical focus includes ethnically diverse communities (Pakistani and Bangladeshi) in England as well as marginalised communities in Pakistan.

Aliya’s PhD explored the complexities of gender and international education, and her current work focuses on decolonising educational research practices and the experience of Southern-ness globally. Aliya’s specialist areas are parental, mothers’ and young people’s perspectives of and aspirations for education, and their own modalities of agency to fulfil their dreams.

Aliya publishes on the topics of Southern epistemologies and methodologies and teaches on related topics of decolonisation of knowledge production and the politics of representation. She is currently leading multiple projects in England and Pakistan focusing on girls’ education, gender experiences of education, mothers’ perspectives on educating their children, teacher educators, displaced peoples experiences in England and Pakistan.

Aliya is accepting DPhil students interested in these areas:

  • Southern epistemologies and methodologies
  • The capability approach and social justice
  • Negative capability
  • Deconstruction of the silence/violence binary
  • Marginalised peoples’ perspectives
  • Intersectional experiences of marginalisation including those related with gender, race, ethnicity, indigeneity, queerness, disability, class and caste (among others)
  • Decolonisation of knowledge production and representation of the South
  • Qualitative methodologies
  • Theorising from the margins
  • Area focus South Asia particularly Pakistan and Afghanistan
  • Internal displacement

Aliya is the acting Deputy Chair of the United Kingdom Forum for International Education and Training (UKFIET) conference 2023.

Gates Cambridge Biography

 

Research Group Membership

 

Research Projects

1. ‘Understanding the impact of COVID-19 on learning experiences of secondary school going age children among Bangladeshi and Pakistani ethnic minority families’
Funder: Cambridge Humanities Research Grants Scheme
Research team: Professor Nidhi Singal and Dr Aliya Khalid
Status: Complete

2. Gendered Inequalities in Education and Capability Spaces for Women/Girls (and others) in Pakistan: Education and reconstruction after 2022 floods in Pakistan
Funder: British Association for International and Comparative Education (BAICE) Seedcorn Fund
Research team: Aliya Khalid, Soufia Siddiqui, Aditi Chidambaram, Indrani Sigamany
Status: Ongoing

3. Bridging the Local and Global: Women’s Spaces and Collectives’: On becoming caregivers and teachers: Immigrant mothers’ identities and philosophies of education in England during COVID
Team members: Aliya Khalid, Jane Rooney and Ruth Houghton, Lavinia Kamphausen, Kate spencer-Bennet, Alana Farrel
Funder: The British Academy
Status: Complete

4. Collaborative development of faculty for Pakistan undergraduate Teacher Education Colleges: Durbeen and Oxford knowledge exchange project
Team members: Aliya Khalid, Ann Childs, Trevor Mutton, Ian Thompson, Jenni Ingram and Katharine Burn
Funder: Malala Fund
Status: Ongoing

Dr Karen Skilling is an Associate Professor at the Department of Education at the University of Oxford. Karen is currently the Deputy Director of Doctoral Research, Lead of the PGCE mathematics education at the Department of Education, and co-ordinates the Doctoral Teaching Fellows for teacher education. In 2020, Karen established the STEM Discussion Group and also convenes the Subject Pedagogy Group seminars.

Karen’s research interests include: student engagement and motivation in mathematics; integrated STEM learning and project-based STEM activities; and vignette methods. Karen currently sits on the Executive Committee of BSRLM, and is a journal Editor for the Teaching Education Journal (TEJ) and Research in Mathematics Education (RME). Karen has also been co-Editor for several special issues, and a topic study co-lead at the Congress of the European Society for Research in Mathematics Education (CERME). Karen is a Visiting Fellow at King’s College London and been an HEA Fellow since 2016.

Awards include: Australian Postgraduate Award (Industry) (APAI): funded PhD role attached to MYTEAM Project awarded by Australian Research Council (2008 –2012); Postdoctoral Research Fellowship: Department of Education, University of Oxford (2013-14); and nominations for Most Outstanding Contribution to Student Experience at King’s College London (2015, 2016, 2017).

David Mills is an Associate Professor and Director of the Centre for Global Higher Education (CGHE).

His current research focuses on the political economy of the global science system, and its impact on institutional research and publishing cultures in African universities. His most recent book is ‘Who Counts: Ghanaian Academic Publishing and Global Science’, co-written with colleagues from the University of Ghana and Oxford, and available open access from African Minds:  https://www.africanminds.co.za/who-counts/

Trained in Anthropology, and with inter-disciplinary research interests, David uses ethnographic methods to study the inequalities created by global higher education. He is particularly interested in African university research cultures and the role of diamond Open Access scholarly journals within knowledge ecosystems.

He welcomes enquiries from potential doctoral students interested in studying African Higher Education, as well as research and publishing cultures.

Liam Francis Gearon (BA, Hons, MA, MPhil, Cert He, PhD, FHEA, FRSA, Docent) is Associate Professor in Religious Education in the Department of Education, Senior Research Fellow at Harris Manchester College, University of Oxford; Docent, University of Helsinki, Finland; Honorary Senior Research Fellow at the School of Education, University of Birmingham, UK; Conjoint Professor at Newcastle University, Australia; Visiting Professor at the Irish Centre for Catholic Studies, MIC, Limerick, Ireland; Extraordinary Professor, North-West University, South Africa.

Liam Francis Gearon is Founder-Convenor of the Philosophy, Religion, Education Research Group, providing  a unique interdisciplinary contribution to the research culture of the Department of Education at the University of Oxford. The Philosophy, religion and education Research Group specifically forges theoretical and empirical interconnections between the arts, humanities, philosophy and the social sciences through the common focus of education. Contributions of this research group have been made to matters such as: theories of research policy and impact; the cultural value of research in the arts and humanities; research ethics; the intersection of epistemological and ethical domains in research in schools; religion, radicalisation and counter-terrorism in schools and universities; and the creation of distinctive sub-field of study at the interface of education, security and intelligence studies.

A specialist in the interdisciplinary study of religion in education, and particularly noted for the systematic philosophical and history of ideas analysis on the epistemological foundations of religious education, his framing of the paradigms of religion in education – scriptural-theological; phenomenological; psychological-experiential; philosophical-conceptual; social-cultural; political-historical – has contributed new insights to secularisation theory in numerous, some award-winning, monographs, such as MasterClass in Religious Education (Gearon, 2013); On Holy Ground (Gearon, 2015) [2016 Society of Education Studies Book Prize]; Religious Authority and the Arts: Conversations in Political Theology (Gearon, 2015); and State Religious Education and the State of the Religious Life (Gearon and Prud’homme, 2018).

His theorisations of the politicisation and securitisation of religion in education have been the subject of intense international debate for several years. Landmark publications on security in education – ‘The Counter-Terrorist Classroom’ (2013); ‘The Counter-Terrorist Classroom’ (2017); ‘Terrorism and Counter-Terrorism Policy and Research in UK Universities’ (2018): ‘Research Ethics in the Securitised University’ (Gearon and Parsons, 2019) and ‘The Kill Chain’ (Gearon, 2020) – have enabled empirical, methodological and theoretical advances on elites’ theory, the ethics of security and radicalisation research (Gearon and Kuusisto, 2018; Kuusisto and Gearon, 2017; Benjamin, Gearon, Kuusisto, Koirikivi, 2021).

With cognate research interests in security across all phases of education, Liam has over a decade collaboratively developed an interdisciplinary sub-field at the boundary of universities, security and intelligence studies, including research ethics in the securitised university (Gearon and Parsons, 2019). One of the defining outcomes here is Liam’s quarter of a million-word edited collection arising from the international Colloquium at Oriel College he convened in 2017, the Routledge International Handbook of Universities, Security and Intelligence Studies (Gearon, 2019). Interdisciplinary and inter-agency work in this area has included the Nuffield Foundation funded Universities and National Security: Research and Policy Collaborations 2019-2020, with a cross-disciplinary research team of 14 distinguished Co-Investigators.

With a significant Academy of Finland research grant (2018-2022) with Arniika Kuusisto (Stockholm/Helsinki/ Oxford), we oversee the research of two highly productive early career, post-doctoral researchers on radicalisation. This includes notable social and policy impacts such as the development of a national strategy around extremism through education for the Ministry of Justice in Finland (Activities | Growing up radical? | University of Helsinki). With substantial quantitative and qualitative data gathered, the project has already produced a substantial number of quality research outputs (Publications | Growing up radical? | University of Helsinki).

With a doctorate in English literature, Liam has also drawn on arts and humanities theoretical knowledge and methodological approaches to advance what are now intense cross-disciplinary debates around ‘decolonising the curriculum’ in religious education. From a series of foundational papers addressing the relationship between religious education and postcolonial theory – Gearon (2001a) ‘The Imagined Other: Postcolonial Theory and Religious Education’; Gearon (2001b) ‘A Spirituality of Dissent: Religion, Culture and Postcolonial Criticism’; Gearon (2002a) ‘Human Rights and Religious Education: Some Postcolonial Perspectives’ – he has recently led an international team (UK, Finland, Sweden, South Africa) as Guest Editor of the British Journal of Religious Education, for a high profile special issue on religion and education in postcolonial context (Gearon, Kuusisto, Matemba, Benjamin, Du Preez, Koirikivi, and Simmonds, 2020).

As Principal Investigator, Liam has led funded research projects with the Academy of Finland, the Arts and Humanities Research Council, the British Academy, the Leverhulme Trust, the Nuffield Foundation, the Philosophy of Education Society of Great Britain, and the Society for Educational Studies, a career total of funding exceeding £5,000,000, including a £4.5 million grant to establish a centre for citizenship and human rights at the University of Surrey Roehampton.

Doctoral supervision and Graduate teaching

 PGCE Religious Education (Subject lead)

  • Masters in Learning and Teaching (Subject lead)
  • Comparative and International Education

EXTERNAL POSTS

2020- Docent, Helsinki University, Finland

2020- Extraordinary Professor, Faculty of Education, North-West University, South Africa

2019-2021 Visiting Professor, Irish Institute of Catholic Studies, MIC, Limerick, Ireland

2012-2020 Conjoint Professor, Newcastle University, Australia

2019-2023 Honorary Senior Research Fellow, School of Education, University of Birmingham

 

PREVIOUS EXTERNAL POSTS

2011-2018, Adjunct Professor, Australian Catholic University, Australia

2010-2011, Visiting Professor, Faculty of Education, University of Plymouth

2008-2010, Research Professor, Faculty of Education, University of Plymouth

2006-2008, Professor of Education, University of Roehampton

2000-2006, Reader in Education, University of Surrey Roehampton

2006-2008, Senior Fellow, Centre of Excellence in Human Rights, University of Surrey Roehampton

2005-2008, Vice-President, International Human Rights Education Consortium, New York, USA

2001-2005, Director, Centre for Research in Human Rights, University of Surrey, Roehampton

1996-2000, Senior Lecturer, Faculty of Education, Roehampton, London

 

UK RESEARCH COUNCIL PEER REVIEW COLLEGES

AHRC Expert Group on Covid Research Group and Research Grant Panel ‘Introducer’

AHRC Peer Review College (2019 Gold Standard award, for ‘Recognition of significant contributions to the AHRC Peer Review College’)

ESRC Peer Review College

Universities UK Peer Review College Global Challenges Research Fund (GCRF)

 

INTERNATIONAL RESEARCH COUNCIL PEER REVIEWER

Academy of Finland

Austrian Science Fund (FWF)

EU 7th Framework Program for Research
Hong Kong Research Grants Council’s Public Policy Research Fund (PPR)

Irish Research Council

John Templeton Foundation

National Research Foundation, South Africa

 

PROFESSIONAL AND RESEARCH ASSOCIATIONS

Association of University Lecturers in Religion and Education (AULRE, co-founder and former Chair)

British Educational Research Association (BERA)

European Educational Research Association (EERA)

International Seminar on Religious Education and Values (ISREV)

Philosophy of Education Society of Great Britain (PESGB)

Society for Research in Higher Education (SRHE)
Society for Educational Studies (SES)

Also:

Executive (2019-2022) Oxford Intelligence Group, Nuffield College, University of Oxford

Fellow, Higher Education Academy (FHEA)

Fellow, Royal Society of Arts (FRSA)

Cambridge Intelligence Seminar

 

OTHER ADMINISTRATIVE ROLES AT OXFORD

Elected by Congregation to the University of Oxford Prevent Steering Group

Social Sciences Divisional representative of the Permanent Private Halls Supervisory Committee (PPHSC), a senior committee of the University of Oxford overseeing governance of Blackfriars; Campion Hall; Regent’s Park College; St Benet’s; St Stephen’s House; Wycliffe Hall.

Member, Central University Research Ethics Committee (CUREC)

Chair, Department of Education Research Ethics Committee (DREC)

Member, Inter-Divisional Social Sciences and Humanities Research Ethics Committee (IDREC)

Chair, Bodleian Library Education Committee

Member and occasional Chair Social Sciences Divisional Library Committee

Education Advisory Group, Christ Church College, Oxford

 

EDITORSHIP OF INTERNATIONAL JOURNALS

Gearon, L. (Guest editor) (2021) Literature and Security, Special Issue, Text Matters: A Journal of Literature, Theory and Culture, with a planned formal launch at Lodz, Poland.

Gearon, L., (Lead Guest Editor with editorial team) Kuusisto, A., Matemba, Y., Benjamin, S., Du Preez, P., Koirikivi, P., Simmonds, S. (2020) Decolonising the Religious Education Curriculum: International Perspectives in Theory, Research, and Practice, Special Issue, British Journal of Religious Education.

Gearon, L. (Guest Editor) (2019) Special Issue of Religions 10 (1) on Religion, Security, Education.

Gearon, L. and Williams, E. (Guest Editors) (2019) Special Issue of the British Journal of Educational Studies, Writers and their Education, 67 (3), 283–289.

Gearon, L. and Williams, E. (Guest Editors) (2018) Special Issue of Journal of Philosophy of Education on Philosophy, Literature and Education, 52 (4), 577-777.

Gearon, L. (Guest Editor) (2015) British Journal of Educational Studies, Special Issue, Education, Security and Intelligence Studies, 63 (3) 263-411.

Tirri, K., (Finland) Campbell, E. (Canada), Gearon, L. (UK), Lovat, T. (Australia) (Guest Editors) (2012) The Moral Core of Teaching, Education Research International.

Gearon, L. (Guest Editor) (2008) Citizenship, Human Rights and Religion, British Journal of Religious Education, 30 (2) 93-108.

Gearon, L. (Guest Editor) (2006) Children’s Spirituality and Children’s Rights, International Journal of Children’s Spirituality, 11 (2) 193-310.

Simon Marginson is  Emeritus Professor of Higher Education at the University of Oxford, Director of the ESRC/RE Centre for Global Higher Education (CGHE), and Editor-in-Chief of the journal Higher Education.

Simon led the ESRC Centre for Global Higher Education between November 2015 and April 2024. His research is focused primarily on global and international higher education, higher education in East Asia, the public and social contributions of higher education, and higher education and social equality. He is currently preparing an integrated theorisation of higher education. His scholarship is widely published and cited (Google h-index 67 in September 2019). Books include Higher Education and the Common Good (Melbourne University Publishing, 2016); High Participation Systems of Higher Education, edited with Brendan Cantwell and Anna Smolentseva (Oxford University Press, 2018); Changing Higher Education in East Asia, edited with Xin Xu (Bloomsbury, 2022) and Assessing the Contributions of Higher Education, edited with Brendan Cantwell, Daria Platonova and Anna Smolentseva (Edward Elgar, 2023).

Selected Publications
Books
  • Marginson, S. (2016).The Dream is Over: The crisis of Clark Kerr’s California Idea of higher education. Berkeley: University of California Press.
  • Marginson, S. (2016).Higher Education and the Common Good. Melbourne: Melbourne University Publishing.
  • Tran, L. & Marginson, S. (eds.). (2018).Internationalisation of Vietnamese Higher Education. Dordrecht: Springer Nature.
  • Carnoy, M., Froumin, I., Leshukov, O. & Marginson, S. (eds.). (2018) Higher Education in Federal Countries. New Delhi: Sage.
  • Cantwell, B., Marginson, S. & Smolentseva, A. (eds.). (2018) High Participation Systems of Higher Education. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
  • Callender, C., Locke, W. & Marginson, S. (eds.) (2020). Changing Higher Education for a Changing World. London: Bloomsbury.
  • Chattopadhyay, S., Marginson, S. & Varghese, N.V. (eds.) (2021). Changing Higher Education in India. London: Bloomsbury.
  • Marginson, S. & Xu, X. (eds.) (2022). Changing Higher Education in East Asia. (2022). London: Bloomsbury.
  • Marginson, S., Cantwell, B., Platonova, D. & Smolentseva, A. (eds.) (2023). Assessing the contributions of higher education. Cheltenham: Edward Elgar.
Recent Journal Papers
  • Marginson, S. (2016). The worldwide trend to high participation higher education: Dynamics of social stratification in inclusive systems. Higher Education, 72 (4), 413-435.
  • Marginson, S. (2018). Private/public in higher education: A synthesis of economic and political approaches. Studies in Higher Education, 43 (2), 322-337
  • Marginson, S. (2018) Global trends in higher education financing: The United Kingdom. International J. Educational Development, 58, 26-36
  • Marginson, S. (2018) National/global synergy in the development of higher education and science in China since 1978. Frontiers of Education in China, 13 (4), 486–512
  • Marginson, S. (2019) Limitations of human capital theory. Studies in Higher Education, 44 (2), 287-301
  • Marginson, S. and Yang, L. (2022). Individual and collective outcomes of higher education: A comparison of Anglo-American and Chinese approaches. Globalisation, Societies and Education, 20 (1), 1-32.
  • Marginson, S. (2022). ‘All things are in flux’: China in global science. Higher Education, 83 (4), 881-910.
  • Marginson, S. (2022). What drives global science? The four competing narratives. Studies in Higher Education, 47 (8), 1566-1584.
  • Marginson, S. (2022). Global science and national comparisons: Beyond bibliometrics and scientometrics. Comparative Education, 58 (2), 125-146.
  • Marginson, S. (2022). What is global higher education? Oxford Review of Education, 48 (4), 492-517.
  • Marginson S. (2022). Space and scale in higher education: The glonacal heuristic revisited. Higher Education, 84 (6),1365-1395.
  • Marginson, S. & Xu, X. (2023). Hegemony and inequality in global science: Problems of the center-periphery model. Comparative Education Review, 67 (1). https://doi.org/10.1086/722760
  • Marginson, S. (2023). Student self-formation: An emerging paradigm in higher education. Studies in Higher Education, https://doi.org/10.1080/03075079.2023.2252826 (2023).
  • Marginson, S. (2023). Limitations of the leading definition of ‘internationalisation’ of higher education: Is the idea wrong or is the fault in reality? Globalisation, Societies and Education, https://doi.org/10.1080/14767724.2023.2264223
  • Marginson, S. and Yang ,L. (2023). Has the public good been emptied out of higher education in England? Higher Education. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10734-023-01117-6

Maia Chankseliani is Associate Professor of Comparative and International Education at the University of Oxford where she leads a flagship master’s course in Comparative and International Education. She convenes the Comparative and International Education Research Group at the Department of Education.

Within comparative and international education, Maia Chankseliani works at the intersection of tertiary education and development. She researches societal, institutional, and policy forces that shape tertiary education and the potential of tertiary education and research for transforming societies.

Methodologically, she utilises both qualitative and quantitative methods. Her work often combines secondary data analysis with insights gathered through semi-structured interviews and contextualised case studies.

Maia Chankseliani has published four books in the field of comparative and international education: What Happened to the Soviet University? (2022), Building Research Capacity at Universities: Insights from Post-Soviet Countries (2022), Comparing Post-Socialist Transformations: Purposes, Policies, and Practices in Education (2018), and Fairness in Access to Higher Education in a Global Perspective: Reconciling Excellence, Efficiency, and Justice (2013).

She currently leads a major research project examining the impact of international mobility on world development (funded by the U.S. Department of State). Maia Chankseliani has worked on a number of externally funded research projects and consultancies involving the UK Government agencies responsible for education and skills, UKRI/ESRC, British Council, World Bank, Qatar Foundation, the European Commission.

With a background in education research, teaching, policy-making, leadership, and consultancy, Maia Chankseliani brings to her role extensive experience in diverse international settings. This breadth of experience informs her research and enables her to bridge theory and practice.

Maia Chankseliani engages with governments and gives academic and policy-relevant talks nationally and internationally. Her research regularly features in national and international media.

She holds a BA in Philology from Tbilisi State University (Georgia), an Ed. M in International Education Policy from Harvard University (USA), and a PhD in Education from the University of Cambridge (UK).

Maia Chankseliani serves as the Editor-in-Chief of the International Journal of Educational Research.

Aliya teaches on the Comparative and International Education MSc programme at our Department. She is also a Junior Research Fellow at Lady Margaret Hall. Her research focuses on young people and families’ experiences of education in turbulent times.

For example, educational challenges and rehabilitation during COVID-19 and after the 2022 floods in Pakistan. Her current geographical focus includes ethnically diverse communities (Pakistani and Bangladeshi) in England as well as marginalised communities in Pakistan.

Aliya’s PhD explored the complexities of gender and international education, and her current work focuses on decolonising educational research practices and the experience of Southern-ness globally. Aliya’s specialist areas are parental, mothers’ and young people’s perspectives of and aspirations for education, and their own modalities of agency to fulfil their dreams.

Aliya publishes on the topics of Southern epistemologies and methodologies and teaches on related topics of decolonisation of knowledge production and the politics of representation. She is currently leading multiple projects in England and Pakistan focusing on girls’ education, gender experiences of education, mothers’ perspectives on educating their children, teacher educators, displaced peoples experiences in England and Pakistan.

Aliya is accepting DPhil students interested in these areas:

  • Southern epistemologies and methodologies
  • The capability approach and social justice
  • Negative capability
  • Deconstruction of the silence/violence binary
  • Marginalised peoples’ perspectives
  • Intersectional experiences of marginalisation including those related with gender, race, ethnicity, indigeneity, queerness, disability, class and caste (among others)
  • Decolonisation of knowledge production and representation of the South
  • Qualitative methodologies
  • Theorising from the margins
  • Area focus South Asia particularly Pakistan and Afghanistan
  • Internal displacement

Aliya is the acting Deputy Chair of the United Kingdom Forum for International Education and Training (UKFIET) conference 2023.

Gates Cambridge Biography

 

Research Group Membership

 

Research Projects

1. ‘Understanding the impact of COVID-19 on learning experiences of secondary school going age children among Bangladeshi and Pakistani ethnic minority families’
Funder: Cambridge Humanities Research Grants Scheme
Research team: Professor Nidhi Singal and Dr Aliya Khalid
Status: Complete

2. Gendered Inequalities in Education and Capability Spaces for Women/Girls (and others) in Pakistan: Education and reconstruction after 2022 floods in Pakistan
Funder: British Association for International and Comparative Education (BAICE) Seedcorn Fund
Research team: Aliya Khalid, Soufia Siddiqui, Aditi Chidambaram, Indrani Sigamany
Status: Ongoing

3. Bridging the Local and Global: Women’s Spaces and Collectives’: On becoming caregivers and teachers: Immigrant mothers’ identities and philosophies of education in England during COVID
Team members: Aliya Khalid, Jane Rooney and Ruth Houghton, Lavinia Kamphausen, Kate spencer-Bennet, Alana Farrel
Funder: The British Academy
Status: Complete

4. Collaborative development of faculty for Pakistan undergraduate Teacher Education Colleges: Durbeen and Oxford knowledge exchange project
Team members: Aliya Khalid, Ann Childs, Trevor Mutton, Ian Thompson, Jenni Ingram and Katharine Burn
Funder: Malala Fund
Status: Ongoing

Dr Karen Skilling is an Associate Professor at the Department of Education at the University of Oxford. Karen is currently the Deputy Director of Doctoral Research, Lead of the PGCE mathematics education at the Department of Education, and co-ordinates the Doctoral Teaching Fellows for teacher education. In 2020, Karen established the STEM Discussion Group and also convenes the Subject Pedagogy Group seminars.

Karen’s research interests include: student engagement and motivation in mathematics; integrated STEM learning and project-based STEM activities; and vignette methods. Karen currently sits on the Executive Committee of BSRLM, and is a journal Editor for the Teaching Education Journal (TEJ) and Research in Mathematics Education (RME). Karen has also been co-Editor for several special issues, and a topic study co-lead at the Congress of the European Society for Research in Mathematics Education (CERME). Karen is a Visiting Fellow at King’s College London and been an HEA Fellow since 2016.

Awards include: Australian Postgraduate Award (Industry) (APAI): funded PhD role attached to MYTEAM Project awarded by Australian Research Council (2008 –2012); Postdoctoral Research Fellowship: Department of Education, University of Oxford (2013-14); and nominations for Most Outstanding Contribution to Student Experience at King’s College London (2015, 2016, 2017).

David Mills is an Associate Professor and Director of the Centre for Global Higher Education (CGHE).

His current research focuses on the political economy of the global science system, and its impact on institutional research and publishing cultures in African universities. His most recent book is ‘Who Counts: Ghanaian Academic Publishing and Global Science’, co-written with colleagues from the University of Ghana and Oxford, and available open access from African Minds:  https://www.africanminds.co.za/who-counts/

Trained in Anthropology, and with inter-disciplinary research interests, David uses ethnographic methods to study the inequalities created by global higher education. He is particularly interested in African university research cultures and the role of diamond Open Access scholarly journals within knowledge ecosystems.

He welcomes enquiries from potential doctoral students interested in studying African Higher Education, as well as research and publishing cultures.

Liam Francis Gearon (BA, Hons, MA, MPhil, Cert He, PhD, FHEA, FRSA, Docent) is Associate Professor in Religious Education in the Department of Education, Senior Research Fellow at Harris Manchester College, University of Oxford; Docent, University of Helsinki, Finland; Honorary Senior Research Fellow at the School of Education, University of Birmingham, UK; Conjoint Professor at Newcastle University, Australia; Visiting Professor at the Irish Centre for Catholic Studies, MIC, Limerick, Ireland; Extraordinary Professor, North-West University, South Africa.

Liam Francis Gearon is Founder-Convenor of the Philosophy, Religion, Education Research Group, providing  a unique interdisciplinary contribution to the research culture of the Department of Education at the University of Oxford. The Philosophy, religion and education Research Group specifically forges theoretical and empirical interconnections between the arts, humanities, philosophy and the social sciences through the common focus of education. Contributions of this research group have been made to matters such as: theories of research policy and impact; the cultural value of research in the arts and humanities; research ethics; the intersection of epistemological and ethical domains in research in schools; religion, radicalisation and counter-terrorism in schools and universities; and the creation of distinctive sub-field of study at the interface of education, security and intelligence studies.

A specialist in the interdisciplinary study of religion in education, and particularly noted for the systematic philosophical and history of ideas analysis on the epistemological foundations of religious education, his framing of the paradigms of religion in education – scriptural-theological; phenomenological; psychological-experiential; philosophical-conceptual; social-cultural; political-historical – has contributed new insights to secularisation theory in numerous, some award-winning, monographs, such as MasterClass in Religious Education (Gearon, 2013); On Holy Ground (Gearon, 2015) [2016 Society of Education Studies Book Prize]; Religious Authority and the Arts: Conversations in Political Theology (Gearon, 2015); and State Religious Education and the State of the Religious Life (Gearon and Prud’homme, 2018).

His theorisations of the politicisation and securitisation of religion in education have been the subject of intense international debate for several years. Landmark publications on security in education – ‘The Counter-Terrorist Classroom’ (2013); ‘The Counter-Terrorist Classroom’ (2017); ‘Terrorism and Counter-Terrorism Policy and Research in UK Universities’ (2018): ‘Research Ethics in the Securitised University’ (Gearon and Parsons, 2019) and ‘The Kill Chain’ (Gearon, 2020) – have enabled empirical, methodological and theoretical advances on elites’ theory, the ethics of security and radicalisation research (Gearon and Kuusisto, 2018; Kuusisto and Gearon, 2017; Benjamin, Gearon, Kuusisto, Koirikivi, 2021).

With cognate research interests in security across all phases of education, Liam has over a decade collaboratively developed an interdisciplinary sub-field at the boundary of universities, security and intelligence studies, including research ethics in the securitised university (Gearon and Parsons, 2019). One of the defining outcomes here is Liam’s quarter of a million-word edited collection arising from the international Colloquium at Oriel College he convened in 2017, the Routledge International Handbook of Universities, Security and Intelligence Studies (Gearon, 2019). Interdisciplinary and inter-agency work in this area has included the Nuffield Foundation funded Universities and National Security: Research and Policy Collaborations 2019-2020, with a cross-disciplinary research team of 14 distinguished Co-Investigators.

With a significant Academy of Finland research grant (2018-2022) with Arniika Kuusisto (Stockholm/Helsinki/ Oxford), we oversee the research of two highly productive early career, post-doctoral researchers on radicalisation. This includes notable social and policy impacts such as the development of a national strategy around extremism through education for the Ministry of Justice in Finland (Activities | Growing up radical? | University of Helsinki). With substantial quantitative and qualitative data gathered, the project has already produced a substantial number of quality research outputs (Publications | Growing up radical? | University of Helsinki).

With a doctorate in English literature, Liam has also drawn on arts and humanities theoretical knowledge and methodological approaches to advance what are now intense cross-disciplinary debates around ‘decolonising the curriculum’ in religious education. From a series of foundational papers addressing the relationship between religious education and postcolonial theory – Gearon (2001a) ‘The Imagined Other: Postcolonial Theory and Religious Education’; Gearon (2001b) ‘A Spirituality of Dissent: Religion, Culture and Postcolonial Criticism’; Gearon (2002a) ‘Human Rights and Religious Education: Some Postcolonial Perspectives’ – he has recently led an international team (UK, Finland, Sweden, South Africa) as Guest Editor of the British Journal of Religious Education, for a high profile special issue on religion and education in postcolonial context (Gearon, Kuusisto, Matemba, Benjamin, Du Preez, Koirikivi, and Simmonds, 2020).

As Principal Investigator, Liam has led funded research projects with the Academy of Finland, the Arts and Humanities Research Council, the British Academy, the Leverhulme Trust, the Nuffield Foundation, the Philosophy of Education Society of Great Britain, and the Society for Educational Studies, a career total of funding exceeding £5,000,000, including a £4.5 million grant to establish a centre for citizenship and human rights at the University of Surrey Roehampton.

Doctoral supervision and Graduate teaching

 PGCE Religious Education (Subject lead)

  • Masters in Learning and Teaching (Subject lead)
  • Comparative and International Education

EXTERNAL POSTS

2020- Docent, Helsinki University, Finland

2020- Extraordinary Professor, Faculty of Education, North-West University, South Africa

2019-2021 Visiting Professor, Irish Institute of Catholic Studies, MIC, Limerick, Ireland

2012-2020 Conjoint Professor, Newcastle University, Australia

2019-2023 Honorary Senior Research Fellow, School of Education, University of Birmingham

 

PREVIOUS EXTERNAL POSTS

2011-2018, Adjunct Professor, Australian Catholic University, Australia

2010-2011, Visiting Professor, Faculty of Education, University of Plymouth

2008-2010, Research Professor, Faculty of Education, University of Plymouth

2006-2008, Professor of Education, University of Roehampton

2000-2006, Reader in Education, University of Surrey Roehampton

2006-2008, Senior Fellow, Centre of Excellence in Human Rights, University of Surrey Roehampton

2005-2008, Vice-President, International Human Rights Education Consortium, New York, USA

2001-2005, Director, Centre for Research in Human Rights, University of Surrey, Roehampton

1996-2000, Senior Lecturer, Faculty of Education, Roehampton, London

 

UK RESEARCH COUNCIL PEER REVIEW COLLEGES

AHRC Expert Group on Covid Research Group and Research Grant Panel ‘Introducer’

AHRC Peer Review College (2019 Gold Standard award, for ‘Recognition of significant contributions to the AHRC Peer Review College’)

ESRC Peer Review College

Universities UK Peer Review College Global Challenges Research Fund (GCRF)

 

INTERNATIONAL RESEARCH COUNCIL PEER REVIEWER

Academy of Finland

Austrian Science Fund (FWF)

EU 7th Framework Program for Research
Hong Kong Research Grants Council’s Public Policy Research Fund (PPR)

Irish Research Council

John Templeton Foundation

National Research Foundation, South Africa

 

PROFESSIONAL AND RESEARCH ASSOCIATIONS

Association of University Lecturers in Religion and Education (AULRE, co-founder and former Chair)

British Educational Research Association (BERA)

European Educational Research Association (EERA)

International Seminar on Religious Education and Values (ISREV)

Philosophy of Education Society of Great Britain (PESGB)

Society for Research in Higher Education (SRHE)
Society for Educational Studies (SES)

Also:

Executive (2019-2022) Oxford Intelligence Group, Nuffield College, University of Oxford

Fellow, Higher Education Academy (FHEA)

Fellow, Royal Society of Arts (FRSA)

Cambridge Intelligence Seminar

 

OTHER ADMINISTRATIVE ROLES AT OXFORD

Elected by Congregation to the University of Oxford Prevent Steering Group

Social Sciences Divisional representative of the Permanent Private Halls Supervisory Committee (PPHSC), a senior committee of the University of Oxford overseeing governance of Blackfriars; Campion Hall; Regent’s Park College; St Benet’s; St Stephen’s House; Wycliffe Hall.

Member, Central University Research Ethics Committee (CUREC)

Chair, Department of Education Research Ethics Committee (DREC)

Member, Inter-Divisional Social Sciences and Humanities Research Ethics Committee (IDREC)

Chair, Bodleian Library Education Committee

Member and occasional Chair Social Sciences Divisional Library Committee

Education Advisory Group, Christ Church College, Oxford

 

EDITORSHIP OF INTERNATIONAL JOURNALS

Gearon, L. (Guest editor) (2021) Literature and Security, Special Issue, Text Matters: A Journal of Literature, Theory and Culture, with a planned formal launch at Lodz, Poland.

Gearon, L., (Lead Guest Editor with editorial team) Kuusisto, A., Matemba, Y., Benjamin, S., Du Preez, P., Koirikivi, P., Simmonds, S. (2020) Decolonising the Religious Education Curriculum: International Perspectives in Theory, Research, and Practice, Special Issue, British Journal of Religious Education.

Gearon, L. (Guest Editor) (2019) Special Issue of Religions 10 (1) on Religion, Security, Education.

Gearon, L. and Williams, E. (Guest Editors) (2019) Special Issue of the British Journal of Educational Studies, Writers and their Education, 67 (3), 283–289.

Gearon, L. and Williams, E. (Guest Editors) (2018) Special Issue of Journal of Philosophy of Education on Philosophy, Literature and Education, 52 (4), 577-777.

Gearon, L. (Guest Editor) (2015) British Journal of Educational Studies, Special Issue, Education, Security and Intelligence Studies, 63 (3) 263-411.

Tirri, K., (Finland) Campbell, E. (Canada), Gearon, L. (UK), Lovat, T. (Australia) (Guest Editors) (2012) The Moral Core of Teaching, Education Research International.

Gearon, L. (Guest Editor) (2008) Citizenship, Human Rights and Religion, British Journal of Religious Education, 30 (2) 93-108.

Gearon, L. (Guest Editor) (2006) Children’s Spirituality and Children’s Rights, International Journal of Children’s Spirituality, 11 (2) 193-310.

Simon Marginson is  Emeritus Professor of Higher Education at the University of Oxford, Director of the ESRC/RE Centre for Global Higher Education (CGHE), and Editor-in-Chief of the journal Higher Education.

Simon led the ESRC Centre for Global Higher Education between November 2015 and April 2024. His research is focused primarily on global and international higher education, higher education in East Asia, the public and social contributions of higher education, and higher education and social equality. He is currently preparing an integrated theorisation of higher education. His scholarship is widely published and cited (Google h-index 67 in September 2019). Books include Higher Education and the Common Good (Melbourne University Publishing, 2016); High Participation Systems of Higher Education, edited with Brendan Cantwell and Anna Smolentseva (Oxford University Press, 2018); Changing Higher Education in East Asia, edited with Xin Xu (Bloomsbury, 2022) and Assessing the Contributions of Higher Education, edited with Brendan Cantwell, Daria Platonova and Anna Smolentseva (Edward Elgar, 2023).

Selected Publications
Books
  • Marginson, S. (2016).The Dream is Over: The crisis of Clark Kerr’s California Idea of higher education. Berkeley: University of California Press.
  • Marginson, S. (2016).Higher Education and the Common Good. Melbourne: Melbourne University Publishing.
  • Tran, L. & Marginson, S. (eds.). (2018).Internationalisation of Vietnamese Higher Education. Dordrecht: Springer Nature.
  • Carnoy, M., Froumin, I., Leshukov, O. & Marginson, S. (eds.). (2018) Higher Education in Federal Countries. New Delhi: Sage.
  • Cantwell, B., Marginson, S. & Smolentseva, A. (eds.). (2018) High Participation Systems of Higher Education. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
  • Callender, C., Locke, W. & Marginson, S. (eds.) (2020). Changing Higher Education for a Changing World. London: Bloomsbury.
  • Chattopadhyay, S., Marginson, S. & Varghese, N.V. (eds.) (2021). Changing Higher Education in India. London: Bloomsbury.
  • Marginson, S. & Xu, X. (eds.) (2022). Changing Higher Education in East Asia. (2022). London: Bloomsbury.
  • Marginson, S., Cantwell, B., Platonova, D. & Smolentseva, A. (eds.) (2023). Assessing the contributions of higher education. Cheltenham: Edward Elgar.
Recent Journal Papers
  • Marginson, S. (2016). The worldwide trend to high participation higher education: Dynamics of social stratification in inclusive systems. Higher Education, 72 (4), 413-435.
  • Marginson, S. (2018). Private/public in higher education: A synthesis of economic and political approaches. Studies in Higher Education, 43 (2), 322-337
  • Marginson, S. (2018) Global trends in higher education financing: The United Kingdom. International J. Educational Development, 58, 26-36
  • Marginson, S. (2018) National/global synergy in the development of higher education and science in China since 1978. Frontiers of Education in China, 13 (4), 486–512
  • Marginson, S. (2019) Limitations of human capital theory. Studies in Higher Education, 44 (2), 287-301
  • Marginson, S. and Yang, L. (2022). Individual and collective outcomes of higher education: A comparison of Anglo-American and Chinese approaches. Globalisation, Societies and Education, 20 (1), 1-32.
  • Marginson, S. (2022). ‘All things are in flux’: China in global science. Higher Education, 83 (4), 881-910.
  • Marginson, S. (2022). What drives global science? The four competing narratives. Studies in Higher Education, 47 (8), 1566-1584.
  • Marginson, S. (2022). Global science and national comparisons: Beyond bibliometrics and scientometrics. Comparative Education, 58 (2), 125-146.
  • Marginson, S. (2022). What is global higher education? Oxford Review of Education, 48 (4), 492-517.
  • Marginson S. (2022). Space and scale in higher education: The glonacal heuristic revisited. Higher Education, 84 (6),1365-1395.
  • Marginson, S. & Xu, X. (2023). Hegemony and inequality in global science: Problems of the center-periphery model. Comparative Education Review, 67 (1). https://doi.org/10.1086/722760
  • Marginson, S. (2023). Student self-formation: An emerging paradigm in higher education. Studies in Higher Education, https://doi.org/10.1080/03075079.2023.2252826 (2023).
  • Marginson, S. (2023). Limitations of the leading definition of ‘internationalisation’ of higher education: Is the idea wrong or is the fault in reality? Globalisation, Societies and Education, https://doi.org/10.1080/14767724.2023.2264223
  • Marginson, S. and Yang ,L. (2023). Has the public good been emptied out of higher education in England? Higher Education. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10734-023-01117-6

Maia Chankseliani is Associate Professor of Comparative and International Education at the University of Oxford where she leads a flagship master’s course in Comparative and International Education. She convenes the Comparative and International Education Research Group at the Department of Education.

Within comparative and international education, Maia Chankseliani works at the intersection of tertiary education and development. She researches societal, institutional, and policy forces that shape tertiary education and the potential of tertiary education and research for transforming societies.

Methodologically, she utilises both qualitative and quantitative methods. Her work often combines secondary data analysis with insights gathered through semi-structured interviews and contextualised case studies.

Maia Chankseliani has published four books in the field of comparative and international education: What Happened to the Soviet University? (2022), Building Research Capacity at Universities: Insights from Post-Soviet Countries (2022), Comparing Post-Socialist Transformations: Purposes, Policies, and Practices in Education (2018), and Fairness in Access to Higher Education in a Global Perspective: Reconciling Excellence, Efficiency, and Justice (2013).

She currently leads a major research project examining the impact of international mobility on world development (funded by the U.S. Department of State). Maia Chankseliani has worked on a number of externally funded research projects and consultancies involving the UK Government agencies responsible for education and skills, UKRI/ESRC, British Council, World Bank, Qatar Foundation, the European Commission.

With a background in education research, teaching, policy-making, leadership, and consultancy, Maia Chankseliani brings to her role extensive experience in diverse international settings. This breadth of experience informs her research and enables her to bridge theory and practice.

Maia Chankseliani engages with governments and gives academic and policy-relevant talks nationally and internationally. Her research regularly features in national and international media.

She holds a BA in Philology from Tbilisi State University (Georgia), an Ed. M in International Education Policy from Harvard University (USA), and a PhD in Education from the University of Cambridge (UK).

Maia Chankseliani serves as the Editor-in-Chief of the International Journal of Educational Research.

Aliya teaches on the Comparative and International Education MSc programme at our Department. She is also a Junior Research Fellow at Lady Margaret Hall. Her research focuses on young people and families’ experiences of education in turbulent times.

For example, educational challenges and rehabilitation during COVID-19 and after the 2022 floods in Pakistan. Her current geographical focus includes ethnically diverse communities (Pakistani and Bangladeshi) in England as well as marginalised communities in Pakistan.

Aliya’s PhD explored the complexities of gender and international education, and her current work focuses on decolonising educational research practices and the experience of Southern-ness globally. Aliya’s specialist areas are parental, mothers’ and young people’s perspectives of and aspirations for education, and their own modalities of agency to fulfil their dreams.

Aliya publishes on the topics of Southern epistemologies and methodologies and teaches on related topics of decolonisation of knowledge production and the politics of representation. She is currently leading multiple projects in England and Pakistan focusing on girls’ education, gender experiences of education, mothers’ perspectives on educating their children, teacher educators, displaced peoples experiences in England and Pakistan.

Aliya is accepting DPhil students interested in these areas:

  • Southern epistemologies and methodologies
  • The capability approach and social justice
  • Negative capability
  • Deconstruction of the silence/violence binary
  • Marginalised peoples’ perspectives
  • Intersectional experiences of marginalisation including those related with gender, race, ethnicity, indigeneity, queerness, disability, class and caste (among others)
  • Decolonisation of knowledge production and representation of the South
  • Qualitative methodologies
  • Theorising from the margins
  • Area focus South Asia particularly Pakistan and Afghanistan
  • Internal displacement

Aliya is the acting Deputy Chair of the United Kingdom Forum for International Education and Training (UKFIET) conference 2023.

Gates Cambridge Biography

 

Research Group Membership

 

Research Projects

1. ‘Understanding the impact of COVID-19 on learning experiences of secondary school going age children among Bangladeshi and Pakistani ethnic minority families’
Funder: Cambridge Humanities Research Grants Scheme
Research team: Professor Nidhi Singal and Dr Aliya Khalid
Status: Complete

2. Gendered Inequalities in Education and Capability Spaces for Women/Girls (and others) in Pakistan: Education and reconstruction after 2022 floods in Pakistan
Funder: British Association for International and Comparative Education (BAICE) Seedcorn Fund
Research team: Aliya Khalid, Soufia Siddiqui, Aditi Chidambaram, Indrani Sigamany
Status: Ongoing

3. Bridging the Local and Global: Women’s Spaces and Collectives’: On becoming caregivers and teachers: Immigrant mothers’ identities and philosophies of education in England during COVID
Team members: Aliya Khalid, Jane Rooney and Ruth Houghton, Lavinia Kamphausen, Kate spencer-Bennet, Alana Farrel
Funder: The British Academy
Status: Complete

4. Collaborative development of faculty for Pakistan undergraduate Teacher Education Colleges: Durbeen and Oxford knowledge exchange project
Team members: Aliya Khalid, Ann Childs, Trevor Mutton, Ian Thompson, Jenni Ingram and Katharine Burn
Funder: Malala Fund
Status: Ongoing

Dr Karen Skilling is an Associate Professor at the Department of Education at the University of Oxford. Karen is currently the Deputy Director of Doctoral Research, Lead of the PGCE mathematics education at the Department of Education, and co-ordinates the Doctoral Teaching Fellows for teacher education. In 2020, Karen established the STEM Discussion Group and also convenes the Subject Pedagogy Group seminars.

Karen’s research interests include: student engagement and motivation in mathematics; integrated STEM learning and project-based STEM activities; and vignette methods. Karen currently sits on the Executive Committee of BSRLM, and is a journal Editor for the Teaching Education Journal (TEJ) and Research in Mathematics Education (RME). Karen has also been co-Editor for several special issues, and a topic study co-lead at the Congress of the European Society for Research in Mathematics Education (CERME). Karen is a Visiting Fellow at King’s College London and been an HEA Fellow since 2016.

Awards include: Australian Postgraduate Award (Industry) (APAI): funded PhD role attached to MYTEAM Project awarded by Australian Research Council (2008 –2012); Postdoctoral Research Fellowship: Department of Education, University of Oxford (2013-14); and nominations for Most Outstanding Contribution to Student Experience at King’s College London (2015, 2016, 2017).

David Mills is an Associate Professor and Director of the Centre for Global Higher Education (CGHE).

His current research focuses on the political economy of the global science system, and its impact on institutional research and publishing cultures in African universities. His most recent book is ‘Who Counts: Ghanaian Academic Publishing and Global Science’, co-written with colleagues from the University of Ghana and Oxford, and available open access from African Minds:  https://www.africanminds.co.za/who-counts/

Trained in Anthropology, and with inter-disciplinary research interests, David uses ethnographic methods to study the inequalities created by global higher education. He is particularly interested in African university research cultures and the role of diamond Open Access scholarly journals within knowledge ecosystems.

He welcomes enquiries from potential doctoral students interested in studying African Higher Education, as well as research and publishing cultures.

Liam Francis Gearon (BA, Hons, MA, MPhil, Cert He, PhD, FHEA, FRSA, Docent) is Associate Professor in Religious Education in the Department of Education, Senior Research Fellow at Harris Manchester College, University of Oxford; Docent, University of Helsinki, Finland; Honorary Senior Research Fellow at the School of Education, University of Birmingham, UK; Conjoint Professor at Newcastle University, Australia; Visiting Professor at the Irish Centre for Catholic Studies, MIC, Limerick, Ireland; Extraordinary Professor, North-West University, South Africa.

Liam Francis Gearon is Founder-Convenor of the Philosophy, Religion, Education Research Group, providing  a unique interdisciplinary contribution to the research culture of the Department of Education at the University of Oxford. The Philosophy, religion and education Research Group specifically forges theoretical and empirical interconnections between the arts, humanities, philosophy and the social sciences through the common focus of education. Contributions of this research group have been made to matters such as: theories of research policy and impact; the cultural value of research in the arts and humanities; research ethics; the intersection of epistemological and ethical domains in research in schools; religion, radicalisation and counter-terrorism in schools and universities; and the creation of distinctive sub-field of study at the interface of education, security and intelligence studies.

A specialist in the interdisciplinary study of religion in education, and particularly noted for the systematic philosophical and history of ideas analysis on the epistemological foundations of religious education, his framing of the paradigms of religion in education – scriptural-theological; phenomenological; psychological-experiential; philosophical-conceptual; social-cultural; political-historical – has contributed new insights to secularisation theory in numerous, some award-winning, monographs, such as MasterClass in Religious Education (Gearon, 2013); On Holy Ground (Gearon, 2015) [2016 Society of Education Studies Book Prize]; Religious Authority and the Arts: Conversations in Political Theology (Gearon, 2015); and State Religious Education and the State of the Religious Life (Gearon and Prud’homme, 2018).

His theorisations of the politicisation and securitisation of religion in education have been the subject of intense international debate for several years. Landmark publications on security in education – ‘The Counter-Terrorist Classroom’ (2013); ‘The Counter-Terrorist Classroom’ (2017); ‘Terrorism and Counter-Terrorism Policy and Research in UK Universities’ (2018): ‘Research Ethics in the Securitised University’ (Gearon and Parsons, 2019) and ‘The Kill Chain’ (Gearon, 2020) – have enabled empirical, methodological and theoretical advances on elites’ theory, the ethics of security and radicalisation research (Gearon and Kuusisto, 2018; Kuusisto and Gearon, 2017; Benjamin, Gearon, Kuusisto, Koirikivi, 2021).

With cognate research interests in security across all phases of education, Liam has over a decade collaboratively developed an interdisciplinary sub-field at the boundary of universities, security and intelligence studies, including research ethics in the securitised university (Gearon and Parsons, 2019). One of the defining outcomes here is Liam’s quarter of a million-word edited collection arising from the international Colloquium at Oriel College he convened in 2017, the Routledge International Handbook of Universities, Security and Intelligence Studies (Gearon, 2019). Interdisciplinary and inter-agency work in this area has included the Nuffield Foundation funded Universities and National Security: Research and Policy Collaborations 2019-2020, with a cross-disciplinary research team of 14 distinguished Co-Investigators.

With a significant Academy of Finland research grant (2018-2022) with Arniika Kuusisto (Stockholm/Helsinki/ Oxford), we oversee the research of two highly productive early career, post-doctoral researchers on radicalisation. This includes notable social and policy impacts such as the development of a national strategy around extremism through education for the Ministry of Justice in Finland (Activities | Growing up radical? | University of Helsinki). With substantial quantitative and qualitative data gathered, the project has already produced a substantial number of quality research outputs (Publications | Growing up radical? | University of Helsinki).

With a doctorate in English literature, Liam has also drawn on arts and humanities theoretical knowledge and methodological approaches to advance what are now intense cross-disciplinary debates around ‘decolonising the curriculum’ in religious education. From a series of foundational papers addressing the relationship between religious education and postcolonial theory – Gearon (2001a) ‘The Imagined Other: Postcolonial Theory and Religious Education’; Gearon (2001b) ‘A Spirituality of Dissent: Religion, Culture and Postcolonial Criticism’; Gearon (2002a) ‘Human Rights and Religious Education: Some Postcolonial Perspectives’ – he has recently led an international team (UK, Finland, Sweden, South Africa) as Guest Editor of the British Journal of Religious Education, for a high profile special issue on religion and education in postcolonial context (Gearon, Kuusisto, Matemba, Benjamin, Du Preez, Koirikivi, and Simmonds, 2020).

As Principal Investigator, Liam has led funded research projects with the Academy of Finland, the Arts and Humanities Research Council, the British Academy, the Leverhulme Trust, the Nuffield Foundation, the Philosophy of Education Society of Great Britain, and the Society for Educational Studies, a career total of funding exceeding £5,000,000, including a £4.5 million grant to establish a centre for citizenship and human rights at the University of Surrey Roehampton.

Doctoral supervision and Graduate teaching

 PGCE Religious Education (Subject lead)

  • Masters in Learning and Teaching (Subject lead)
  • Comparative and International Education

EXTERNAL POSTS

2020- Docent, Helsinki University, Finland

2020- Extraordinary Professor, Faculty of Education, North-West University, South Africa

2019-2021 Visiting Professor, Irish Institute of Catholic Studies, MIC, Limerick, Ireland

2012-2020 Conjoint Professor, Newcastle University, Australia

2019-2023 Honorary Senior Research Fellow, School of Education, University of Birmingham

 

PREVIOUS EXTERNAL POSTS

2011-2018, Adjunct Professor, Australian Catholic University, Australia

2010-2011, Visiting Professor, Faculty of Education, University of Plymouth

2008-2010, Research Professor, Faculty of Education, University of Plymouth

2006-2008, Professor of Education, University of Roehampton

2000-2006, Reader in Education, University of Surrey Roehampton

2006-2008, Senior Fellow, Centre of Excellence in Human Rights, University of Surrey Roehampton

2005-2008, Vice-President, International Human Rights Education Consortium, New York, USA

2001-2005, Director, Centre for Research in Human Rights, University of Surrey, Roehampton

1996-2000, Senior Lecturer, Faculty of Education, Roehampton, London

 

UK RESEARCH COUNCIL PEER REVIEW COLLEGES

AHRC Expert Group on Covid Research Group and Research Grant Panel ‘Introducer’

AHRC Peer Review College (2019 Gold Standard award, for ‘Recognition of significant contributions to the AHRC Peer Review College’)

ESRC Peer Review College

Universities UK Peer Review College Global Challenges Research Fund (GCRF)

 

INTERNATIONAL RESEARCH COUNCIL PEER REVIEWER

Academy of Finland

Austrian Science Fund (FWF)

EU 7th Framework Program for Research
Hong Kong Research Grants Council’s Public Policy Research Fund (PPR)

Irish Research Council

John Templeton Foundation

National Research Foundation, South Africa

 

PROFESSIONAL AND RESEARCH ASSOCIATIONS

Association of University Lecturers in Religion and Education (AULRE, co-founder and former Chair)

British Educational Research Association (BERA)

European Educational Research Association (EERA)

International Seminar on Religious Education and Values (ISREV)

Philosophy of Education Society of Great Britain (PESGB)

Society for Research in Higher Education (SRHE)
Society for Educational Studies (SES)

Also:

Executive (2019-2022) Oxford Intelligence Group, Nuffield College, University of Oxford

Fellow, Higher Education Academy (FHEA)

Fellow, Royal Society of Arts (FRSA)

Cambridge Intelligence Seminar

 

OTHER ADMINISTRATIVE ROLES AT OXFORD

Elected by Congregation to the University of Oxford Prevent Steering Group

Social Sciences Divisional representative of the Permanent Private Halls Supervisory Committee (PPHSC), a senior committee of the University of Oxford overseeing governance of Blackfriars; Campion Hall; Regent’s Park College; St Benet’s; St Stephen’s House; Wycliffe Hall.

Member, Central University Research Ethics Committee (CUREC)

Chair, Department of Education Research Ethics Committee (DREC)

Member, Inter-Divisional Social Sciences and Humanities Research Ethics Committee (IDREC)

Chair, Bodleian Library Education Committee

Member and occasional Chair Social Sciences Divisional Library Committee

Education Advisory Group, Christ Church College, Oxford

 

EDITORSHIP OF INTERNATIONAL JOURNALS

Gearon, L. (Guest editor) (2021) Literature and Security, Special Issue, Text Matters: A Journal of Literature, Theory and Culture, with a planned formal launch at Lodz, Poland.

Gearon, L., (Lead Guest Editor with editorial team) Kuusisto, A., Matemba, Y., Benjamin, S., Du Preez, P., Koirikivi, P., Simmonds, S. (2020) Decolonising the Religious Education Curriculum: International Perspectives in Theory, Research, and Practice, Special Issue, British Journal of Religious Education.

Gearon, L. (Guest Editor) (2019) Special Issue of Religions 10 (1) on Religion, Security, Education.

Gearon, L. and Williams, E. (Guest Editors) (2019) Special Issue of the British Journal of Educational Studies, Writers and their Education, 67 (3), 283–289.

Gearon, L. and Williams, E. (Guest Editors) (2018) Special Issue of Journal of Philosophy of Education on Philosophy, Literature and Education, 52 (4), 577-777.

Gearon, L. (Guest Editor) (2015) British Journal of Educational Studies, Special Issue, Education, Security and Intelligence Studies, 63 (3) 263-411.

Tirri, K., (Finland) Campbell, E. (Canada), Gearon, L. (UK), Lovat, T. (Australia) (Guest Editors) (2012) The Moral Core of Teaching, Education Research International.

Gearon, L. (Guest Editor) (2008) Citizenship, Human Rights and Religion, British Journal of Religious Education, 30 (2) 93-108.

Gearon, L. (Guest Editor) (2006) Children’s Spirituality and Children’s Rights, International Journal of Children’s Spirituality, 11 (2) 193-310.

Simon Marginson is  Emeritus Professor of Higher Education at the University of Oxford, Director of the ESRC/RE Centre for Global Higher Education (CGHE), and Editor-in-Chief of the journal Higher Education.

Simon led the ESRC Centre for Global Higher Education between November 2015 and April 2024. His research is focused primarily on global and international higher education, higher education in East Asia, the public and social contributions of higher education, and higher education and social equality. He is currently preparing an integrated theorisation of higher education. His scholarship is widely published and cited (Google h-index 67 in September 2019). Books include Higher Education and the Common Good (Melbourne University Publishing, 2016); High Participation Systems of Higher Education, edited with Brendan Cantwell and Anna Smolentseva (Oxford University Press, 2018); Changing Higher Education in East Asia, edited with Xin Xu (Bloomsbury, 2022) and Assessing the Contributions of Higher Education, edited with Brendan Cantwell, Daria Platonova and Anna Smolentseva (Edward Elgar, 2023).

Selected Publications
Books
  • Marginson, S. (2016).The Dream is Over: The crisis of Clark Kerr’s California Idea of higher education. Berkeley: University of California Press.
  • Marginson, S. (2016).Higher Education and the Common Good. Melbourne: Melbourne University Publishing.
  • Tran, L. & Marginson, S. (eds.). (2018).Internationalisation of Vietnamese Higher Education. Dordrecht: Springer Nature.
  • Carnoy, M., Froumin, I., Leshukov, O. & Marginson, S. (eds.). (2018) Higher Education in Federal Countries. New Delhi: Sage.
  • Cantwell, B., Marginson, S. & Smolentseva, A. (eds.). (2018) High Participation Systems of Higher Education. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
  • Callender, C., Locke, W. & Marginson, S. (eds.) (2020). Changing Higher Education for a Changing World. London: Bloomsbury.
  • Chattopadhyay, S., Marginson, S. & Varghese, N.V. (eds.) (2021). Changing Higher Education in India. London: Bloomsbury.
  • Marginson, S. & Xu, X. (eds.) (2022). Changing Higher Education in East Asia. (2022). London: Bloomsbury.
  • Marginson, S., Cantwell, B., Platonova, D. & Smolentseva, A. (eds.) (2023). Assessing the contributions of higher education. Cheltenham: Edward Elgar.
Recent Journal Papers
  • Marginson, S. (2016). The worldwide trend to high participation higher education: Dynamics of social stratification in inclusive systems. Higher Education, 72 (4), 413-435.
  • Marginson, S. (2018). Private/public in higher education: A synthesis of economic and political approaches. Studies in Higher Education, 43 (2), 322-337
  • Marginson, S. (2018) Global trends in higher education financing: The United Kingdom. International J. Educational Development, 58, 26-36
  • Marginson, S. (2018) National/global synergy in the development of higher education and science in China since 1978. Frontiers of Education in China, 13 (4), 486–512
  • Marginson, S. (2019) Limitations of human capital theory. Studies in Higher Education, 44 (2), 287-301
  • Marginson, S. and Yang, L. (2022). Individual and collective outcomes of higher education: A comparison of Anglo-American and Chinese approaches. Globalisation, Societies and Education, 20 (1), 1-32.
  • Marginson, S. (2022). ‘All things are in flux’: China in global science. Higher Education, 83 (4), 881-910.
  • Marginson, S. (2022). What drives global science? The four competing narratives. Studies in Higher Education, 47 (8), 1566-1584.
  • Marginson, S. (2022). Global science and national comparisons: Beyond bibliometrics and scientometrics. Comparative Education, 58 (2), 125-146.
  • Marginson, S. (2022). What is global higher education? Oxford Review of Education, 48 (4), 492-517.
  • Marginson S. (2022). Space and scale in higher education: The glonacal heuristic revisited. Higher Education, 84 (6),1365-1395.
  • Marginson, S. & Xu, X. (2023). Hegemony and inequality in global science: Problems of the center-periphery model. Comparative Education Review, 67 (1). https://doi.org/10.1086/722760
  • Marginson, S. (2023). Student self-formation: An emerging paradigm in higher education. Studies in Higher Education, https://doi.org/10.1080/03075079.2023.2252826 (2023).
  • Marginson, S. (2023). Limitations of the leading definition of ‘internationalisation’ of higher education: Is the idea wrong or is the fault in reality? Globalisation, Societies and Education, https://doi.org/10.1080/14767724.2023.2264223
  • Marginson, S. and Yang ,L. (2023). Has the public good been emptied out of higher education in England? Higher Education. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10734-023-01117-6

Maia Chankseliani is Associate Professor of Comparative and International Education at the University of Oxford where she leads a flagship master’s course in Comparative and International Education. She convenes the Comparative and International Education Research Group at the Department of Education.

Within comparative and international education, Maia Chankseliani works at the intersection of tertiary education and development. She researches societal, institutional, and policy forces that shape tertiary education and the potential of tertiary education and research for transforming societies.

Methodologically, she utilises both qualitative and quantitative methods. Her work often combines secondary data analysis with insights gathered through semi-structured interviews and contextualised case studies.

Maia Chankseliani has published four books in the field of comparative and international education: What Happened to the Soviet University? (2022), Building Research Capacity at Universities: Insights from Post-Soviet Countries (2022), Comparing Post-Socialist Transformations: Purposes, Policies, and Practices in Education (2018), and Fairness in Access to Higher Education in a Global Perspective: Reconciling Excellence, Efficiency, and Justice (2013).

She currently leads a major research project examining the impact of international mobility on world development (funded by the U.S. Department of State). Maia Chankseliani has worked on a number of externally funded research projects and consultancies involving the UK Government agencies responsible for education and skills, UKRI/ESRC, British Council, World Bank, Qatar Foundation, the European Commission.

With a background in education research, teaching, policy-making, leadership, and consultancy, Maia Chankseliani brings to her role extensive experience in diverse international settings. This breadth of experience informs her research and enables her to bridge theory and practice.

Maia Chankseliani engages with governments and gives academic and policy-relevant talks nationally and internationally. Her research regularly features in national and international media.

She holds a BA in Philology from Tbilisi State University (Georgia), an Ed. M in International Education Policy from Harvard University (USA), and a PhD in Education from the University of Cambridge (UK).

Maia Chankseliani serves as the Editor-in-Chief of the International Journal of Educational Research.

Aliya teaches on the Comparative and International Education MSc programme at our Department. She is also a Junior Research Fellow at Lady Margaret Hall. Her research focuses on young people and families’ experiences of education in turbulent times.

For example, educational challenges and rehabilitation during COVID-19 and after the 2022 floods in Pakistan. Her current geographical focus includes ethnically diverse communities (Pakistani and Bangladeshi) in England as well as marginalised communities in Pakistan.

Aliya’s PhD explored the complexities of gender and international education, and her current work focuses on decolonising educational research practices and the experience of Southern-ness globally. Aliya’s specialist areas are parental, mothers’ and young people’s perspectives of and aspirations for education, and their own modalities of agency to fulfil their dreams.

Aliya publishes on the topics of Southern epistemologies and methodologies and teaches on related topics of decolonisation of knowledge production and the politics of representation. She is currently leading multiple projects in England and Pakistan focusing on girls’ education, gender experiences of education, mothers’ perspectives on educating their children, teacher educators, displaced peoples experiences in England and Pakistan.

Aliya is accepting DPhil students interested in these areas:

  • Southern epistemologies and methodologies
  • The capability approach and social justice
  • Negative capability
  • Deconstruction of the silence/violence binary
  • Marginalised peoples’ perspectives
  • Intersectional experiences of marginalisation including those related with gender, race, ethnicity, indigeneity, queerness, disability, class and caste (among others)
  • Decolonisation of knowledge production and representation of the South
  • Qualitative methodologies
  • Theorising from the margins
  • Area focus South Asia particularly Pakistan and Afghanistan
  • Internal displacement

Aliya is the acting Deputy Chair of the United Kingdom Forum for International Education and Training (UKFIET) conference 2023.

Gates Cambridge Biography

 

Research Group Membership

 

Research Projects

1. ‘Understanding the impact of COVID-19 on learning experiences of secondary school going age children among Bangladeshi and Pakistani ethnic minority families’
Funder: Cambridge Humanities Research Grants Scheme
Research team: Professor Nidhi Singal and Dr Aliya Khalid
Status: Complete

2. Gendered Inequalities in Education and Capability Spaces for Women/Girls (and others) in Pakistan: Education and reconstruction after 2022 floods in Pakistan
Funder: British Association for International and Comparative Education (BAICE) Seedcorn Fund
Research team: Aliya Khalid, Soufia Siddiqui, Aditi Chidambaram, Indrani Sigamany
Status: Ongoing

3. Bridging the Local and Global: Women’s Spaces and Collectives’: On becoming caregivers and teachers: Immigrant mothers’ identities and philosophies of education in England during COVID
Team members: Aliya Khalid, Jane Rooney and Ruth Houghton, Lavinia Kamphausen, Kate spencer-Bennet, Alana Farrel
Funder: The British Academy
Status: Complete

4. Collaborative development of faculty for Pakistan undergraduate Teacher Education Colleges: Durbeen and Oxford knowledge exchange project
Team members: Aliya Khalid, Ann Childs, Trevor Mutton, Ian Thompson, Jenni Ingram and Katharine Burn
Funder: Malala Fund
Status: Ongoing

Dr Karen Skilling is an Associate Professor at the Department of Education at the University of Oxford. Karen is currently the Deputy Director of Doctoral Research, Lead of the PGCE mathematics education at the Department of Education, and co-ordinates the Doctoral Teaching Fellows for teacher education. In 2020, Karen established the STEM Discussion Group and also convenes the Subject Pedagogy Group seminars.

Karen’s research interests include: student engagement and motivation in mathematics; integrated STEM learning and project-based STEM activities; and vignette methods. Karen currently sits on the Executive Committee of BSRLM, and is a journal Editor for the Teaching Education Journal (TEJ) and Research in Mathematics Education (RME). Karen has also been co-Editor for several special issues, and a topic study co-lead at the Congress of the European Society for Research in Mathematics Education (CERME). Karen is a Visiting Fellow at King’s College London and been an HEA Fellow since 2016.

Awards include: Australian Postgraduate Award (Industry) (APAI): funded PhD role attached to MYTEAM Project awarded by Australian Research Council (2008 –2012); Postdoctoral Research Fellowship: Department of Education, University of Oxford (2013-14); and nominations for Most Outstanding Contribution to Student Experience at King’s College London (2015, 2016, 2017).

David Mills is an Associate Professor and Director of the Centre for Global Higher Education (CGHE).

His current research focuses on the political economy of the global science system, and its impact on institutional research and publishing cultures in African universities. His most recent book is ‘Who Counts: Ghanaian Academic Publishing and Global Science’, co-written with colleagues from the University of Ghana and Oxford, and available open access from African Minds:  https://www.africanminds.co.za/who-counts/

Trained in Anthropology, and with inter-disciplinary research interests, David uses ethnographic methods to study the inequalities created by global higher education. He is particularly interested in African university research cultures and the role of diamond Open Access scholarly journals within knowledge ecosystems.

He welcomes enquiries from potential doctoral students interested in studying African Higher Education, as well as research and publishing cultures.

Liam Francis Gearon (BA, Hons, MA, MPhil, Cert He, PhD, FHEA, FRSA, Docent) is Associate Professor in Religious Education in the Department of Education, Senior Research Fellow at Harris Manchester College, University of Oxford; Docent, University of Helsinki, Finland; Honorary Senior Research Fellow at the School of Education, University of Birmingham, UK; Conjoint Professor at Newcastle University, Australia; Visiting Professor at the Irish Centre for Catholic Studies, MIC, Limerick, Ireland; Extraordinary Professor, North-West University, South Africa.

Liam Francis Gearon is Founder-Convenor of the Philosophy, Religion, Education Research Group, providing  a unique interdisciplinary contribution to the research culture of the Department of Education at the University of Oxford. The Philosophy, religion and education Research Group specifically forges theoretical and empirical interconnections between the arts, humanities, philosophy and the social sciences through the common focus of education. Contributions of this research group have been made to matters such as: theories of research policy and impact; the cultural value of research in the arts and humanities; research ethics; the intersection of epistemological and ethical domains in research in schools; religion, radicalisation and counter-terrorism in schools and universities; and the creation of distinctive sub-field of study at the interface of education, security and intelligence studies.

A specialist in the interdisciplinary study of religion in education, and particularly noted for the systematic philosophical and history of ideas analysis on the epistemological foundations of religious education, his framing of the paradigms of religion in education – scriptural-theological; phenomenological; psychological-experiential; philosophical-conceptual; social-cultural; political-historical – has contributed new insights to secularisation theory in numerous, some award-winning, monographs, such as MasterClass in Religious Education (Gearon, 2013); On Holy Ground (Gearon, 2015) [2016 Society of Education Studies Book Prize]; Religious Authority and the Arts: Conversations in Political Theology (Gearon, 2015); and State Religious Education and the State of the Religious Life (Gearon and Prud’homme, 2018).

His theorisations of the politicisation and securitisation of religion in education have been the subject of intense international debate for several years. Landmark publications on security in education – ‘The Counter-Terrorist Classroom’ (2013); ‘The Counter-Terrorist Classroom’ (2017); ‘Terrorism and Counter-Terrorism Policy and Research in UK Universities’ (2018): ‘Research Ethics in the Securitised University’ (Gearon and Parsons, 2019) and ‘The Kill Chain’ (Gearon, 2020) – have enabled empirical, methodological and theoretical advances on elites’ theory, the ethics of security and radicalisation research (Gearon and Kuusisto, 2018; Kuusisto and Gearon, 2017; Benjamin, Gearon, Kuusisto, Koirikivi, 2021).

With cognate research interests in security across all phases of education, Liam has over a decade collaboratively developed an interdisciplinary sub-field at the boundary of universities, security and intelligence studies, including research ethics in the securitised university (Gearon and Parsons, 2019). One of the defining outcomes here is Liam’s quarter of a million-word edited collection arising from the international Colloquium at Oriel College he convened in 2017, the Routledge International Handbook of Universities, Security and Intelligence Studies (Gearon, 2019). Interdisciplinary and inter-agency work in this area has included the Nuffield Foundation funded Universities and National Security: Research and Policy Collaborations 2019-2020, with a cross-disciplinary research team of 14 distinguished Co-Investigators.

With a significant Academy of Finland research grant (2018-2022) with Arniika Kuusisto (Stockholm/Helsinki/ Oxford), we oversee the research of two highly productive early career, post-doctoral researchers on radicalisation. This includes notable social and policy impacts such as the development of a national strategy around extremism through education for the Ministry of Justice in Finland (Activities | Growing up radical? | University of Helsinki). With substantial quantitative and qualitative data gathered, the project has already produced a substantial number of quality research outputs (Publications | Growing up radical? | University of Helsinki).

With a doctorate in English literature, Liam has also drawn on arts and humanities theoretical knowledge and methodological approaches to advance what are now intense cross-disciplinary debates around ‘decolonising the curriculum’ in religious education. From a series of foundational papers addressing the relationship between religious education and postcolonial theory – Gearon (2001a) ‘The Imagined Other: Postcolonial Theory and Religious Education’; Gearon (2001b) ‘A Spirituality of Dissent: Religion, Culture and Postcolonial Criticism’; Gearon (2002a) ‘Human Rights and Religious Education: Some Postcolonial Perspectives’ – he has recently led an international team (UK, Finland, Sweden, South Africa) as Guest Editor of the British Journal of Religious Education, for a high profile special issue on religion and education in postcolonial context (Gearon, Kuusisto, Matemba, Benjamin, Du Preez, Koirikivi, and Simmonds, 2020).

As Principal Investigator, Liam has led funded research projects with the Academy of Finland, the Arts and Humanities Research Council, the British Academy, the Leverhulme Trust, the Nuffield Foundation, the Philosophy of Education Society of Great Britain, and the Society for Educational Studies, a career total of funding exceeding £5,000,000, including a £4.5 million grant to establish a centre for citizenship and human rights at the University of Surrey Roehampton.

Doctoral supervision and Graduate teaching

 PGCE Religious Education (Subject lead)

  • Masters in Learning and Teaching (Subject lead)
  • Comparative and International Education

EXTERNAL POSTS

2020- Docent, Helsinki University, Finland

2020- Extraordinary Professor, Faculty of Education, North-West University, South Africa

2019-2021 Visiting Professor, Irish Institute of Catholic Studies, MIC, Limerick, Ireland

2012-2020 Conjoint Professor, Newcastle University, Australia

2019-2023 Honorary Senior Research Fellow, School of Education, University of Birmingham

 

PREVIOUS EXTERNAL POSTS

2011-2018, Adjunct Professor, Australian Catholic University, Australia

2010-2011, Visiting Professor, Faculty of Education, University of Plymouth

2008-2010, Research Professor, Faculty of Education, University of Plymouth

2006-2008, Professor of Education, University of Roehampton

2000-2006, Reader in Education, University of Surrey Roehampton

2006-2008, Senior Fellow, Centre of Excellence in Human Rights, University of Surrey Roehampton

2005-2008, Vice-President, International Human Rights Education Consortium, New York, USA

2001-2005, Director, Centre for Research in Human Rights, University of Surrey, Roehampton

1996-2000, Senior Lecturer, Faculty of Education, Roehampton, London

 

UK RESEARCH COUNCIL PEER REVIEW COLLEGES

AHRC Expert Group on Covid Research Group and Research Grant Panel ‘Introducer’

AHRC Peer Review College (2019 Gold Standard award, for ‘Recognition of significant contributions to the AHRC Peer Review College’)

ESRC Peer Review College

Universities UK Peer Review College Global Challenges Research Fund (GCRF)

 

INTERNATIONAL RESEARCH COUNCIL PEER REVIEWER

Academy of Finland

Austrian Science Fund (FWF)

EU 7th Framework Program for Research
Hong Kong Research Grants Council’s Public Policy Research Fund (PPR)

Irish Research Council

John Templeton Foundation

National Research Foundation, South Africa

 

PROFESSIONAL AND RESEARCH ASSOCIATIONS

Association of University Lecturers in Religion and Education (AULRE, co-founder and former Chair)

British Educational Research Association (BERA)

European Educational Research Association (EERA)

International Seminar on Religious Education and Values (ISREV)

Philosophy of Education Society of Great Britain (PESGB)

Society for Research in Higher Education (SRHE)
Society for Educational Studies (SES)

Also:

Executive (2019-2022) Oxford Intelligence Group, Nuffield College, University of Oxford

Fellow, Higher Education Academy (FHEA)

Fellow, Royal Society of Arts (FRSA)

Cambridge Intelligence Seminar

 

OTHER ADMINISTRATIVE ROLES AT OXFORD

Elected by Congregation to the University of Oxford Prevent Steering Group

Social Sciences Divisional representative of the Permanent Private Halls Supervisory Committee (PPHSC), a senior committee of the University of Oxford overseeing governance of Blackfriars; Campion Hall; Regent’s Park College; St Benet’s; St Stephen’s House; Wycliffe Hall.

Member, Central University Research Ethics Committee (CUREC)

Chair, Department of Education Research Ethics Committee (DREC)

Member, Inter-Divisional Social Sciences and Humanities Research Ethics Committee (IDREC)

Chair, Bodleian Library Education Committee

Member and occasional Chair Social Sciences Divisional Library Committee

Education Advisory Group, Christ Church College, Oxford

 

EDITORSHIP OF INTERNATIONAL JOURNALS

Gearon, L. (Guest editor) (2021) Literature and Security, Special Issue, Text Matters: A Journal of Literature, Theory and Culture, with a planned formal launch at Lodz, Poland.

Gearon, L., (Lead Guest Editor with editorial team) Kuusisto, A., Matemba, Y., Benjamin, S., Du Preez, P., Koirikivi, P., Simmonds, S. (2020) Decolonising the Religious Education Curriculum: International Perspectives in Theory, Research, and Practice, Special Issue, British Journal of Religious Education.

Gearon, L. (Guest Editor) (2019) Special Issue of Religions 10 (1) on Religion, Security, Education.

Gearon, L. and Williams, E. (Guest Editors) (2019) Special Issue of the British Journal of Educational Studies, Writers and their Education, 67 (3), 283–289.

Gearon, L. and Williams, E. (Guest Editors) (2018) Special Issue of Journal of Philosophy of Education on Philosophy, Literature and Education, 52 (4), 577-777.

Gearon, L. (Guest Editor) (2015) British Journal of Educational Studies, Special Issue, Education, Security and Intelligence Studies, 63 (3) 263-411.

Tirri, K., (Finland) Campbell, E. (Canada), Gearon, L. (UK), Lovat, T. (Australia) (Guest Editors) (2012) The Moral Core of Teaching, Education Research International.

Gearon, L. (Guest Editor) (2008) Citizenship, Human Rights and Religion, British Journal of Religious Education, 30 (2) 93-108.

Gearon, L. (Guest Editor) (2006) Children’s Spirituality and Children’s Rights, International Journal of Children’s Spirituality, 11 (2) 193-310.

Simon Marginson is  Emeritus Professor of Higher Education at the University of Oxford, Director of the ESRC/RE Centre for Global Higher Education (CGHE), and Editor-in-Chief of the journal Higher Education.

Simon led the ESRC Centre for Global Higher Education between November 2015 and April 2024. His research is focused primarily on global and international higher education, higher education in East Asia, the public and social contributions of higher education, and higher education and social equality. He is currently preparing an integrated theorisation of higher education. His scholarship is widely published and cited (Google h-index 67 in September 2019). Books include Higher Education and the Common Good (Melbourne University Publishing, 2016); High Participation Systems of Higher Education, edited with Brendan Cantwell and Anna Smolentseva (Oxford University Press, 2018); Changing Higher Education in East Asia, edited with Xin Xu (Bloomsbury, 2022) and Assessing the Contributions of Higher Education, edited with Brendan Cantwell, Daria Platonova and Anna Smolentseva (Edward Elgar, 2023).

Selected Publications
Books
  • Marginson, S. (2016).The Dream is Over: The crisis of Clark Kerr’s California Idea of higher education. Berkeley: University of California Press.
  • Marginson, S. (2016).Higher Education and the Common Good. Melbourne: Melbourne University Publishing.
  • Tran, L. & Marginson, S. (eds.). (2018).Internationalisation of Vietnamese Higher Education. Dordrecht: Springer Nature.
  • Carnoy, M., Froumin, I., Leshukov, O. & Marginson, S. (eds.). (2018) Higher Education in Federal Countries. New Delhi: Sage.
  • Cantwell, B., Marginson, S. & Smolentseva, A. (eds.). (2018) High Participation Systems of Higher Education. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
  • Callender, C., Locke, W. & Marginson, S. (eds.) (2020). Changing Higher Education for a Changing World. London: Bloomsbury.
  • Chattopadhyay, S., Marginson, S. & Varghese, N.V. (eds.) (2021). Changing Higher Education in India. London: Bloomsbury.
  • Marginson, S. & Xu, X. (eds.) (2022). Changing Higher Education in East Asia. (2022). London: Bloomsbury.
  • Marginson, S., Cantwell, B., Platonova, D. & Smolentseva, A. (eds.) (2023). Assessing the contributions of higher education. Cheltenham: Edward Elgar.
Recent Journal Papers
  • Marginson, S. (2016). The worldwide trend to high participation higher education: Dynamics of social stratification in inclusive systems. Higher Education, 72 (4), 413-435.
  • Marginson, S. (2018). Private/public in higher education: A synthesis of economic and political approaches. Studies in Higher Education, 43 (2), 322-337
  • Marginson, S. (2018) Global trends in higher education financing: The United Kingdom. International J. Educational Development, 58, 26-36
  • Marginson, S. (2018) National/global synergy in the development of higher education and science in China since 1978. Frontiers of Education in China, 13 (4), 486–512
  • Marginson, S. (2019) Limitations of human capital theory. Studies in Higher Education, 44 (2), 287-301
  • Marginson, S. and Yang, L. (2022). Individual and collective outcomes of higher education: A comparison of Anglo-American and Chinese approaches. Globalisation, Societies and Education, 20 (1), 1-32.
  • Marginson, S. (2022). ‘All things are in flux’: China in global science. Higher Education, 83 (4), 881-910.
  • Marginson, S. (2022). What drives global science? The four competing narratives. Studies in Higher Education, 47 (8), 1566-1584.
  • Marginson, S. (2022). Global science and national comparisons: Beyond bibliometrics and scientometrics. Comparative Education, 58 (2), 125-146.
  • Marginson, S. (2022). What is global higher education? Oxford Review of Education, 48 (4), 492-517.
  • Marginson S. (2022). Space and scale in higher education: The glonacal heuristic revisited. Higher Education, 84 (6),1365-1395.
  • Marginson, S. & Xu, X. (2023). Hegemony and inequality in global science: Problems of the center-periphery model. Comparative Education Review, 67 (1). https://doi.org/10.1086/722760
  • Marginson, S. (2023). Student self-formation: An emerging paradigm in higher education. Studies in Higher Education, https://doi.org/10.1080/03075079.2023.2252826 (2023).
  • Marginson, S. (2023). Limitations of the leading definition of ‘internationalisation’ of higher education: Is the idea wrong or is the fault in reality? Globalisation, Societies and Education, https://doi.org/10.1080/14767724.2023.2264223
  • Marginson, S. and Yang ,L. (2023). Has the public good been emptied out of higher education in England? Higher Education. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10734-023-01117-6

Maia Chankseliani is Associate Professor of Comparative and International Education at the University of Oxford where she leads a flagship master’s course in Comparative and International Education. She convenes the Comparative and International Education Research Group at the Department of Education.

Within comparative and international education, Maia Chankseliani works at the intersection of tertiary education and development. She researches societal, institutional, and policy forces that shape tertiary education and the potential of tertiary education and research for transforming societies.

Methodologically, she utilises both qualitative and quantitative methods. Her work often combines secondary data analysis with insights gathered through semi-structured interviews and contextualised case studies.

Maia Chankseliani has published four books in the field of comparative and international education: What Happened to the Soviet University? (2022), Building Research Capacity at Universities: Insights from Post-Soviet Countries (2022), Comparing Post-Socialist Transformations: Purposes, Policies, and Practices in Education (2018), and Fairness in Access to Higher Education in a Global Perspective: Reconciling Excellence, Efficiency, and Justice (2013).

She currently leads a major research project examining the impact of international mobility on world development (funded by the U.S. Department of State). Maia Chankseliani has worked on a number of externally funded research projects and consultancies involving the UK Government agencies responsible for education and skills, UKRI/ESRC, British Council, World Bank, Qatar Foundation, the European Commission.

With a background in education research, teaching, policy-making, leadership, and consultancy, Maia Chankseliani brings to her role extensive experience in diverse international settings. This breadth of experience informs her research and enables her to bridge theory and practice.

Maia Chankseliani engages with governments and gives academic and policy-relevant talks nationally and internationally. Her research regularly features in national and international media.

She holds a BA in Philology from Tbilisi State University (Georgia), an Ed. M in International Education Policy from Harvard University (USA), and a PhD in Education from the University of Cambridge (UK).

Maia Chankseliani serves as the Editor-in-Chief of the International Journal of Educational Research.

Aliya teaches on the Comparative and International Education MSc programme at our Department. She is also a Junior Research Fellow at Lady Margaret Hall. Her research focuses on young people and families’ experiences of education in turbulent times.

For example, educational challenges and rehabilitation during COVID-19 and after the 2022 floods in Pakistan. Her current geographical focus includes ethnically diverse communities (Pakistani and Bangladeshi) in England as well as marginalised communities in Pakistan.

Aliya’s PhD explored the complexities of gender and international education, and her current work focuses on decolonising educational research practices and the experience of Southern-ness globally. Aliya’s specialist areas are parental, mothers’ and young people’s perspectives of and aspirations for education, and their own modalities of agency to fulfil their dreams.

Aliya publishes on the topics of Southern epistemologies and methodologies and teaches on related topics of decolonisation of knowledge production and the politics of representation. She is currently leading multiple projects in England and Pakistan focusing on girls’ education, gender experiences of education, mothers’ perspectives on educating their children, teacher educators, displaced peoples experiences in England and Pakistan.

Aliya is accepting DPhil students interested in these areas:

  • Southern epistemologies and methodologies
  • The capability approach and social justice
  • Negative capability
  • Deconstruction of the silence/violence binary
  • Marginalised peoples’ perspectives
  • Intersectional experiences of marginalisation including those related with gender, race, ethnicity, indigeneity, queerness, disability, class and caste (among others)
  • Decolonisation of knowledge production and representation of the South
  • Qualitative methodologies
  • Theorising from the margins
  • Area focus South Asia particularly Pakistan and Afghanistan
  • Internal displacement

Aliya is the acting Deputy Chair of the United Kingdom Forum for International Education and Training (UKFIET) conference 2023.

Gates Cambridge Biography

 

Research Group Membership

 

Research Projects

1. ‘Understanding the impact of COVID-19 on learning experiences of secondary school going age children among Bangladeshi and Pakistani ethnic minority families’
Funder: Cambridge Humanities Research Grants Scheme
Research team: Professor Nidhi Singal and Dr Aliya Khalid
Status: Complete

2. Gendered Inequalities in Education and Capability Spaces for Women/Girls (and others) in Pakistan: Education and reconstruction after 2022 floods in Pakistan
Funder: British Association for International and Comparative Education (BAICE) Seedcorn Fund
Research team: Aliya Khalid, Soufia Siddiqui, Aditi Chidambaram, Indrani Sigamany
Status: Ongoing

3. Bridging the Local and Global: Women’s Spaces and Collectives’: On becoming caregivers and teachers: Immigrant mothers’ identities and philosophies of education in England during COVID
Team members: Aliya Khalid, Jane Rooney and Ruth Houghton, Lavinia Kamphausen, Kate spencer-Bennet, Alana Farrel
Funder: The British Academy
Status: Complete

4. Collaborative development of faculty for Pakistan undergraduate Teacher Education Colleges: Durbeen and Oxford knowledge exchange project
Team members: Aliya Khalid, Ann Childs, Trevor Mutton, Ian Thompson, Jenni Ingram and Katharine Burn
Funder: Malala Fund
Status: Ongoing

Dr Karen Skilling is an Associate Professor at the Department of Education at the University of Oxford. Karen is currently the Deputy Director of Doctoral Research, Lead of the PGCE mathematics education at the Department of Education, and co-ordinates the Doctoral Teaching Fellows for teacher education. In 2020, Karen established the STEM Discussion Group and also convenes the Subject Pedagogy Group seminars.

Karen’s research interests include: student engagement and motivation in mathematics; integrated STEM learning and project-based STEM activities; and vignette methods. Karen currently sits on the Executive Committee of BSRLM, and is a journal Editor for the Teaching Education Journal (TEJ) and Research in Mathematics Education (RME). Karen has also been co-Editor for several special issues, and a topic study co-lead at the Congress of the European Society for Research in Mathematics Education (CERME). Karen is a Visiting Fellow at King’s College London and been an HEA Fellow since 2016.

Awards include: Australian Postgraduate Award (Industry) (APAI): funded PhD role attached to MYTEAM Project awarded by Australian Research Council (2008 –2012); Postdoctoral Research Fellowship: Department of Education, University of Oxford (2013-14); and nominations for Most Outstanding Contribution to Student Experience at King’s College London (2015, 2016, 2017).

David Mills is an Associate Professor and Director of the Centre for Global Higher Education (CGHE).

His current research focuses on the political economy of the global science system, and its impact on institutional research and publishing cultures in African universities. His most recent book is ‘Who Counts: Ghanaian Academic Publishing and Global Science’, co-written with colleagues from the University of Ghana and Oxford, and available open access from African Minds:  https://www.africanminds.co.za/who-counts/

Trained in Anthropology, and with inter-disciplinary research interests, David uses ethnographic methods to study the inequalities created by global higher education. He is particularly interested in African university research cultures and the role of diamond Open Access scholarly journals within knowledge ecosystems.

He welcomes enquiries from potential doctoral students interested in studying African Higher Education, as well as research and publishing cultures.

Liam Francis Gearon (BA, Hons, MA, MPhil, Cert He, PhD, FHEA, FRSA, Docent) is Associate Professor in Religious Education in the Department of Education, Senior Research Fellow at Harris Manchester College, University of Oxford; Docent, University of Helsinki, Finland; Honorary Senior Research Fellow at the School of Education, University of Birmingham, UK; Conjoint Professor at Newcastle University, Australia; Visiting Professor at the Irish Centre for Catholic Studies, MIC, Limerick, Ireland; Extraordinary Professor, North-West University, South Africa.

Liam Francis Gearon is Founder-Convenor of the Philosophy, Religion, Education Research Group, providing  a unique interdisciplinary contribution to the research culture of the Department of Education at the University of Oxford. The Philosophy, religion and education Research Group specifically forges theoretical and empirical interconnections between the arts, humanities, philosophy and the social sciences through the common focus of education. Contributions of this research group have been made to matters such as: theories of research policy and impact; the cultural value of research in the arts and humanities; research ethics; the intersection of epistemological and ethical domains in research in schools; religion, radicalisation and counter-terrorism in schools and universities; and the creation of distinctive sub-field of study at the interface of education, security and intelligence studies.

A specialist in the interdisciplinary study of religion in education, and particularly noted for the systematic philosophical and history of ideas analysis on the epistemological foundations of religious education, his framing of the paradigms of religion in education – scriptural-theological; phenomenological; psychological-experiential; philosophical-conceptual; social-cultural; political-historical – has contributed new insights to secularisation theory in numerous, some award-winning, monographs, such as MasterClass in Religious Education (Gearon, 2013); On Holy Ground (Gearon, 2015) [2016 Society of Education Studies Book Prize]; Religious Authority and the Arts: Conversations in Political Theology (Gearon, 2015); and State Religious Education and the State of the Religious Life (Gearon and Prud’homme, 2018).

His theorisations of the politicisation and securitisation of religion in education have been the subject of intense international debate for several years. Landmark publications on security in education – ‘The Counter-Terrorist Classroom’ (2013); ‘The Counter-Terrorist Classroom’ (2017); ‘Terrorism and Counter-Terrorism Policy and Research in UK Universities’ (2018): ‘Research Ethics in the Securitised University’ (Gearon and Parsons, 2019) and ‘The Kill Chain’ (Gearon, 2020) – have enabled empirical, methodological and theoretical advances on elites’ theory, the ethics of security and radicalisation research (Gearon and Kuusisto, 2018; Kuusisto and Gearon, 2017; Benjamin, Gearon, Kuusisto, Koirikivi, 2021).

With cognate research interests in security across all phases of education, Liam has over a decade collaboratively developed an interdisciplinary sub-field at the boundary of universities, security and intelligence studies, including research ethics in the securitised university (Gearon and Parsons, 2019). One of the defining outcomes here is Liam’s quarter of a million-word edited collection arising from the international Colloquium at Oriel College he convened in 2017, the Routledge International Handbook of Universities, Security and Intelligence Studies (Gearon, 2019). Interdisciplinary and inter-agency work in this area has included the Nuffield Foundation funded Universities and National Security: Research and Policy Collaborations 2019-2020, with a cross-disciplinary research team of 14 distinguished Co-Investigators.

With a significant Academy of Finland research grant (2018-2022) with Arniika Kuusisto (Stockholm/Helsinki/ Oxford), we oversee the research of two highly productive early career, post-doctoral researchers on radicalisation. This includes notable social and policy impacts such as the development of a national strategy around extremism through education for the Ministry of Justice in Finland (Activities | Growing up radical? | University of Helsinki). With substantial quantitative and qualitative data gathered, the project has already produced a substantial number of quality research outputs (Publications | Growing up radical? | University of Helsinki).

With a doctorate in English literature, Liam has also drawn on arts and humanities theoretical knowledge and methodological approaches to advance what are now intense cross-disciplinary debates around ‘decolonising the curriculum’ in religious education. From a series of foundational papers addressing the relationship between religious education and postcolonial theory – Gearon (2001a) ‘The Imagined Other: Postcolonial Theory and Religious Education’; Gearon (2001b) ‘A Spirituality of Dissent: Religion, Culture and Postcolonial Criticism’; Gearon (2002a) ‘Human Rights and Religious Education: Some Postcolonial Perspectives’ – he has recently led an international team (UK, Finland, Sweden, South Africa) as Guest Editor of the British Journal of Religious Education, for a high profile special issue on religion and education in postcolonial context (Gearon, Kuusisto, Matemba, Benjamin, Du Preez, Koirikivi, and Simmonds, 2020).

As Principal Investigator, Liam has led funded research projects with the Academy of Finland, the Arts and Humanities Research Council, the British Academy, the Leverhulme Trust, the Nuffield Foundation, the Philosophy of Education Society of Great Britain, and the Society for Educational Studies, a career total of funding exceeding £5,000,000, including a £4.5 million grant to establish a centre for citizenship and human rights at the University of Surrey Roehampton.

Doctoral supervision and Graduate teaching

 PGCE Religious Education (Subject lead)

  • Masters in Learning and Teaching (Subject lead)
  • Comparative and International Education

EXTERNAL POSTS

2020- Docent, Helsinki University, Finland

2020- Extraordinary Professor, Faculty of Education, North-West University, South Africa

2019-2021 Visiting Professor, Irish Institute of Catholic Studies, MIC, Limerick, Ireland

2012-2020 Conjoint Professor, Newcastle University, Australia

2019-2023 Honorary Senior Research Fellow, School of Education, University of Birmingham

 

PREVIOUS EXTERNAL POSTS

2011-2018, Adjunct Professor, Australian Catholic University, Australia

2010-2011, Visiting Professor, Faculty of Education, University of Plymouth

2008-2010, Research Professor, Faculty of Education, University of Plymouth

2006-2008, Professor of Education, University of Roehampton

2000-2006, Reader in Education, University of Surrey Roehampton

2006-2008, Senior Fellow, Centre of Excellence in Human Rights, University of Surrey Roehampton

2005-2008, Vice-President, International Human Rights Education Consortium, New York, USA

2001-2005, Director, Centre for Research in Human Rights, University of Surrey, Roehampton

1996-2000, Senior Lecturer, Faculty of Education, Roehampton, London

 

UK RESEARCH COUNCIL PEER REVIEW COLLEGES

AHRC Expert Group on Covid Research Group and Research Grant Panel ‘Introducer’

AHRC Peer Review College (2019 Gold Standard award, for ‘Recognition of significant contributions to the AHRC Peer Review College’)

ESRC Peer Review College

Universities UK Peer Review College Global Challenges Research Fund (GCRF)

 

INTERNATIONAL RESEARCH COUNCIL PEER REVIEWER

Academy of Finland

Austrian Science Fund (FWF)

EU 7th Framework Program for Research
Hong Kong Research Grants Council’s Public Policy Research Fund (PPR)

Irish Research Council

John Templeton Foundation

National Research Foundation, South Africa

 

PROFESSIONAL AND RESEARCH ASSOCIATIONS

Association of University Lecturers in Religion and Education (AULRE, co-founder and former Chair)

British Educational Research Association (BERA)

European Educational Research Association (EERA)

International Seminar on Religious Education and Values (ISREV)

Philosophy of Education Society of Great Britain (PESGB)

Society for Research in Higher Education (SRHE)
Society for Educational Studies (SES)

Also:

Executive (2019-2022) Oxford Intelligence Group, Nuffield College, University of Oxford

Fellow, Higher Education Academy (FHEA)

Fellow, Royal Society of Arts (FRSA)

Cambridge Intelligence Seminar

 

OTHER ADMINISTRATIVE ROLES AT OXFORD

Elected by Congregation to the University of Oxford Prevent Steering Group

Social Sciences Divisional representative of the Permanent Private Halls Supervisory Committee (PPHSC), a senior committee of the University of Oxford overseeing governance of Blackfriars; Campion Hall; Regent’s Park College; St Benet’s; St Stephen’s House; Wycliffe Hall.

Member, Central University Research Ethics Committee (CUREC)

Chair, Department of Education Research Ethics Committee (DREC)

Member, Inter-Divisional Social Sciences and Humanities Research Ethics Committee (IDREC)

Chair, Bodleian Library Education Committee

Member and occasional Chair Social Sciences Divisional Library Committee

Education Advisory Group, Christ Church College, Oxford

 

EDITORSHIP OF INTERNATIONAL JOURNALS

Gearon, L. (Guest editor) (2021) Literature and Security, Special Issue, Text Matters: A Journal of Literature, Theory and Culture, with a planned formal launch at Lodz, Poland.

Gearon, L., (Lead Guest Editor with editorial team) Kuusisto, A., Matemba, Y., Benjamin, S., Du Preez, P., Koirikivi, P., Simmonds, S. (2020) Decolonising the Religious Education Curriculum: International Perspectives in Theory, Research, and Practice, Special Issue, British Journal of Religious Education.

Gearon, L. (Guest Editor) (2019) Special Issue of Religions 10 (1) on Religion, Security, Education.

Gearon, L. and Williams, E. (Guest Editors) (2019) Special Issue of the British Journal of Educational Studies, Writers and their Education, 67 (3), 283–289.

Gearon, L. and Williams, E. (Guest Editors) (2018) Special Issue of Journal of Philosophy of Education on Philosophy, Literature and Education, 52 (4), 577-777.

Gearon, L. (Guest Editor) (2015) British Journal of Educational Studies, Special Issue, Education, Security and Intelligence Studies, 63 (3) 263-411.

Tirri, K., (Finland) Campbell, E. (Canada), Gearon, L. (UK), Lovat, T. (Australia) (Guest Editors) (2012) The Moral Core of Teaching, Education Research International.

Gearon, L. (Guest Editor) (2008) Citizenship, Human Rights and Religion, British Journal of Religious Education, 30 (2) 93-108.

Gearon, L. (Guest Editor) (2006) Children’s Spirituality and Children’s Rights, International Journal of Children’s Spirituality, 11 (2) 193-310.

Simon Marginson is  Emeritus Professor of Higher Education at the University of Oxford, Director of the ESRC/RE Centre for Global Higher Education (CGHE), and Editor-in-Chief of the journal Higher Education.

Simon led the ESRC Centre for Global Higher Education between November 2015 and April 2024. His research is focused primarily on global and international higher education, higher education in East Asia, the public and social contributions of higher education, and higher education and social equality. He is currently preparing an integrated theorisation of higher education. His scholarship is widely published and cited (Google h-index 67 in September 2019). Books include Higher Education and the Common Good (Melbourne University Publishing, 2016); High Participation Systems of Higher Education, edited with Brendan Cantwell and Anna Smolentseva (Oxford University Press, 2018); Changing Higher Education in East Asia, edited with Xin Xu (Bloomsbury, 2022) and Assessing the Contributions of Higher Education, edited with Brendan Cantwell, Daria Platonova and Anna Smolentseva (Edward Elgar, 2023).

Selected Publications
Books
  • Marginson, S. (2016).The Dream is Over: The crisis of Clark Kerr’s California Idea of higher education. Berkeley: University of California Press.
  • Marginson, S. (2016).Higher Education and the Common Good. Melbourne: Melbourne University Publishing.
  • Tran, L. & Marginson, S. (eds.). (2018).Internationalisation of Vietnamese Higher Education. Dordrecht: Springer Nature.
  • Carnoy, M., Froumin, I., Leshukov, O. & Marginson, S. (eds.). (2018) Higher Education in Federal Countries. New Delhi: Sage.
  • Cantwell, B., Marginson, S. & Smolentseva, A. (eds.). (2018) High Participation Systems of Higher Education. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
  • Callender, C., Locke, W. & Marginson, S. (eds.) (2020). Changing Higher Education for a Changing World. London: Bloomsbury.
  • Chattopadhyay, S., Marginson, S. & Varghese, N.V. (eds.) (2021). Changing Higher Education in India. London: Bloomsbury.
  • Marginson, S. & Xu, X. (eds.) (2022). Changing Higher Education in East Asia. (2022). London: Bloomsbury.
  • Marginson, S., Cantwell, B., Platonova, D. & Smolentseva, A. (eds.) (2023). Assessing the contributions of higher education. Cheltenham: Edward Elgar.
Recent Journal Papers
  • Marginson, S. (2016). The worldwide trend to high participation higher education: Dynamics of social stratification in inclusive systems. Higher Education, 72 (4), 413-435.
  • Marginson, S. (2018). Private/public in higher education: A synthesis of economic and political approaches. Studies in Higher Education, 43 (2), 322-337
  • Marginson, S. (2018) Global trends in higher education financing: The United Kingdom. International J. Educational Development, 58, 26-36
  • Marginson, S. (2018) National/global synergy in the development of higher education and science in China since 1978. Frontiers of Education in China, 13 (4), 486–512
  • Marginson, S. (2019) Limitations of human capital theory. Studies in Higher Education, 44 (2), 287-301
  • Marginson, S. and Yang, L. (2022). Individual and collective outcomes of higher education: A comparison of Anglo-American and Chinese approaches. Globalisation, Societies and Education, 20 (1), 1-32.
  • Marginson, S. (2022). ‘All things are in flux’: China in global science. Higher Education, 83 (4), 881-910.
  • Marginson, S. (2022). What drives global science? The four competing narratives. Studies in Higher Education, 47 (8), 1566-1584.
  • Marginson, S. (2022). Global science and national comparisons: Beyond bibliometrics and scientometrics. Comparative Education, 58 (2), 125-146.
  • Marginson, S. (2022). What is global higher education? Oxford Review of Education, 48 (4), 492-517.
  • Marginson S. (2022). Space and scale in higher education: The glonacal heuristic revisited. Higher Education, 84 (6),1365-1395.
  • Marginson, S. & Xu, X. (2023). Hegemony and inequality in global science: Problems of the center-periphery model. Comparative Education Review, 67 (1). https://doi.org/10.1086/722760
  • Marginson, S. (2023). Student self-formation: An emerging paradigm in higher education. Studies in Higher Education, https://doi.org/10.1080/03075079.2023.2252826 (2023).
  • Marginson, S. (2023). Limitations of the leading definition of ‘internationalisation’ of higher education: Is the idea wrong or is the fault in reality? Globalisation, Societies and Education, https://doi.org/10.1080/14767724.2023.2264223
  • Marginson, S. and Yang ,L. (2023). Has the public good been emptied out of higher education in England? Higher Education. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10734-023-01117-6

Maia Chankseliani is Associate Professor of Comparative and International Education at the University of Oxford where she leads a flagship master’s course in Comparative and International Education. She convenes the Comparative and International Education Research Group at the Department of Education.

Within comparative and international education, Maia Chankseliani works at the intersection of tertiary education and development. She researches societal, institutional, and policy forces that shape tertiary education and the potential of tertiary education and research for transforming societies.

Methodologically, she utilises both qualitative and quantitative methods. Her work often combines secondary data analysis with insights gathered through semi-structured interviews and contextualised case studies.

Maia Chankseliani has published four books in the field of comparative and international education: What Happened to the Soviet University? (2022), Building Research Capacity at Universities: Insights from Post-Soviet Countries (2022), Comparing Post-Socialist Transformations: Purposes, Policies, and Practices in Education (2018), and Fairness in Access to Higher Education in a Global Perspective: Reconciling Excellence, Efficiency, and Justice (2013).

She currently leads a major research project examining the impact of international mobility on world development (funded by the U.S. Department of State). Maia Chankseliani has worked on a number of externally funded research projects and consultancies involving the UK Government agencies responsible for education and skills, UKRI/ESRC, British Council, World Bank, Qatar Foundation, the European Commission.

With a background in education research, teaching, policy-making, leadership, and consultancy, Maia Chankseliani brings to her role extensive experience in diverse international settings. This breadth of experience informs her research and enables her to bridge theory and practice.

Maia Chankseliani engages with governments and gives academic and policy-relevant talks nationally and internationally. Her research regularly features in national and international media.

She holds a BA in Philology from Tbilisi State University (Georgia), an Ed. M in International Education Policy from Harvard University (USA), and a PhD in Education from the University of Cambridge (UK).

Maia Chankseliani serves as the Editor-in-Chief of the International Journal of Educational Research.

Aliya teaches on the Comparative and International Education MSc programme at our Department. She is also a Junior Research Fellow at Lady Margaret Hall. Her research focuses on young people and families’ experiences of education in turbulent times.

For example, educational challenges and rehabilitation during COVID-19 and after the 2022 floods in Pakistan. Her current geographical focus includes ethnically diverse communities (Pakistani and Bangladeshi) in England as well as marginalised communities in Pakistan.

Aliya’s PhD explored the complexities of gender and international education, and her current work focuses on decolonising educational research practices and the experience of Southern-ness globally. Aliya’s specialist areas are parental, mothers’ and young people’s perspectives of and aspirations for education, and their own modalities of agency to fulfil their dreams.

Aliya publishes on the topics of Southern epistemologies and methodologies and teaches on related topics of decolonisation of knowledge production and the politics of representation. She is currently leading multiple projects in England and Pakistan focusing on girls’ education, gender experiences of education, mothers’ perspectives on educating their children, teacher educators, displaced peoples experiences in England and Pakistan.

Aliya is accepting DPhil students interested in these areas:

  • Southern epistemologies and methodologies
  • The capability approach and social justice
  • Negative capability
  • Deconstruction of the silence/violence binary
  • Marginalised peoples’ perspectives
  • Intersectional experiences of marginalisation including those related with gender, race, ethnicity, indigeneity, queerness, disability, class and caste (among others)
  • Decolonisation of knowledge production and representation of the South
  • Qualitative methodologies
  • Theorising from the margins
  • Area focus South Asia particularly Pakistan and Afghanistan
  • Internal displacement

Aliya is the acting Deputy Chair of the United Kingdom Forum for International Education and Training (UKFIET) conference 2023.

Gates Cambridge Biography

 

Research Group Membership

 

Research Projects

1. ‘Understanding the impact of COVID-19 on learning experiences of secondary school going age children among Bangladeshi and Pakistani ethnic minority families’
Funder: Cambridge Humanities Research Grants Scheme
Research team: Professor Nidhi Singal and Dr Aliya Khalid
Status: Complete

2. Gendered Inequalities in Education and Capability Spaces for Women/Girls (and others) in Pakistan: Education and reconstruction after 2022 floods in Pakistan
Funder: British Association for International and Comparative Education (BAICE) Seedcorn Fund
Research team: Aliya Khalid, Soufia Siddiqui, Aditi Chidambaram, Indrani Sigamany
Status: Ongoing

3. Bridging the Local and Global: Women’s Spaces and Collectives’: On becoming caregivers and teachers: Immigrant mothers’ identities and philosophies of education in England during COVID
Team members: Aliya Khalid, Jane Rooney and Ruth Houghton, Lavinia Kamphausen, Kate spencer-Bennet, Alana Farrel
Funder: The British Academy
Status: Complete

4. Collaborative development of faculty for Pakistan undergraduate Teacher Education Colleges: Durbeen and Oxford knowledge exchange project
Team members: Aliya Khalid, Ann Childs, Trevor Mutton, Ian Thompson, Jenni Ingram and Katharine Burn
Funder: Malala Fund
Status: Ongoing

Dr Karen Skilling is an Associate Professor at the Department of Education at the University of Oxford. Karen is currently the Deputy Director of Doctoral Research, Lead of the PGCE mathematics education at the Department of Education, and co-ordinates the Doctoral Teaching Fellows for teacher education. In 2020, Karen established the STEM Discussion Group and also convenes the Subject Pedagogy Group seminars.

Karen’s research interests include: student engagement and motivation in mathematics; integrated STEM learning and project-based STEM activities; and vignette methods. Karen currently sits on the Executive Committee of BSRLM, and is a journal Editor for the Teaching Education Journal (TEJ) and Research in Mathematics Education (RME). Karen has also been co-Editor for several special issues, and a topic study co-lead at the Congress of the European Society for Research in Mathematics Education (CERME). Karen is a Visiting Fellow at King’s College London and been an HEA Fellow since 2016.

Awards include: Australian Postgraduate Award (Industry) (APAI): funded PhD role attached to MYTEAM Project awarded by Australian Research Council (2008 –2012); Postdoctoral Research Fellowship: Department of Education, University of Oxford (2013-14); and nominations for Most Outstanding Contribution to Student Experience at King’s College London (2015, 2016, 2017).

David Mills is an Associate Professor and Director of the Centre for Global Higher Education (CGHE).

His current research focuses on the political economy of the global science system, and its impact on institutional research and publishing cultures in African universities. His most recent book is ‘Who Counts: Ghanaian Academic Publishing and Global Science’, co-written with colleagues from the University of Ghana and Oxford, and available open access from African Minds:  https://www.africanminds.co.za/who-counts/

Trained in Anthropology, and with inter-disciplinary research interests, David uses ethnographic methods to study the inequalities created by global higher education. He is particularly interested in African university research cultures and the role of diamond Open Access scholarly journals within knowledge ecosystems.

He welcomes enquiries from potential doctoral students interested in studying African Higher Education, as well as research and publishing cultures.

Liam Francis Gearon (BA, Hons, MA, MPhil, Cert He, PhD, FHEA, FRSA, Docent) is Associate Professor in Religious Education in the Department of Education, Senior Research Fellow at Harris Manchester College, University of Oxford; Docent, University of Helsinki, Finland; Honorary Senior Research Fellow at the School of Education, University of Birmingham, UK; Conjoint Professor at Newcastle University, Australia; Visiting Professor at the Irish Centre for Catholic Studies, MIC, Limerick, Ireland; Extraordinary Professor, North-West University, South Africa.

Liam Francis Gearon is Founder-Convenor of the Philosophy, Religion, Education Research Group, providing  a unique interdisciplinary contribution to the research culture of the Department of Education at the University of Oxford. The Philosophy, religion and education Research Group specifically forges theoretical and empirical interconnections between the arts, humanities, philosophy and the social sciences through the common focus of education. Contributions of this research group have been made to matters such as: theories of research policy and impact; the cultural value of research in the arts and humanities; research ethics; the intersection of epistemological and ethical domains in research in schools; religion, radicalisation and counter-terrorism in schools and universities; and the creation of distinctive sub-field of study at the interface of education, security and intelligence studies.

A specialist in the interdisciplinary study of religion in education, and particularly noted for the systematic philosophical and history of ideas analysis on the epistemological foundations of religious education, his framing of the paradigms of religion in education – scriptural-theological; phenomenological; psychological-experiential; philosophical-conceptual; social-cultural; political-historical – has contributed new insights to secularisation theory in numerous, some award-winning, monographs, such as MasterClass in Religious Education (Gearon, 2013); On Holy Ground (Gearon, 2015) [2016 Society of Education Studies Book Prize]; Religious Authority and the Arts: Conversations in Political Theology (Gearon, 2015); and State Religious Education and the State of the Religious Life (Gearon and Prud’homme, 2018).

His theorisations of the politicisation and securitisation of religion in education have been the subject of intense international debate for several years. Landmark publications on security in education – ‘The Counter-Terrorist Classroom’ (2013); ‘The Counter-Terrorist Classroom’ (2017); ‘Terrorism and Counter-Terrorism Policy and Research in UK Universities’ (2018): ‘Research Ethics in the Securitised University’ (Gearon and Parsons, 2019) and ‘The Kill Chain’ (Gearon, 2020) – have enabled empirical, methodological and theoretical advances on elites’ theory, the ethics of security and radicalisation research (Gearon and Kuusisto, 2018; Kuusisto and Gearon, 2017; Benjamin, Gearon, Kuusisto, Koirikivi, 2021).

With cognate research interests in security across all phases of education, Liam has over a decade collaboratively developed an interdisciplinary sub-field at the boundary of universities, security and intelligence studies, including research ethics in the securitised university (Gearon and Parsons, 2019). One of the defining outcomes here is Liam’s quarter of a million-word edited collection arising from the international Colloquium at Oriel College he convened in 2017, the Routledge International Handbook of Universities, Security and Intelligence Studies (Gearon, 2019). Interdisciplinary and inter-agency work in this area has included the Nuffield Foundation funded Universities and National Security: Research and Policy Collaborations 2019-2020, with a cross-disciplinary research team of 14 distinguished Co-Investigators.

With a significant Academy of Finland research grant (2018-2022) with Arniika Kuusisto (Stockholm/Helsinki/ Oxford), we oversee the research of two highly productive early career, post-doctoral researchers on radicalisation. This includes notable social and policy impacts such as the development of a national strategy around extremism through education for the Ministry of Justice in Finland (Activities | Growing up radical? | University of Helsinki). With substantial quantitative and qualitative data gathered, the project has already produced a substantial number of quality research outputs (Publications | Growing up radical? | University of Helsinki).

With a doctorate in English literature, Liam has also drawn on arts and humanities theoretical knowledge and methodological approaches to advance what are now intense cross-disciplinary debates around ‘decolonising the curriculum’ in religious education. From a series of foundational papers addressing the relationship between religious education and postcolonial theory – Gearon (2001a) ‘The Imagined Other: Postcolonial Theory and Religious Education’; Gearon (2001b) ‘A Spirituality of Dissent: Religion, Culture and Postcolonial Criticism’; Gearon (2002a) ‘Human Rights and Religious Education: Some Postcolonial Perspectives’ – he has recently led an international team (UK, Finland, Sweden, South Africa) as Guest Editor of the British Journal of Religious Education, for a high profile special issue on religion and education in postcolonial context (Gearon, Kuusisto, Matemba, Benjamin, Du Preez, Koirikivi, and Simmonds, 2020).

As Principal Investigator, Liam has led funded research projects with the Academy of Finland, the Arts and Humanities Research Council, the British Academy, the Leverhulme Trust, the Nuffield Foundation, the Philosophy of Education Society of Great Britain, and the Society for Educational Studies, a career total of funding exceeding £5,000,000, including a £4.5 million grant to establish a centre for citizenship and human rights at the University of Surrey Roehampton.

Doctoral supervision and Graduate teaching

 PGCE Religious Education (Subject lead)

  • Masters in Learning and Teaching (Subject lead)
  • Comparative and International Education

EXTERNAL POSTS

2020- Docent, Helsinki University, Finland

2020- Extraordinary Professor, Faculty of Education, North-West University, South Africa

2019-2021 Visiting Professor, Irish Institute of Catholic Studies, MIC, Limerick, Ireland

2012-2020 Conjoint Professor, Newcastle University, Australia

2019-2023 Honorary Senior Research Fellow, School of Education, University of Birmingham

 

PREVIOUS EXTERNAL POSTS

2011-2018, Adjunct Professor, Australian Catholic University, Australia

2010-2011, Visiting Professor, Faculty of Education, University of Plymouth

2008-2010, Research Professor, Faculty of Education, University of Plymouth

2006-2008, Professor of Education, University of Roehampton

2000-2006, Reader in Education, University of Surrey Roehampton

2006-2008, Senior Fellow, Centre of Excellence in Human Rights, University of Surrey Roehampton

2005-2008, Vice-President, International Human Rights Education Consortium, New York, USA

2001-2005, Director, Centre for Research in Human Rights, University of Surrey, Roehampton

1996-2000, Senior Lecturer, Faculty of Education, Roehampton, London

 

UK RESEARCH COUNCIL PEER REVIEW COLLEGES

AHRC Expert Group on Covid Research Group and Research Grant Panel ‘Introducer’

AHRC Peer Review College (2019 Gold Standard award, for ‘Recognition of significant contributions to the AHRC Peer Review College’)

ESRC Peer Review College

Universities UK Peer Review College Global Challenges Research Fund (GCRF)

 

INTERNATIONAL RESEARCH COUNCIL PEER REVIEWER

Academy of Finland

Austrian Science Fund (FWF)

EU 7th Framework Program for Research
Hong Kong Research Grants Council’s Public Policy Research Fund (PPR)

Irish Research Council

John Templeton Foundation

National Research Foundation, South Africa

 

PROFESSIONAL AND RESEARCH ASSOCIATIONS

Association of University Lecturers in Religion and Education (AULRE, co-founder and former Chair)

British Educational Research Association (BERA)

European Educational Research Association (EERA)

International Seminar on Religious Education and Values (ISREV)

Philosophy of Education Society of Great Britain (PESGB)

Society for Research in Higher Education (SRHE)
Society for Educational Studies (SES)

Also:

Executive (2019-2022) Oxford Intelligence Group, Nuffield College, University of Oxford

Fellow, Higher Education Academy (FHEA)

Fellow, Royal Society of Arts (FRSA)

Cambridge Intelligence Seminar

 

OTHER ADMINISTRATIVE ROLES AT OXFORD

Elected by Congregation to the University of Oxford Prevent Steering Group

Social Sciences Divisional representative of the Permanent Private Halls Supervisory Committee (PPHSC), a senior committee of the University of Oxford overseeing governance of Blackfriars; Campion Hall; Regent’s Park College; St Benet’s; St Stephen’s House; Wycliffe Hall.

Member, Central University Research Ethics Committee (CUREC)

Chair, Department of Education Research Ethics Committee (DREC)

Member, Inter-Divisional Social Sciences and Humanities Research Ethics Committee (IDREC)

Chair, Bodleian Library Education Committee

Member and occasional Chair Social Sciences Divisional Library Committee

Education Advisory Group, Christ Church College, Oxford

 

EDITORSHIP OF INTERNATIONAL JOURNALS

Gearon, L. (Guest editor) (2021) Literature and Security, Special Issue, Text Matters: A Journal of Literature, Theory and Culture, with a planned formal launch at Lodz, Poland.

Gearon, L., (Lead Guest Editor with editorial team) Kuusisto, A., Matemba, Y., Benjamin, S., Du Preez, P., Koirikivi, P., Simmonds, S. (2020) Decolonising the Religious Education Curriculum: International Perspectives in Theory, Research, and Practice, Special Issue, British Journal of Religious Education.

Gearon, L. (Guest Editor) (2019) Special Issue of Religions 10 (1) on Religion, Security, Education.

Gearon, L. and Williams, E. (Guest Editors) (2019) Special Issue of the British Journal of Educational Studies, Writers and their Education, 67 (3), 283–289.

Gearon, L. and Williams, E. (Guest Editors) (2018) Special Issue of Journal of Philosophy of Education on Philosophy, Literature and Education, 52 (4), 577-777.

Gearon, L. (Guest Editor) (2015) British Journal of Educational Studies, Special Issue, Education, Security and Intelligence Studies, 63 (3) 263-411.

Tirri, K., (Finland) Campbell, E. (Canada), Gearon, L. (UK), Lovat, T. (Australia) (Guest Editors) (2012) The Moral Core of Teaching, Education Research International.

Gearon, L. (Guest Editor) (2008) Citizenship, Human Rights and Religion, British Journal of Religious Education, 30 (2) 93-108.

Gearon, L. (Guest Editor) (2006) Children’s Spirituality and Children’s Rights, International Journal of Children’s Spirituality, 11 (2) 193-310.

Simon Marginson is  Emeritus Professor of Higher Education at the University of Oxford, Director of the ESRC/RE Centre for Global Higher Education (CGHE), and Editor-in-Chief of the journal Higher Education.

Simon led the ESRC Centre for Global Higher Education between November 2015 and April 2024. His research is focused primarily on global and international higher education, higher education in East Asia, the public and social contributions of higher education, and higher education and social equality. He is currently preparing an integrated theorisation of higher education. His scholarship is widely published and cited (Google h-index 67 in September 2019). Books include Higher Education and the Common Good (Melbourne University Publishing, 2016); High Participation Systems of Higher Education, edited with Brendan Cantwell and Anna Smolentseva (Oxford University Press, 2018); Changing Higher Education in East Asia, edited with Xin Xu (Bloomsbury, 2022) and Assessing the Contributions of Higher Education, edited with Brendan Cantwell, Daria Platonova and Anna Smolentseva (Edward Elgar, 2023).

Selected Publications
Books
  • Marginson, S. (2016).The Dream is Over: The crisis of Clark Kerr’s California Idea of higher education. Berkeley: University of California Press.
  • Marginson, S. (2016).Higher Education and the Common Good. Melbourne: Melbourne University Publishing.
  • Tran, L. & Marginson, S. (eds.). (2018).Internationalisation of Vietnamese Higher Education. Dordrecht: Springer Nature.
  • Carnoy, M., Froumin, I., Leshukov, O. & Marginson, S. (eds.). (2018) Higher Education in Federal Countries. New Delhi: Sage.
  • Cantwell, B., Marginson, S. & Smolentseva, A. (eds.). (2018) High Participation Systems of Higher Education. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
  • Callender, C., Locke, W. & Marginson, S. (eds.) (2020). Changing Higher Education for a Changing World. London: Bloomsbury.
  • Chattopadhyay, S., Marginson, S. & Varghese, N.V. (eds.) (2021). Changing Higher Education in India. London: Bloomsbury.
  • Marginson, S. & Xu, X. (eds.) (2022). Changing Higher Education in East Asia. (2022). London: Bloomsbury.
  • Marginson, S., Cantwell, B., Platonova, D. & Smolentseva, A. (eds.) (2023). Assessing the contributions of higher education. Cheltenham: Edward Elgar.
Recent Journal Papers
  • Marginson, S. (2016). The worldwide trend to high participation higher education: Dynamics of social stratification in inclusive systems. Higher Education, 72 (4), 413-435.
  • Marginson, S. (2018). Private/public in higher education: A synthesis of economic and political approaches. Studies in Higher Education, 43 (2), 322-337
  • Marginson, S. (2018) Global trends in higher education financing: The United Kingdom. International J. Educational Development, 58, 26-36
  • Marginson, S. (2018) National/global synergy in the development of higher education and science in China since 1978. Frontiers of Education in China, 13 (4), 486–512
  • Marginson, S. (2019) Limitations of human capital theory. Studies in Higher Education, 44 (2), 287-301
  • Marginson, S. and Yang, L. (2022). Individual and collective outcomes of higher education: A comparison of Anglo-American and Chinese approaches. Globalisation, Societies and Education, 20 (1), 1-32.
  • Marginson, S. (2022). ‘All things are in flux’: China in global science. Higher Education, 83 (4), 881-910.
  • Marginson, S. (2022). What drives global science? The four competing narratives. Studies in Higher Education, 47 (8), 1566-1584.
  • Marginson, S. (2022). Global science and national comparisons: Beyond bibliometrics and scientometrics. Comparative Education, 58 (2), 125-146.
  • Marginson, S. (2022). What is global higher education? Oxford Review of Education, 48 (4), 492-517.
  • Marginson S. (2022). Space and scale in higher education: The glonacal heuristic revisited. Higher Education, 84 (6),1365-1395.
  • Marginson, S. & Xu, X. (2023). Hegemony and inequality in global science: Problems of the center-periphery model. Comparative Education Review, 67 (1). https://doi.org/10.1086/722760
  • Marginson, S. (2023). Student self-formation: An emerging paradigm in higher education. Studies in Higher Education, https://doi.org/10.1080/03075079.2023.2252826 (2023).
  • Marginson, S. (2023). Limitations of the leading definition of ‘internationalisation’ of higher education: Is the idea wrong or is the fault in reality? Globalisation, Societies and Education, https://doi.org/10.1080/14767724.2023.2264223
  • Marginson, S. and Yang ,L. (2023). Has the public good been emptied out of higher education in England? Higher Education. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10734-023-01117-6

Maia Chankseliani is Associate Professor of Comparative and International Education at the University of Oxford where she leads a flagship master’s course in Comparative and International Education. She convenes the Comparative and International Education Research Group at the Department of Education.

Within comparative and international education, Maia Chankseliani works at the intersection of tertiary education and development. She researches societal, institutional, and policy forces that shape tertiary education and the potential of tertiary education and research for transforming societies.

Methodologically, she utilises both qualitative and quantitative methods. Her work often combines secondary data analysis with insights gathered through semi-structured interviews and contextualised case studies.

Maia Chankseliani has published four books in the field of comparative and international education: What Happened to the Soviet University? (2022), Building Research Capacity at Universities: Insights from Post-Soviet Countries (2022), Comparing Post-Socialist Transformations: Purposes, Policies, and Practices in Education (2018), and Fairness in Access to Higher Education in a Global Perspective: Reconciling Excellence, Efficiency, and Justice (2013).

She currently leads a major research project examining the impact of international mobility on world development (funded by the U.S. Department of State). Maia Chankseliani has worked on a number of externally funded research projects and consultancies involving the UK Government agencies responsible for education and skills, UKRI/ESRC, British Council, World Bank, Qatar Foundation, the European Commission.

With a background in education research, teaching, policy-making, leadership, and consultancy, Maia Chankseliani brings to her role extensive experience in diverse international settings. This breadth of experience informs her research and enables her to bridge theory and practice.

Maia Chankseliani engages with governments and gives academic and policy-relevant talks nationally and internationally. Her research regularly features in national and international media.

She holds a BA in Philology from Tbilisi State University (Georgia), an Ed. M in International Education Policy from Harvard University (USA), and a PhD in Education from the University of Cambridge (UK).

Maia Chankseliani serves as the Editor-in-Chief of the International Journal of Educational Research.

Aliya teaches on the Comparative and International Education MSc programme at our Department. She is also a Junior Research Fellow at Lady Margaret Hall. Her research focuses on young people and families’ experiences of education in turbulent times.

For example, educational challenges and rehabilitation during COVID-19 and after the 2022 floods in Pakistan. Her current geographical focus includes ethnically diverse communities (Pakistani and Bangladeshi) in England as well as marginalised communities in Pakistan.

Aliya’s PhD explored the complexities of gender and international education, and her current work focuses on decolonising educational research practices and the experience of Southern-ness globally. Aliya’s specialist areas are parental, mothers’ and young people’s perspectives of and aspirations for education, and their own modalities of agency to fulfil their dreams.

Aliya publishes on the topics of Southern epistemologies and methodologies and teaches on related topics of decolonisation of knowledge production and the politics of representation. She is currently leading multiple projects in England and Pakistan focusing on girls’ education, gender experiences of education, mothers’ perspectives on educating their children, teacher educators, displaced peoples experiences in England and Pakistan.

Aliya is accepting DPhil students interested in these areas:

  • Southern epistemologies and methodologies
  • The capability approach and social justice
  • Negative capability
  • Deconstruction of the silence/violence binary
  • Marginalised peoples’ perspectives
  • Intersectional experiences of marginalisation including those related with gender, race, ethnicity, indigeneity, queerness, disability, class and caste (among others)
  • Decolonisation of knowledge production and representation of the South
  • Qualitative methodologies
  • Theorising from the margins
  • Area focus South Asia particularly Pakistan and Afghanistan
  • Internal displacement

Aliya is the acting Deputy Chair of the United Kingdom Forum for International Education and Training (UKFIET) conference 2023.

Gates Cambridge Biography

 

Research Group Membership

 

Research Projects

1. ‘Understanding the impact of COVID-19 on learning experiences of secondary school going age children among Bangladeshi and Pakistani ethnic minority families’
Funder: Cambridge Humanities Research Grants Scheme
Research team: Professor Nidhi Singal and Dr Aliya Khalid
Status: Complete

2. Gendered Inequalities in Education and Capability Spaces for Women/Girls (and others) in Pakistan: Education and reconstruction after 2022 floods in Pakistan
Funder: British Association for International and Comparative Education (BAICE) Seedcorn Fund
Research team: Aliya Khalid, Soufia Siddiqui, Aditi Chidambaram, Indrani Sigamany
Status: Ongoing

3. Bridging the Local and Global: Women’s Spaces and Collectives’: On becoming caregivers and teachers: Immigrant mothers’ identities and philosophies of education in England during COVID
Team members: Aliya Khalid, Jane Rooney and Ruth Houghton, Lavinia Kamphausen, Kate spencer-Bennet, Alana Farrel
Funder: The British Academy
Status: Complete

4. Collaborative development of faculty for Pakistan undergraduate Teacher Education Colleges: Durbeen and Oxford knowledge exchange project
Team members: Aliya Khalid, Ann Childs, Trevor Mutton, Ian Thompson, Jenni Ingram and Katharine Burn
Funder: Malala Fund
Status: Ongoing

Dr Karen Skilling is an Associate Professor at the Department of Education at the University of Oxford. Karen is currently the Deputy Director of Doctoral Research, Lead of the PGCE mathematics education at the Department of Education, and co-ordinates the Doctoral Teaching Fellows for teacher education. In 2020, Karen established the STEM Discussion Group and also convenes the Subject Pedagogy Group seminars.

Karen’s research interests include: student engagement and motivation in mathematics; integrated STEM learning and project-based STEM activities; and vignette methods. Karen currently sits on the Executive Committee of BSRLM, and is a journal Editor for the Teaching Education Journal (TEJ) and Research in Mathematics Education (RME). Karen has also been co-Editor for several special issues, and a topic study co-lead at the Congress of the European Society for Research in Mathematics Education (CERME). Karen is a Visiting Fellow at King’s College London and been an HEA Fellow since 2016.

Awards include: Australian Postgraduate Award (Industry) (APAI): funded PhD role attached to MYTEAM Project awarded by Australian Research Council (2008 –2012); Postdoctoral Research Fellowship: Department of Education, University of Oxford (2013-14); and nominations for Most Outstanding Contribution to Student Experience at King’s College London (2015, 2016, 2017).

David Mills is an Associate Professor and Director of the Centre for Global Higher Education (CGHE).

His current research focuses on the political economy of the global science system, and its impact on institutional research and publishing cultures in African universities. His most recent book is ‘Who Counts: Ghanaian Academic Publishing and Global Science’, co-written with colleagues from the University of Ghana and Oxford, and available open access from African Minds:  https://www.africanminds.co.za/who-counts/

Trained in Anthropology, and with inter-disciplinary research interests, David uses ethnographic methods to study the inequalities created by global higher education. He is particularly interested in African university research cultures and the role of diamond Open Access scholarly journals within knowledge ecosystems.

He welcomes enquiries from potential doctoral students interested in studying African Higher Education, as well as research and publishing cultures.

Liam Francis Gearon (BA, Hons, MA, MPhil, Cert He, PhD, FHEA, FRSA, Docent) is Associate Professor in Religious Education in the Department of Education, Senior Research Fellow at Harris Manchester College, University of Oxford; Docent, University of Helsinki, Finland; Honorary Senior Research Fellow at the School of Education, University of Birmingham, UK; Conjoint Professor at Newcastle University, Australia; Visiting Professor at the Irish Centre for Catholic Studies, MIC, Limerick, Ireland; Extraordinary Professor, North-West University, South Africa.

Liam Francis Gearon is Founder-Convenor of the Philosophy, Religion, Education Research Group, providing  a unique interdisciplinary contribution to the research culture of the Department of Education at the University of Oxford. The Philosophy, religion and education Research Group specifically forges theoretical and empirical interconnections between the arts, humanities, philosophy and the social sciences through the common focus of education. Contributions of this research group have been made to matters such as: theories of research policy and impact; the cultural value of research in the arts and humanities; research ethics; the intersection of epistemological and ethical domains in research in schools; religion, radicalisation and counter-terrorism in schools and universities; and the creation of distinctive sub-field of study at the interface of education, security and intelligence studies.

A specialist in the interdisciplinary study of religion in education, and particularly noted for the systematic philosophical and history of ideas analysis on the epistemological foundations of religious education, his framing of the paradigms of religion in education – scriptural-theological; phenomenological; psychological-experiential; philosophical-conceptual; social-cultural; political-historical – has contributed new insights to secularisation theory in numerous, some award-winning, monographs, such as MasterClass in Religious Education (Gearon, 2013); On Holy Ground (Gearon, 2015) [2016 Society of Education Studies Book Prize]; Religious Authority and the Arts: Conversations in Political Theology (Gearon, 2015); and State Religious Education and the State of the Religious Life (Gearon and Prud’homme, 2018).

His theorisations of the politicisation and securitisation of religion in education have been the subject of intense international debate for several years. Landmark publications on security in education – ‘The Counter-Terrorist Classroom’ (2013); ‘The Counter-Terrorist Classroom’ (2017); ‘Terrorism and Counter-Terrorism Policy and Research in UK Universities’ (2018): ‘Research Ethics in the Securitised University’ (Gearon and Parsons, 2019) and ‘The Kill Chain’ (Gearon, 2020) – have enabled empirical, methodological and theoretical advances on elites’ theory, the ethics of security and radicalisation research (Gearon and Kuusisto, 2018; Kuusisto and Gearon, 2017; Benjamin, Gearon, Kuusisto, Koirikivi, 2021).

With cognate research interests in security across all phases of education, Liam has over a decade collaboratively developed an interdisciplinary sub-field at the boundary of universities, security and intelligence studies, including research ethics in the securitised university (Gearon and Parsons, 2019). One of the defining outcomes here is Liam’s quarter of a million-word edited collection arising from the international Colloquium at Oriel College he convened in 2017, the Routledge International Handbook of Universities, Security and Intelligence Studies (Gearon, 2019). Interdisciplinary and inter-agency work in this area has included the Nuffield Foundation funded Universities and National Security: Research and Policy Collaborations 2019-2020, with a cross-disciplinary research team of 14 distinguished Co-Investigators.

With a significant Academy of Finland research grant (2018-2022) with Arniika Kuusisto (Stockholm/Helsinki/ Oxford), we oversee the research of two highly productive early career, post-doctoral researchers on radicalisation. This includes notable social and policy impacts such as the development of a national strategy around extremism through education for the Ministry of Justice in Finland (Activities | Growing up radical? | University of Helsinki). With substantial quantitative and qualitative data gathered, the project has already produced a substantial number of quality research outputs (Publications | Growing up radical? | University of Helsinki).

With a doctorate in English literature, Liam has also drawn on arts and humanities theoretical knowledge and methodological approaches to advance what are now intense cross-disciplinary debates around ‘decolonising the curriculum’ in religious education. From a series of foundational papers addressing the relationship between religious education and postcolonial theory – Gearon (2001a) ‘The Imagined Other: Postcolonial Theory and Religious Education’; Gearon (2001b) ‘A Spirituality of Dissent: Religion, Culture and Postcolonial Criticism’; Gearon (2002a) ‘Human Rights and Religious Education: Some Postcolonial Perspectives’ – he has recently led an international team (UK, Finland, Sweden, South Africa) as Guest Editor of the British Journal of Religious Education, for a high profile special issue on religion and education in postcolonial context (Gearon, Kuusisto, Matemba, Benjamin, Du Preez, Koirikivi, and Simmonds, 2020).

As Principal Investigator, Liam has led funded research projects with the Academy of Finland, the Arts and Humanities Research Council, the British Academy, the Leverhulme Trust, the Nuffield Foundation, the Philosophy of Education Society of Great Britain, and the Society for Educational Studies, a career total of funding exceeding £5,000,000, including a £4.5 million grant to establish a centre for citizenship and human rights at the University of Surrey Roehampton.

Doctoral supervision and Graduate teaching

 PGCE Religious Education (Subject lead)

  • Masters in Learning and Teaching (Subject lead)
  • Comparative and International Education

EXTERNAL POSTS

2020- Docent, Helsinki University, Finland

2020- Extraordinary Professor, Faculty of Education, North-West University, South Africa

2019-2021 Visiting Professor, Irish Institute of Catholic Studies, MIC, Limerick, Ireland

2012-2020 Conjoint Professor, Newcastle University, Australia

2019-2023 Honorary Senior Research Fellow, School of Education, University of Birmingham

 

PREVIOUS EXTERNAL POSTS

2011-2018, Adjunct Professor, Australian Catholic University, Australia

2010-2011, Visiting Professor, Faculty of Education, University of Plymouth

2008-2010, Research Professor, Faculty of Education, University of Plymouth

2006-2008, Professor of Education, University of Roehampton

2000-2006, Reader in Education, University of Surrey Roehampton

2006-2008, Senior Fellow, Centre of Excellence in Human Rights, University of Surrey Roehampton

2005-2008, Vice-President, International Human Rights Education Consortium, New York, USA

2001-2005, Director, Centre for Research in Human Rights, University of Surrey, Roehampton

1996-2000, Senior Lecturer, Faculty of Education, Roehampton, London

 

UK RESEARCH COUNCIL PEER REVIEW COLLEGES

AHRC Expert Group on Covid Research Group and Research Grant Panel ‘Introducer’

AHRC Peer Review College (2019 Gold Standard award, for ‘Recognition of significant contributions to the AHRC Peer Review College’)

ESRC Peer Review College

Universities UK Peer Review College Global Challenges Research Fund (GCRF)

 

INTERNATIONAL RESEARCH COUNCIL PEER REVIEWER

Academy of Finland

Austrian Science Fund (FWF)

EU 7th Framework Program for Research
Hong Kong Research Grants Council’s Public Policy Research Fund (PPR)

Irish Research Council

John Templeton Foundation

National Research Foundation, South Africa

 

PROFESSIONAL AND RESEARCH ASSOCIATIONS

Association of University Lecturers in Religion and Education (AULRE, co-founder and former Chair)

British Educational Research Association (BERA)

European Educational Research Association (EERA)

International Seminar on Religious Education and Values (ISREV)

Philosophy of Education Society of Great Britain (PESGB)

Society for Research in Higher Education (SRHE)
Society for Educational Studies (SES)

Also:

Executive (2019-2022) Oxford Intelligence Group, Nuffield College, University of Oxford

Fellow, Higher Education Academy (FHEA)

Fellow, Royal Society of Arts (FRSA)

Cambridge Intelligence Seminar

 

OTHER ADMINISTRATIVE ROLES AT OXFORD

Elected by Congregation to the University of Oxford Prevent Steering Group

Social Sciences Divisional representative of the Permanent Private Halls Supervisory Committee (PPHSC), a senior committee of the University of Oxford overseeing governance of Blackfriars; Campion Hall; Regent’s Park College; St Benet’s; St Stephen’s House; Wycliffe Hall.

Member, Central University Research Ethics Committee (CUREC)

Chair, Department of Education Research Ethics Committee (DREC)

Member, Inter-Divisional Social Sciences and Humanities Research Ethics Committee (IDREC)

Chair, Bodleian Library Education Committee

Member and occasional Chair Social Sciences Divisional Library Committee

Education Advisory Group, Christ Church College, Oxford

 

EDITORSHIP OF INTERNATIONAL JOURNALS

Gearon, L. (Guest editor) (2021) Literature and Security, Special Issue, Text Matters: A Journal of Literature, Theory and Culture, with a planned formal launch at Lodz, Poland.

Gearon, L., (Lead Guest Editor with editorial team) Kuusisto, A., Matemba, Y., Benjamin, S., Du Preez, P., Koirikivi, P., Simmonds, S. (2020) Decolonising the Religious Education Curriculum: International Perspectives in Theory, Research, and Practice, Special Issue, British Journal of Religious Education.

Gearon, L. (Guest Editor) (2019) Special Issue of Religions 10 (1) on Religion, Security, Education.

Gearon, L. and Williams, E. (Guest Editors) (2019) Special Issue of the British Journal of Educational Studies, Writers and their Education, 67 (3), 283–289.

Gearon, L. and Williams, E. (Guest Editors) (2018) Special Issue of Journal of Philosophy of Education on Philosophy, Literature and Education, 52 (4), 577-777.

Gearon, L. (Guest Editor) (2015) British Journal of Educational Studies, Special Issue, Education, Security and Intelligence Studies, 63 (3) 263-411.

Tirri, K., (Finland) Campbell, E. (Canada), Gearon, L. (UK), Lovat, T. (Australia) (Guest Editors) (2012) The Moral Core of Teaching, Education Research International.

Gearon, L. (Guest Editor) (2008) Citizenship, Human Rights and Religion, British Journal of Religious Education, 30 (2) 93-108.

Gearon, L. (Guest Editor) (2006) Children’s Spirituality and Children’s Rights, International Journal of Children’s Spirituality, 11 (2) 193-310.

Simon Marginson is  Emeritus Professor of Higher Education at the University of Oxford, Director of the ESRC/RE Centre for Global Higher Education (CGHE), and Editor-in-Chief of the journal Higher Education.

Simon led the ESRC Centre for Global Higher Education between November 2015 and April 2024. His research is focused primarily on global and international higher education, higher education in East Asia, the public and social contributions of higher education, and higher education and social equality. He is currently preparing an integrated theorisation of higher education. His scholarship is widely published and cited (Google h-index 67 in September 2019). Books include Higher Education and the Common Good (Melbourne University Publishing, 2016); High Participation Systems of Higher Education, edited with Brendan Cantwell and Anna Smolentseva (Oxford University Press, 2018); Changing Higher Education in East Asia, edited with Xin Xu (Bloomsbury, 2022) and Assessing the Contributions of Higher Education, edited with Brendan Cantwell, Daria Platonova and Anna Smolentseva (Edward Elgar, 2023).

Selected Publications
Books
  • Marginson, S. (2016).The Dream is Over: The crisis of Clark Kerr’s California Idea of higher education. Berkeley: University of California Press.
  • Marginson, S. (2016).Higher Education and the Common Good. Melbourne: Melbourne University Publishing.
  • Tran, L. & Marginson, S. (eds.). (2018).Internationalisation of Vietnamese Higher Education. Dordrecht: Springer Nature.
  • Carnoy, M., Froumin, I., Leshukov, O. & Marginson, S. (eds.). (2018) Higher Education in Federal Countries. New Delhi: Sage.
  • Cantwell, B., Marginson, S. & Smolentseva, A. (eds.). (2018) High Participation Systems of Higher Education. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
  • Callender, C., Locke, W. & Marginson, S. (eds.) (2020). Changing Higher Education for a Changing World. London: Bloomsbury.
  • Chattopadhyay, S., Marginson, S. & Varghese, N.V. (eds.) (2021). Changing Higher Education in India. London: Bloomsbury.
  • Marginson, S. & Xu, X. (eds.) (2022). Changing Higher Education in East Asia. (2022). London: Bloomsbury.
  • Marginson, S., Cantwell, B., Platonova, D. & Smolentseva, A. (eds.) (2023). Assessing the contributions of higher education. Cheltenham: Edward Elgar.
Recent Journal Papers
  • Marginson, S. (2016). The worldwide trend to high participation higher education: Dynamics of social stratification in inclusive systems. Higher Education, 72 (4), 413-435.
  • Marginson, S. (2018). Private/public in higher education: A synthesis of economic and political approaches. Studies in Higher Education, 43 (2), 322-337
  • Marginson, S. (2018) Global trends in higher education financing: The United Kingdom. International J. Educational Development, 58, 26-36
  • Marginson, S. (2018) National/global synergy in the development of higher education and science in China since 1978. Frontiers of Education in China, 13 (4), 486–512
  • Marginson, S. (2019) Limitations of human capital theory. Studies in Higher Education, 44 (2), 287-301
  • Marginson, S. and Yang, L. (2022). Individual and collective outcomes of higher education: A comparison of Anglo-American and Chinese approaches. Globalisation, Societies and Education, 20 (1), 1-32.
  • Marginson, S. (2022). ‘All things are in flux’: China in global science. Higher Education, 83 (4), 881-910.
  • Marginson, S. (2022). What drives global science? The four competing narratives. Studies in Higher Education, 47 (8), 1566-1584.
  • Marginson, S. (2022). Global science and national comparisons: Beyond bibliometrics and scientometrics. Comparative Education, 58 (2), 125-146.
  • Marginson, S. (2022). What is global higher education? Oxford Review of Education, 48 (4), 492-517.
  • Marginson S. (2022). Space and scale in higher education: The glonacal heuristic revisited. Higher Education, 84 (6),1365-1395.
  • Marginson, S. & Xu, X. (2023). Hegemony and inequality in global science: Problems of the center-periphery model. Comparative Education Review, 67 (1). https://doi.org/10.1086/722760
  • Marginson, S. (2023). Student self-formation: An emerging paradigm in higher education. Studies in Higher Education, https://doi.org/10.1080/03075079.2023.2252826 (2023).
  • Marginson, S. (2023). Limitations of the leading definition of ‘internationalisation’ of higher education: Is the idea wrong or is the fault in reality? Globalisation, Societies and Education, https://doi.org/10.1080/14767724.2023.2264223
  • Marginson, S. and Yang ,L. (2023). Has the public good been emptied out of higher education in England? Higher Education. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10734-023-01117-6

Maia Chankseliani is Associate Professor of Comparative and International Education at the University of Oxford where she leads a flagship master’s course in Comparative and International Education. She convenes the Comparative and International Education Research Group at the Department of Education.

Within comparative and international education, Maia Chankseliani works at the intersection of tertiary education and development. She researches societal, institutional, and policy forces that shape tertiary education and the potential of tertiary education and research for transforming societies.

Methodologically, she utilises both qualitative and quantitative methods. Her work often combines secondary data analysis with insights gathered through semi-structured interviews and contextualised case studies.

Maia Chankseliani has published four books in the field of comparative and international education: What Happened to the Soviet University? (2022), Building Research Capacity at Universities: Insights from Post-Soviet Countries (2022), Comparing Post-Socialist Transformations: Purposes, Policies, and Practices in Education (2018), and Fairness in Access to Higher Education in a Global Perspective: Reconciling Excellence, Efficiency, and Justice (2013).

She currently leads a major research project examining the impact of international mobility on world development (funded by the U.S. Department of State). Maia Chankseliani has worked on a number of externally funded research projects and consultancies involving the UK Government agencies responsible for education and skills, UKRI/ESRC, British Council, World Bank, Qatar Foundation, the European Commission.

With a background in education research, teaching, policy-making, leadership, and consultancy, Maia Chankseliani brings to her role extensive experience in diverse international settings. This breadth of experience informs her research and enables her to bridge theory and practice.

Maia Chankseliani engages with governments and gives academic and policy-relevant talks nationally and internationally. Her research regularly features in national and international media.

She holds a BA in Philology from Tbilisi State University (Georgia), an Ed. M in International Education Policy from Harvard University (USA), and a PhD in Education from the University of Cambridge (UK).

Maia Chankseliani serves as the Editor-in-Chief of the International Journal of Educational Research.

Aliya teaches on the Comparative and International Education MSc programme at our Department. She is also a Junior Research Fellow at Lady Margaret Hall. Her research focuses on young people and families’ experiences of education in turbulent times.

For example, educational challenges and rehabilitation during COVID-19 and after the 2022 floods in Pakistan. Her current geographical focus includes ethnically diverse communities (Pakistani and Bangladeshi) in England as well as marginalised communities in Pakistan.

Aliya’s PhD explored the complexities of gender and international education, and her current work focuses on decolonising educational research practices and the experience of Southern-ness globally. Aliya’s specialist areas are parental, mothers’ and young people’s perspectives of and aspirations for education, and their own modalities of agency to fulfil their dreams.

Aliya publishes on the topics of Southern epistemologies and methodologies and teaches on related topics of decolonisation of knowledge production and the politics of representation. She is currently leading multiple projects in England and Pakistan focusing on girls’ education, gender experiences of education, mothers’ perspectives on educating their children, teacher educators, displaced peoples experiences in England and Pakistan.

Aliya is accepting DPhil students interested in these areas:

  • Southern epistemologies and methodologies
  • The capability approach and social justice
  • Negative capability
  • Deconstruction of the silence/violence binary
  • Marginalised peoples’ perspectives
  • Intersectional experiences of marginalisation including those related with gender, race, ethnicity, indigeneity, queerness, disability, class and caste (among others)
  • Decolonisation of knowledge production and representation of the South
  • Qualitative methodologies
  • Theorising from the margins
  • Area focus South Asia particularly Pakistan and Afghanistan
  • Internal displacement

Aliya is the acting Deputy Chair of the United Kingdom Forum for International Education and Training (UKFIET) conference 2023.

Gates Cambridge Biography

 

Research Group Membership

 

Research Projects

1. ‘Understanding the impact of COVID-19 on learning experiences of secondary school going age children among Bangladeshi and Pakistani ethnic minority families’
Funder: Cambridge Humanities Research Grants Scheme
Research team: Professor Nidhi Singal and Dr Aliya Khalid
Status: Complete

2. Gendered Inequalities in Education and Capability Spaces for Women/Girls (and others) in Pakistan: Education and reconstruction after 2022 floods in Pakistan
Funder: British Association for International and Comparative Education (BAICE) Seedcorn Fund
Research team: Aliya Khalid, Soufia Siddiqui, Aditi Chidambaram, Indrani Sigamany
Status: Ongoing

3. Bridging the Local and Global: Women’s Spaces and Collectives’: On becoming caregivers and teachers: Immigrant mothers’ identities and philosophies of education in England during COVID
Team members: Aliya Khalid, Jane Rooney and Ruth Houghton, Lavinia Kamphausen, Kate spencer-Bennet, Alana Farrel
Funder: The British Academy
Status: Complete

4. Collaborative development of faculty for Pakistan undergraduate Teacher Education Colleges: Durbeen and Oxford knowledge exchange project
Team members: Aliya Khalid, Ann Childs, Trevor Mutton, Ian Thompson, Jenni Ingram and Katharine Burn
Funder: Malala Fund
Status: Ongoing

Dr Karen Skilling is an Associate Professor at the Department of Education at the University of Oxford. Karen is currently the Deputy Director of Doctoral Research, Lead of the PGCE mathematics education at the Department of Education, and co-ordinates the Doctoral Teaching Fellows for teacher education. In 2020, Karen established the STEM Discussion Group and also convenes the Subject Pedagogy Group seminars.

Karen’s research interests include: student engagement and motivation in mathematics; integrated STEM learning and project-based STEM activities; and vignette methods. Karen currently sits on the Executive Committee of BSRLM, and is a journal Editor for the Teaching Education Journal (TEJ) and Research in Mathematics Education (RME). Karen has also been co-Editor for several special issues, and a topic study co-lead at the Congress of the European Society for Research in Mathematics Education (CERME). Karen is a Visiting Fellow at King’s College London and been an HEA Fellow since 2016.

Awards include: Australian Postgraduate Award (Industry) (APAI): funded PhD role attached to MYTEAM Project awarded by Australian Research Council (2008 –2012); Postdoctoral Research Fellowship: Department of Education, University of Oxford (2013-14); and nominations for Most Outstanding Contribution to Student Experience at King’s College London (2015, 2016, 2017).

David Mills is an Associate Professor and Director of the Centre for Global Higher Education (CGHE).

His current research focuses on the political economy of the global science system, and its impact on institutional research and publishing cultures in African universities. His most recent book is ‘Who Counts: Ghanaian Academic Publishing and Global Science’, co-written with colleagues from the University of Ghana and Oxford, and available open access from African Minds:  https://www.africanminds.co.za/who-counts/

Trained in Anthropology, and with inter-disciplinary research interests, David uses ethnographic methods to study the inequalities created by global higher education. He is particularly interested in African university research cultures and the role of diamond Open Access scholarly journals within knowledge ecosystems.

He welcomes enquiries from potential doctoral students interested in studying African Higher Education, as well as research and publishing cultures.

Liam Francis Gearon (BA, Hons, MA, MPhil, Cert He, PhD, FHEA, FRSA, Docent) is Associate Professor in Religious Education in the Department of Education, Senior Research Fellow at Harris Manchester College, University of Oxford; Docent, University of Helsinki, Finland; Honorary Senior Research Fellow at the School of Education, University of Birmingham, UK; Conjoint Professor at Newcastle University, Australia; Visiting Professor at the Irish Centre for Catholic Studies, MIC, Limerick, Ireland; Extraordinary Professor, North-West University, South Africa.

Liam Francis Gearon is Founder-Convenor of the Philosophy, Religion, Education Research Group, providing  a unique interdisciplinary contribution to the research culture of the Department of Education at the University of Oxford. The Philosophy, religion and education Research Group specifically forges theoretical and empirical interconnections between the arts, humanities, philosophy and the social sciences through the common focus of education. Contributions of this research group have been made to matters such as: theories of research policy and impact; the cultural value of research in the arts and humanities; research ethics; the intersection of epistemological and ethical domains in research in schools; religion, radicalisation and counter-terrorism in schools and universities; and the creation of distinctive sub-field of study at the interface of education, security and intelligence studies.

A specialist in the interdisciplinary study of religion in education, and particularly noted for the systematic philosophical and history of ideas analysis on the epistemological foundations of religious education, his framing of the paradigms of religion in education – scriptural-theological; phenomenological; psychological-experiential; philosophical-conceptual; social-cultural; political-historical – has contributed new insights to secularisation theory in numerous, some award-winning, monographs, such as MasterClass in Religious Education (Gearon, 2013); On Holy Ground (Gearon, 2015) [2016 Society of Education Studies Book Prize]; Religious Authority and the Arts: Conversations in Political Theology (Gearon, 2015); and State Religious Education and the State of the Religious Life (Gearon and Prud’homme, 2018).

His theorisations of the politicisation and securitisation of religion in education have been the subject of intense international debate for several years. Landmark publications on security in education – ‘The Counter-Terrorist Classroom’ (2013); ‘The Counter-Terrorist Classroom’ (2017); ‘Terrorism and Counter-Terrorism Policy and Research in UK Universities’ (2018): ‘Research Ethics in the Securitised University’ (Gearon and Parsons, 2019) and ‘The Kill Chain’ (Gearon, 2020) – have enabled empirical, methodological and theoretical advances on elites’ theory, the ethics of security and radicalisation research (Gearon and Kuusisto, 2018; Kuusisto and Gearon, 2017; Benjamin, Gearon, Kuusisto, Koirikivi, 2021).

With cognate research interests in security across all phases of education, Liam has over a decade collaboratively developed an interdisciplinary sub-field at the boundary of universities, security and intelligence studies, including research ethics in the securitised university (Gearon and Parsons, 2019). One of the defining outcomes here is Liam’s quarter of a million-word edited collection arising from the international Colloquium at Oriel College he convened in 2017, the Routledge International Handbook of Universities, Security and Intelligence Studies (Gearon, 2019). Interdisciplinary and inter-agency work in this area has included the Nuffield Foundation funded Universities and National Security: Research and Policy Collaborations 2019-2020, with a cross-disciplinary research team of 14 distinguished Co-Investigators.

With a significant Academy of Finland research grant (2018-2022) with Arniika Kuusisto (Stockholm/Helsinki/ Oxford), we oversee the research of two highly productive early career, post-doctoral researchers on radicalisation. This includes notable social and policy impacts such as the development of a national strategy around extremism through education for the Ministry of Justice in Finland (Activities | Growing up radical? | University of Helsinki). With substantial quantitative and qualitative data gathered, the project has already produced a substantial number of quality research outputs (Publications | Growing up radical? | University of Helsinki).

With a doctorate in English literature, Liam has also drawn on arts and humanities theoretical knowledge and methodological approaches to advance what are now intense cross-disciplinary debates around ‘decolonising the curriculum’ in religious education. From a series of foundational papers addressing the relationship between religious education and postcolonial theory – Gearon (2001a) ‘The Imagined Other: Postcolonial Theory and Religious Education’; Gearon (2001b) ‘A Spirituality of Dissent: Religion, Culture and Postcolonial Criticism’; Gearon (2002a) ‘Human Rights and Religious Education: Some Postcolonial Perspectives’ – he has recently led an international team (UK, Finland, Sweden, South Africa) as Guest Editor of the British Journal of Religious Education, for a high profile special issue on religion and education in postcolonial context (Gearon, Kuusisto, Matemba, Benjamin, Du Preez, Koirikivi, and Simmonds, 2020).

As Principal Investigator, Liam has led funded research projects with the Academy of Finland, the Arts and Humanities Research Council, the British Academy, the Leverhulme Trust, the Nuffield Foundation, the Philosophy of Education Society of Great Britain, and the Society for Educational Studies, a career total of funding exceeding £5,000,000, including a £4.5 million grant to establish a centre for citizenship and human rights at the University of Surrey Roehampton.

Doctoral supervision and Graduate teaching

 PGCE Religious Education (Subject lead)

  • Masters in Learning and Teaching (Subject lead)
  • Comparative and International Education

EXTERNAL POSTS

2020- Docent, Helsinki University, Finland

2020- Extraordinary Professor, Faculty of Education, North-West University, South Africa

2019-2021 Visiting Professor, Irish Institute of Catholic Studies, MIC, Limerick, Ireland

2012-2020 Conjoint Professor, Newcastle University, Australia

2019-2023 Honorary Senior Research Fellow, School of Education, University of Birmingham

 

PREVIOUS EXTERNAL POSTS

2011-2018, Adjunct Professor, Australian Catholic University, Australia

2010-2011, Visiting Professor, Faculty of Education, University of Plymouth

2008-2010, Research Professor, Faculty of Education, University of Plymouth

2006-2008, Professor of Education, University of Roehampton

2000-2006, Reader in Education, University of Surrey Roehampton

2006-2008, Senior Fellow, Centre of Excellence in Human Rights, University of Surrey Roehampton

2005-2008, Vice-President, International Human Rights Education Consortium, New York, USA

2001-2005, Director, Centre for Research in Human Rights, University of Surrey, Roehampton

1996-2000, Senior Lecturer, Faculty of Education, Roehampton, London

 

UK RESEARCH COUNCIL PEER REVIEW COLLEGES

AHRC Expert Group on Covid Research Group and Research Grant Panel ‘Introducer’

AHRC Peer Review College (2019 Gold Standard award, for ‘Recognition of significant contributions to the AHRC Peer Review College’)

ESRC Peer Review College

Universities UK Peer Review College Global Challenges Research Fund (GCRF)

 

INTERNATIONAL RESEARCH COUNCIL PEER REVIEWER

Academy of Finland

Austrian Science Fund (FWF)

EU 7th Framework Program for Research
Hong Kong Research Grants Council’s Public Policy Research Fund (PPR)

Irish Research Council

John Templeton Foundation

National Research Foundation, South Africa

 

PROFESSIONAL AND RESEARCH ASSOCIATIONS

Association of University Lecturers in Religion and Education (AULRE, co-founder and former Chair)

British Educational Research Association (BERA)

European Educational Research Association (EERA)

International Seminar on Religious Education and Values (ISREV)

Philosophy of Education Society of Great Britain (PESGB)

Society for Research in Higher Education (SRHE)
Society for Educational Studies (SES)

Also:

Executive (2019-2022) Oxford Intelligence Group, Nuffield College, University of Oxford

Fellow, Higher Education Academy (FHEA)

Fellow, Royal Society of Arts (FRSA)

Cambridge Intelligence Seminar

 

OTHER ADMINISTRATIVE ROLES AT OXFORD

Elected by Congregation to the University of Oxford Prevent Steering Group

Social Sciences Divisional representative of the Permanent Private Halls Supervisory Committee (PPHSC), a senior committee of the University of Oxford overseeing governance of Blackfriars; Campion Hall; Regent’s Park College; St Benet’s; St Stephen’s House; Wycliffe Hall.

Member, Central University Research Ethics Committee (CUREC)

Chair, Department of Education Research Ethics Committee (DREC)

Member, Inter-Divisional Social Sciences and Humanities Research Ethics Committee (IDREC)

Chair, Bodleian Library Education Committee

Member and occasional Chair Social Sciences Divisional Library Committee

Education Advisory Group, Christ Church College, Oxford

 

EDITORSHIP OF INTERNATIONAL JOURNALS

Gearon, L. (Guest editor) (2021) Literature and Security, Special Issue, Text Matters: A Journal of Literature, Theory and Culture, with a planned formal launch at Lodz, Poland.

Gearon, L., (Lead Guest Editor with editorial team) Kuusisto, A., Matemba, Y., Benjamin, S., Du Preez, P., Koirikivi, P., Simmonds, S. (2020) Decolonising the Religious Education Curriculum: International Perspectives in Theory, Research, and Practice, Special Issue, British Journal of Religious Education.

Gearon, L. (Guest Editor) (2019) Special Issue of Religions 10 (1) on Religion, Security, Education.

Gearon, L. and Williams, E. (Guest Editors) (2019) Special Issue of the British Journal of Educational Studies, Writers and their Education, 67 (3), 283–289.

Gearon, L. and Williams, E. (Guest Editors) (2018) Special Issue of Journal of Philosophy of Education on Philosophy, Literature and Education, 52 (4), 577-777.

Gearon, L. (Guest Editor) (2015) British Journal of Educational Studies, Special Issue, Education, Security and Intelligence Studies, 63 (3) 263-411.

Tirri, K., (Finland) Campbell, E. (Canada), Gearon, L. (UK), Lovat, T. (Australia) (Guest Editors) (2012) The Moral Core of Teaching, Education Research International.

Gearon, L. (Guest Editor) (2008) Citizenship, Human Rights and Religion, British Journal of Religious Education, 30 (2) 93-108.

Gearon, L. (Guest Editor) (2006) Children’s Spirituality and Children’s Rights, International Journal of Children’s Spirituality, 11 (2) 193-310.

Simon Marginson is  Emeritus Professor of Higher Education at the University of Oxford, Director of the ESRC/RE Centre for Global Higher Education (CGHE), and Editor-in-Chief of the journal Higher Education.

Simon led the ESRC Centre for Global Higher Education between November 2015 and April 2024. His research is focused primarily on global and international higher education, higher education in East Asia, the public and social contributions of higher education, and higher education and social equality. He is currently preparing an integrated theorisation of higher education. His scholarship is widely published and cited (Google h-index 67 in September 2019). Books include Higher Education and the Common Good (Melbourne University Publishing, 2016); High Participation Systems of Higher Education, edited with Brendan Cantwell and Anna Smolentseva (Oxford University Press, 2018); Changing Higher Education in East Asia, edited with Xin Xu (Bloomsbury, 2022) and Assessing the Contributions of Higher Education, edited with Brendan Cantwell, Daria Platonova and Anna Smolentseva (Edward Elgar, 2023).

Selected Publications
Books
  • Marginson, S. (2016).The Dream is Over: The crisis of Clark Kerr’s California Idea of higher education. Berkeley: University of California Press.
  • Marginson, S. (2016).Higher Education and the Common Good. Melbourne: Melbourne University Publishing.
  • Tran, L. & Marginson, S. (eds.). (2018).Internationalisation of Vietnamese Higher Education. Dordrecht: Springer Nature.
  • Carnoy, M., Froumin, I., Leshukov, O. & Marginson, S. (eds.). (2018) Higher Education in Federal Countries. New Delhi: Sage.
  • Cantwell, B., Marginson, S. & Smolentseva, A. (eds.). (2018) High Participation Systems of Higher Education. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
  • Callender, C., Locke, W. & Marginson, S. (eds.) (2020). Changing Higher Education for a Changing World. London: Bloomsbury.
  • Chattopadhyay, S., Marginson, S. & Varghese, N.V. (eds.) (2021). Changing Higher Education in India. London: Bloomsbury.
  • Marginson, S. & Xu, X. (eds.) (2022). Changing Higher Education in East Asia. (2022). London: Bloomsbury.
  • Marginson, S., Cantwell, B., Platonova, D. & Smolentseva, A. (eds.) (2023). Assessing the contributions of higher education. Cheltenham: Edward Elgar.
Recent Journal Papers
  • Marginson, S. (2016). The worldwide trend to high participation higher education: Dynamics of social stratification in inclusive systems. Higher Education, 72 (4), 413-435.
  • Marginson, S. (2018). Private/public in higher education: A synthesis of economic and political approaches. Studies in Higher Education, 43 (2), 322-337
  • Marginson, S. (2018) Global trends in higher education financing: The United Kingdom. International J. Educational Development, 58, 26-36
  • Marginson, S. (2018) National/global synergy in the development of higher education and science in China since 1978. Frontiers of Education in China, 13 (4), 486–512
  • Marginson, S. (2019) Limitations of human capital theory. Studies in Higher Education, 44 (2), 287-301
  • Marginson, S. and Yang, L. (2022). Individual and collective outcomes of higher education: A comparison of Anglo-American and Chinese approaches. Globalisation, Societies and Education, 20 (1), 1-32.
  • Marginson, S. (2022). ‘All things are in flux’: China in global science. Higher Education, 83 (4), 881-910.
  • Marginson, S. (2022). What drives global science? The four competing narratives. Studies in Higher Education, 47 (8), 1566-1584.
  • Marginson, S. (2022). Global science and national comparisons: Beyond bibliometrics and scientometrics. Comparative Education, 58 (2), 125-146.
  • Marginson, S. (2022). What is global higher education? Oxford Review of Education, 48 (4), 492-517.
  • Marginson S. (2022). Space and scale in higher education: The glonacal heuristic revisited. Higher Education, 84 (6),1365-1395.
  • Marginson, S. & Xu, X. (2023). Hegemony and inequality in global science: Problems of the center-periphery model. Comparative Education Review, 67 (1). https://doi.org/10.1086/722760
  • Marginson, S. (2023). Student self-formation: An emerging paradigm in higher education. Studies in Higher Education, https://doi.org/10.1080/03075079.2023.2252826 (2023).
  • Marginson, S. (2023). Limitations of the leading definition of ‘internationalisation’ of higher education: Is the idea wrong or is the fault in reality? Globalisation, Societies and Education, https://doi.org/10.1080/14767724.2023.2264223
  • Marginson, S. and Yang ,L. (2023). Has the public good been emptied out of higher education in England? Higher Education. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10734-023-01117-6

Maia Chankseliani is Associate Professor of Comparative and International Education at the University of Oxford where she leads a flagship master’s course in Comparative and International Education. She convenes the Comparative and International Education Research Group at the Department of Education.

Within comparative and international education, Maia Chankseliani works at the intersection of tertiary education and development. She researches societal, institutional, and policy forces that shape tertiary education and the potential of tertiary education and research for transforming societies.

Methodologically, she utilises both qualitative and quantitative methods. Her work often combines secondary data analysis with insights gathered through semi-structured interviews and contextualised case studies.

Maia Chankseliani has published four books in the field of comparative and international education: What Happened to the Soviet University? (2022), Building Research Capacity at Universities: Insights from Post-Soviet Countries (2022), Comparing Post-Socialist Transformations: Purposes, Policies, and Practices in Education (2018), and Fairness in Access to Higher Education in a Global Perspective: Reconciling Excellence, Efficiency, and Justice (2013).

She currently leads a major research project examining the impact of international mobility on world development (funded by the U.S. Department of State). Maia Chankseliani has worked on a number of externally funded research projects and consultancies involving the UK Government agencies responsible for education and skills, UKRI/ESRC, British Council, World Bank, Qatar Foundation, the European Commission.

With a background in education research, teaching, policy-making, leadership, and consultancy, Maia Chankseliani brings to her role extensive experience in diverse international settings. This breadth of experience informs her research and enables her to bridge theory and practice.

Maia Chankseliani engages with governments and gives academic and policy-relevant talks nationally and internationally. Her research regularly features in national and international media.

She holds a BA in Philology from Tbilisi State University (Georgia), an Ed. M in International Education Policy from Harvard University (USA), and a PhD in Education from the University of Cambridge (UK).

Maia Chankseliani serves as the Editor-in-Chief of the International Journal of Educational Research.

Aliya teaches on the Comparative and International Education MSc programme at our Department. She is also a Junior Research Fellow at Lady Margaret Hall. Her research focuses on young people and families’ experiences of education in turbulent times.

For example, educational challenges and rehabilitation during COVID-19 and after the 2022 floods in Pakistan. Her current geographical focus includes ethnically diverse communities (Pakistani and Bangladeshi) in England as well as marginalised communities in Pakistan.

Aliya’s PhD explored the complexities of gender and international education, and her current work focuses on decolonising educational research practices and the experience of Southern-ness globally. Aliya’s specialist areas are parental, mothers’ and young people’s perspectives of and aspirations for education, and their own modalities of agency to fulfil their dreams.

Aliya publishes on the topics of Southern epistemologies and methodologies and teaches on related topics of decolonisation of knowledge production and the politics of representation. She is currently leading multiple projects in England and Pakistan focusing on girls’ education, gender experiences of education, mothers’ perspectives on educating their children, teacher educators, displaced peoples experiences in England and Pakistan.

Aliya is accepting DPhil students interested in these areas:

  • Southern epistemologies and methodologies
  • The capability approach and social justice
  • Negative capability
  • Deconstruction of the silence/violence binary
  • Marginalised peoples’ perspectives
  • Intersectional experiences of marginalisation including those related with gender, race, ethnicity, indigeneity, queerness, disability, class and caste (among others)
  • Decolonisation of knowledge production and representation of the South
  • Qualitative methodologies
  • Theorising from the margins
  • Area focus South Asia particularly Pakistan and Afghanistan
  • Internal displacement

Aliya is the acting Deputy Chair of the United Kingdom Forum for International Education and Training (UKFIET) conference 2023.

Gates Cambridge Biography

 

Research Group Membership

 

Research Projects

1. ‘Understanding the impact of COVID-19 on learning experiences of secondary school going age children among Bangladeshi and Pakistani ethnic minority families’
Funder: Cambridge Humanities Research Grants Scheme
Research team: Professor Nidhi Singal and Dr Aliya Khalid
Status: Complete

2. Gendered Inequalities in Education and Capability Spaces for Women/Girls (and others) in Pakistan: Education and reconstruction after 2022 floods in Pakistan
Funder: British Association for International and Comparative Education (BAICE) Seedcorn Fund
Research team: Aliya Khalid, Soufia Siddiqui, Aditi Chidambaram, Indrani Sigamany
Status: Ongoing

3. Bridging the Local and Global: Women’s Spaces and Collectives’: On becoming caregivers and teachers: Immigrant mothers’ identities and philosophies of education in England during COVID
Team members: Aliya Khalid, Jane Rooney and Ruth Houghton, Lavinia Kamphausen, Kate spencer-Bennet, Alana Farrel
Funder: The British Academy
Status: Complete

4. Collaborative development of faculty for Pakistan undergraduate Teacher Education Colleges: Durbeen and Oxford knowledge exchange project
Team members: Aliya Khalid, Ann Childs, Trevor Mutton, Ian Thompson, Jenni Ingram and Katharine Burn
Funder: Malala Fund
Status: Ongoing

Dr Karen Skilling is an Associate Professor at the Department of Education at the University of Oxford. Karen is currently the Deputy Director of Doctoral Research, Lead of the PGCE mathematics education at the Department of Education, and co-ordinates the Doctoral Teaching Fellows for teacher education. In 2020, Karen established the STEM Discussion Group and also convenes the Subject Pedagogy Group seminars.

Karen’s research interests include: student engagement and motivation in mathematics; integrated STEM learning and project-based STEM activities; and vignette methods. Karen currently sits on the Executive Committee of BSRLM, and is a journal Editor for the Teaching Education Journal (TEJ) and Research in Mathematics Education (RME). Karen has also been co-Editor for several special issues, and a topic study co-lead at the Congress of the European Society for Research in Mathematics Education (CERME). Karen is a Visiting Fellow at King’s College London and been an HEA Fellow since 2016.

Awards include: Australian Postgraduate Award (Industry) (APAI): funded PhD role attached to MYTEAM Project awarded by Australian Research Council (2008 –2012); Postdoctoral Research Fellowship: Department of Education, University of Oxford (2013-14); and nominations for Most Outstanding Contribution to Student Experience at King’s College London (2015, 2016, 2017).

David Mills is an Associate Professor and Director of the Centre for Global Higher Education (CGHE).

His current research focuses on the political economy of the global science system, and its impact on institutional research and publishing cultures in African universities. His most recent book is ‘Who Counts: Ghanaian Academic Publishing and Global Science’, co-written with colleagues from the University of Ghana and Oxford, and available open access from African Minds:  https://www.africanminds.co.za/who-counts/

Trained in Anthropology, and with inter-disciplinary research interests, David uses ethnographic methods to study the inequalities created by global higher education. He is particularly interested in African university research cultures and the role of diamond Open Access scholarly journals within knowledge ecosystems.

He welcomes enquiries from potential doctoral students interested in studying African Higher Education, as well as research and publishing cultures.

Liam Francis Gearon (BA, Hons, MA, MPhil, Cert He, PhD, FHEA, FRSA, Docent) is Associate Professor in Religious Education in the Department of Education, Senior Research Fellow at Harris Manchester College, University of Oxford; Docent, University of Helsinki, Finland; Honorary Senior Research Fellow at the School of Education, University of Birmingham, UK; Conjoint Professor at Newcastle University, Australia; Visiting Professor at the Irish Centre for Catholic Studies, MIC, Limerick, Ireland; Extraordinary Professor, North-West University, South Africa.

Liam Francis Gearon is Founder-Convenor of the Philosophy, Religion, Education Research Group, providing  a unique interdisciplinary contribution to the research culture of the Department of Education at the University of Oxford. The Philosophy, religion and education Research Group specifically forges theoretical and empirical interconnections between the arts, humanities, philosophy and the social sciences through the common focus of education. Contributions of this research group have been made to matters such as: theories of research policy and impact; the cultural value of research in the arts and humanities; research ethics; the intersection of epistemological and ethical domains in research in schools; religion, radicalisation and counter-terrorism in schools and universities; and the creation of distinctive sub-field of study at the interface of education, security and intelligence studies.

A specialist in the interdisciplinary study of religion in education, and particularly noted for the systematic philosophical and history of ideas analysis on the epistemological foundations of religious education, his framing of the paradigms of religion in education – scriptural-theological; phenomenological; psychological-experiential; philosophical-conceptual; social-cultural; political-historical – has contributed new insights to secularisation theory in numerous, some award-winning, monographs, such as MasterClass in Religious Education (Gearon, 2013); On Holy Ground (Gearon, 2015) [2016 Society of Education Studies Book Prize]; Religious Authority and the Arts: Conversations in Political Theology (Gearon, 2015); and State Religious Education and the State of the Religious Life (Gearon and Prud’homme, 2018).

His theorisations of the politicisation and securitisation of religion in education have been the subject of intense international debate for several years. Landmark publications on security in education – ‘The Counter-Terrorist Classroom’ (2013); ‘The Counter-Terrorist Classroom’ (2017); ‘Terrorism and Counter-Terrorism Policy and Research in UK Universities’ (2018): ‘Research Ethics in the Securitised University’ (Gearon and Parsons, 2019) and ‘The Kill Chain’ (Gearon, 2020) – have enabled empirical, methodological and theoretical advances on elites’ theory, the ethics of security and radicalisation research (Gearon and Kuusisto, 2018; Kuusisto and Gearon, 2017; Benjamin, Gearon, Kuusisto, Koirikivi, 2021).

With cognate research interests in security across all phases of education, Liam has over a decade collaboratively developed an interdisciplinary sub-field at the boundary of universities, security and intelligence studies, including research ethics in the securitised university (Gearon and Parsons, 2019). One of the defining outcomes here is Liam’s quarter of a million-word edited collection arising from the international Colloquium at Oriel College he convened in 2017, the Routledge International Handbook of Universities, Security and Intelligence Studies (Gearon, 2019). Interdisciplinary and inter-agency work in this area has included the Nuffield Foundation funded Universities and National Security: Research and Policy Collaborations 2019-2020, with a cross-disciplinary research team of 14 distinguished Co-Investigators.

With a significant Academy of Finland research grant (2018-2022) with Arniika Kuusisto (Stockholm/Helsinki/ Oxford), we oversee the research of two highly productive early career, post-doctoral researchers on radicalisation. This includes notable social and policy impacts such as the development of a national strategy around extremism through education for the Ministry of Justice in Finland (Activities | Growing up radical? | University of Helsinki). With substantial quantitative and qualitative data gathered, the project has already produced a substantial number of quality research outputs (Publications | Growing up radical? | University of Helsinki).

With a doctorate in English literature, Liam has also drawn on arts and humanities theoretical knowledge and methodological approaches to advance what are now intense cross-disciplinary debates around ‘decolonising the curriculum’ in religious education. From a series of foundational papers addressing the relationship between religious education and postcolonial theory – Gearon (2001a) ‘The Imagined Other: Postcolonial Theory and Religious Education’; Gearon (2001b) ‘A Spirituality of Dissent: Religion, Culture and Postcolonial Criticism’; Gearon (2002a) ‘Human Rights and Religious Education: Some Postcolonial Perspectives’ – he has recently led an international team (UK, Finland, Sweden, South Africa) as Guest Editor of the British Journal of Religious Education, for a high profile special issue on religion and education in postcolonial context (Gearon, Kuusisto, Matemba, Benjamin, Du Preez, Koirikivi, and Simmonds, 2020).

As Principal Investigator, Liam has led funded research projects with the Academy of Finland, the Arts and Humanities Research Council, the British Academy, the Leverhulme Trust, the Nuffield Foundation, the Philosophy of Education Society of Great Britain, and the Society for Educational Studies, a career total of funding exceeding £5,000,000, including a £4.5 million grant to establish a centre for citizenship and human rights at the University of Surrey Roehampton.

Doctoral supervision and Graduate teaching

 PGCE Religious Education (Subject lead)

  • Masters in Learning and Teaching (Subject lead)
  • Comparative and International Education

EXTERNAL POSTS

2020- Docent, Helsinki University, Finland

2020- Extraordinary Professor, Faculty of Education, North-West University, South Africa

2019-2021 Visiting Professor, Irish Institute of Catholic Studies, MIC, Limerick, Ireland

2012-2020 Conjoint Professor, Newcastle University, Australia

2019-2023 Honorary Senior Research Fellow, School of Education, University of Birmingham

 

PREVIOUS EXTERNAL POSTS

2011-2018, Adjunct Professor, Australian Catholic University, Australia

2010-2011, Visiting Professor, Faculty of Education, University of Plymouth

2008-2010, Research Professor, Faculty of Education, University of Plymouth

2006-2008, Professor of Education, University of Roehampton

2000-2006, Reader in Education, University of Surrey Roehampton

2006-2008, Senior Fellow, Centre of Excellence in Human Rights, University of Surrey Roehampton

2005-2008, Vice-President, International Human Rights Education Consortium, New York, USA

2001-2005, Director, Centre for Research in Human Rights, University of Surrey, Roehampton

1996-2000, Senior Lecturer, Faculty of Education, Roehampton, London

 

UK RESEARCH COUNCIL PEER REVIEW COLLEGES

AHRC Expert Group on Covid Research Group and Research Grant Panel ‘Introducer’

AHRC Peer Review College (2019 Gold Standard award, for ‘Recognition of significant contributions to the AHRC Peer Review College’)

ESRC Peer Review College

Universities UK Peer Review College Global Challenges Research Fund (GCRF)

 

INTERNATIONAL RESEARCH COUNCIL PEER REVIEWER

Academy of Finland

Austrian Science Fund (FWF)

EU 7th Framework Program for Research
Hong Kong Research Grants Council’s Public Policy Research Fund (PPR)

Irish Research Council

John Templeton Foundation

National Research Foundation, South Africa

 

PROFESSIONAL AND RESEARCH ASSOCIATIONS

Association of University Lecturers in Religion and Education (AULRE, co-founder and former Chair)

British Educational Research Association (BERA)

European Educational Research Association (EERA)

International Seminar on Religious Education and Values (ISREV)

Philosophy of Education Society of Great Britain (PESGB)

Society for Research in Higher Education (SRHE)
Society for Educational Studies (SES)

Also:

Executive (2019-2022) Oxford Intelligence Group, Nuffield College, University of Oxford

Fellow, Higher Education Academy (FHEA)

Fellow, Royal Society of Arts (FRSA)

Cambridge Intelligence Seminar

 

OTHER ADMINISTRATIVE ROLES AT OXFORD

Elected by Congregation to the University of Oxford Prevent Steering Group

Social Sciences Divisional representative of the Permanent Private Halls Supervisory Committee (PPHSC), a senior committee of the University of Oxford overseeing governance of Blackfriars; Campion Hall; Regent’s Park College; St Benet’s; St Stephen’s House; Wycliffe Hall.

Member, Central University Research Ethics Committee (CUREC)

Chair, Department of Education Research Ethics Committee (DREC)

Member, Inter-Divisional Social Sciences and Humanities Research Ethics Committee (IDREC)

Chair, Bodleian Library Education Committee

Member and occasional Chair Social Sciences Divisional Library Committee

Education Advisory Group, Christ Church College, Oxford

 

EDITORSHIP OF INTERNATIONAL JOURNALS

Gearon, L. (Guest editor) (2021) Literature and Security, Special Issue, Text Matters: A Journal of Literature, Theory and Culture, with a planned formal launch at Lodz, Poland.

Gearon, L., (Lead Guest Editor with editorial team) Kuusisto, A., Matemba, Y., Benjamin, S., Du Preez, P., Koirikivi, P., Simmonds, S. (2020) Decolonising the Religious Education Curriculum: International Perspectives in Theory, Research, and Practice, Special Issue, British Journal of Religious Education.

Gearon, L. (Guest Editor) (2019) Special Issue of Religions 10 (1) on Religion, Security, Education.

Gearon, L. and Williams, E. (Guest Editors) (2019) Special Issue of the British Journal of Educational Studies, Writers and their Education, 67 (3), 283–289.

Gearon, L. and Williams, E. (Guest Editors) (2018) Special Issue of Journal of Philosophy of Education on Philosophy, Literature and Education, 52 (4), 577-777.

Gearon, L. (Guest Editor) (2015) British Journal of Educational Studies, Special Issue, Education, Security and Intelligence Studies, 63 (3) 263-411.

Tirri, K., (Finland) Campbell, E. (Canada), Gearon, L. (UK), Lovat, T. (Australia) (Guest Editors) (2012) The Moral Core of Teaching, Education Research International.

Gearon, L. (Guest Editor) (2008) Citizenship, Human Rights and Religion, British Journal of Religious Education, 30 (2) 93-108.

Gearon, L. (Guest Editor) (2006) Children’s Spirituality and Children’s Rights, International Journal of Children’s Spirituality, 11 (2) 193-310.

Simon Marginson is  Emeritus Professor of Higher Education at the University of Oxford, Director of the ESRC/RE Centre for Global Higher Education (CGHE), and Editor-in-Chief of the journal Higher Education.

Simon led the ESRC Centre for Global Higher Education between November 2015 and April 2024. His research is focused primarily on global and international higher education, higher education in East Asia, the public and social contributions of higher education, and higher education and social equality. He is currently preparing an integrated theorisation of higher education. His scholarship is widely published and cited (Google h-index 67 in September 2019). Books include Higher Education and the Common Good (Melbourne University Publishing, 2016); High Participation Systems of Higher Education, edited with Brendan Cantwell and Anna Smolentseva (Oxford University Press, 2018); Changing Higher Education in East Asia, edited with Xin Xu (Bloomsbury, 2022) and Assessing the Contributions of Higher Education, edited with Brendan Cantwell, Daria Platonova and Anna Smolentseva (Edward Elgar, 2023).

Selected Publications
Books
  • Marginson, S. (2016).The Dream is Over: The crisis of Clark Kerr’s California Idea of higher education. Berkeley: University of California Press.
  • Marginson, S. (2016).Higher Education and the Common Good. Melbourne: Melbourne University Publishing.
  • Tran, L. & Marginson, S. (eds.). (2018).Internationalisation of Vietnamese Higher Education. Dordrecht: Springer Nature.
  • Carnoy, M., Froumin, I., Leshukov, O. & Marginson, S. (eds.). (2018) Higher Education in Federal Countries. New Delhi: Sage.
  • Cantwell, B., Marginson, S. & Smolentseva, A. (eds.). (2018) High Participation Systems of Higher Education. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
  • Callender, C., Locke, W. & Marginson, S. (eds.) (2020). Changing Higher Education for a Changing World. London: Bloomsbury.
  • Chattopadhyay, S., Marginson, S. & Varghese, N.V. (eds.) (2021). Changing Higher Education in India. London: Bloomsbury.
  • Marginson, S. & Xu, X. (eds.) (2022). Changing Higher Education in East Asia. (2022). London: Bloomsbury.
  • Marginson, S., Cantwell, B., Platonova, D. & Smolentseva, A. (eds.) (2023). Assessing the contributions of higher education. Cheltenham: Edward Elgar.
Recent Journal Papers
  • Marginson, S. (2016). The worldwide trend to high participation higher education: Dynamics of social stratification in inclusive systems. Higher Education, 72 (4), 413-435.
  • Marginson, S. (2018). Private/public in higher education: A synthesis of economic and political approaches. Studies in Higher Education, 43 (2), 322-337
  • Marginson, S. (2018) Global trends in higher education financing: The United Kingdom. International J. Educational Development, 58, 26-36
  • Marginson, S. (2018) National/global synergy in the development of higher education and science in China since 1978. Frontiers of Education in China, 13 (4), 486–512
  • Marginson, S. (2019) Limitations of human capital theory. Studies in Higher Education, 44 (2), 287-301
  • Marginson, S. and Yang, L. (2022). Individual and collective outcomes of higher education: A comparison of Anglo-American and Chinese approaches. Globalisation, Societies and Education, 20 (1), 1-32.
  • Marginson, S. (2022). ‘All things are in flux’: China in global science. Higher Education, 83 (4), 881-910.
  • Marginson, S. (2022). What drives global science? The four competing narratives. Studies in Higher Education, 47 (8), 1566-1584.
  • Marginson, S. (2022). Global science and national comparisons: Beyond bibliometrics and scientometrics. Comparative Education, 58 (2), 125-146.
  • Marginson, S. (2022). What is global higher education? Oxford Review of Education, 48 (4), 492-517.
  • Marginson S. (2022). Space and scale in higher education: The glonacal heuristic revisited. Higher Education, 84 (6),1365-1395.
  • Marginson, S. & Xu, X. (2023). Hegemony and inequality in global science: Problems of the center-periphery model. Comparative Education Review, 67 (1). https://doi.org/10.1086/722760
  • Marginson, S. (2023). Student self-formation: An emerging paradigm in higher education. Studies in Higher Education, https://doi.org/10.1080/03075079.2023.2252826 (2023).
  • Marginson, S. (2023). Limitations of the leading definition of ‘internationalisation’ of higher education: Is the idea wrong or is the fault in reality? Globalisation, Societies and Education, https://doi.org/10.1080/14767724.2023.2264223
  • Marginson, S. and Yang ,L. (2023). Has the public good been emptied out of higher education in England? Higher Education. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10734-023-01117-6

Maia Chankseliani is Associate Professor of Comparative and International Education at the University of Oxford where she leads a flagship master’s course in Comparative and International Education. She convenes the Comparative and International Education Research Group at the Department of Education.

Within comparative and international education, Maia Chankseliani works at the intersection of tertiary education and development. She researches societal, institutional, and policy forces that shape tertiary education and the potential of tertiary education and research for transforming societies.

Methodologically, she utilises both qualitative and quantitative methods. Her work often combines secondary data analysis with insights gathered through semi-structured interviews and contextualised case studies.

Maia Chankseliani has published four books in the field of comparative and international education: What Happened to the Soviet University? (2022), Building Research Capacity at Universities: Insights from Post-Soviet Countries (2022), Comparing Post-Socialist Transformations: Purposes, Policies, and Practices in Education (2018), and Fairness in Access to Higher Education in a Global Perspective: Reconciling Excellence, Efficiency, and Justice (2013).

She currently leads a major research project examining the impact of international mobility on world development (funded by the U.S. Department of State). Maia Chankseliani has worked on a number of externally funded research projects and consultancies involving the UK Government agencies responsible for education and skills, UKRI/ESRC, British Council, World Bank, Qatar Foundation, the European Commission.

With a background in education research, teaching, policy-making, leadership, and consultancy, Maia Chankseliani brings to her role extensive experience in diverse international settings. This breadth of experience informs her research and enables her to bridge theory and practice.

Maia Chankseliani engages with governments and gives academic and policy-relevant talks nationally and internationally. Her research regularly features in national and international media.

She holds a BA in Philology from Tbilisi State University (Georgia), an Ed. M in International Education Policy from Harvard University (USA), and a PhD in Education from the University of Cambridge (UK).

Maia Chankseliani serves as the Editor-in-Chief of the International Journal of Educational Research.

Aliya teaches on the Comparative and International Education MSc programme at our Department. She is also a Junior Research Fellow at Lady Margaret Hall. Her research focuses on young people and families’ experiences of education in turbulent times.

For example, educational challenges and rehabilitation during COVID-19 and after the 2022 floods in Pakistan. Her current geographical focus includes ethnically diverse communities (Pakistani and Bangladeshi) in England as well as marginalised communities in Pakistan.

Aliya’s PhD explored the complexities of gender and international education, and her current work focuses on decolonising educational research practices and the experience of Southern-ness globally. Aliya’s specialist areas are parental, mothers’ and young people’s perspectives of and aspirations for education, and their own modalities of agency to fulfil their dreams.

Aliya publishes on the topics of Southern epistemologies and methodologies and teaches on related topics of decolonisation of knowledge production and the politics of representation. She is currently leading multiple projects in England and Pakistan focusing on girls’ education, gender experiences of education, mothers’ perspectives on educating their children, teacher educators, displaced peoples experiences in England and Pakistan.

Aliya is accepting DPhil students interested in these areas:

  • Southern epistemologies and methodologies
  • The capability approach and social justice
  • Negative capability
  • Deconstruction of the silence/violence binary
  • Marginalised peoples’ perspectives
  • Intersectional experiences of marginalisation including those related with gender, race, ethnicity, indigeneity, queerness, disability, class and caste (among others)
  • Decolonisation of knowledge production and representation of the South
  • Qualitative methodologies
  • Theorising from the margins
  • Area focus South Asia particularly Pakistan and Afghanistan
  • Internal displacement

Aliya is the acting Deputy Chair of the United Kingdom Forum for International Education and Training (UKFIET) conference 2023.

Gates Cambridge Biography

 

Research Group Membership

 

Research Projects

1. ‘Understanding the impact of COVID-19 on learning experiences of secondary school going age children among Bangladeshi and Pakistani ethnic minority families’
Funder: Cambridge Humanities Research Grants Scheme
Research team: Professor Nidhi Singal and Dr Aliya Khalid
Status: Complete

2. Gendered Inequalities in Education and Capability Spaces for Women/Girls (and others) in Pakistan: Education and reconstruction after 2022 floods in Pakistan
Funder: British Association for International and Comparative Education (BAICE) Seedcorn Fund
Research team: Aliya Khalid, Soufia Siddiqui, Aditi Chidambaram, Indrani Sigamany
Status: Ongoing

3. Bridging the Local and Global: Women’s Spaces and Collectives’: On becoming caregivers and teachers: Immigrant mothers’ identities and philosophies of education in England during COVID
Team members: Aliya Khalid, Jane Rooney and Ruth Houghton, Lavinia Kamphausen, Kate spencer-Bennet, Alana Farrel
Funder: The British Academy
Status: Complete

4. Collaborative development of faculty for Pakistan undergraduate Teacher Education Colleges: Durbeen and Oxford knowledge exchange project
Team members: Aliya Khalid, Ann Childs, Trevor Mutton, Ian Thompson, Jenni Ingram and Katharine Burn
Funder: Malala Fund
Status: Ongoing

Dr Karen Skilling is an Associate Professor at the Department of Education at the University of Oxford. Karen is currently the Deputy Director of Doctoral Research, Lead of the PGCE mathematics education at the Department of Education, and co-ordinates the Doctoral Teaching Fellows for teacher education. In 2020, Karen established the STEM Discussion Group and also convenes the Subject Pedagogy Group seminars.

Karen’s research interests include: student engagement and motivation in mathematics; integrated STEM learning and project-based STEM activities; and vignette methods. Karen currently sits on the Executive Committee of BSRLM, and is a journal Editor for the Teaching Education Journal (TEJ) and Research in Mathematics Education (RME). Karen has also been co-Editor for several special issues, and a topic study co-lead at the Congress of the European Society for Research in Mathematics Education (CERME). Karen is a Visiting Fellow at King’s College London and been an HEA Fellow since 2016.

Awards include: Australian Postgraduate Award (Industry) (APAI): funded PhD role attached to MYTEAM Project awarded by Australian Research Council (2008 –2012); Postdoctoral Research Fellowship: Department of Education, University of Oxford (2013-14); and nominations for Most Outstanding Contribution to Student Experience at King’s College London (2015, 2016, 2017).

David Mills is an Associate Professor and Director of the Centre for Global Higher Education (CGHE).

His current research focuses on the political economy of the global science system, and its impact on institutional research and publishing cultures in African universities. His most recent book is ‘Who Counts: Ghanaian Academic Publishing and Global Science’, co-written with colleagues from the University of Ghana and Oxford, and available open access from African Minds:  https://www.africanminds.co.za/who-counts/

Trained in Anthropology, and with inter-disciplinary research interests, David uses ethnographic methods to study the inequalities created by global higher education. He is particularly interested in African university research cultures and the role of diamond Open Access scholarly journals within knowledge ecosystems.

He welcomes enquiries from potential doctoral students interested in studying African Higher Education, as well as research and publishing cultures.

Liam Francis Gearon (BA, Hons, MA, MPhil, Cert He, PhD, FHEA, FRSA, Docent) is Associate Professor in Religious Education in the Department of Education, Senior Research Fellow at Harris Manchester College, University of Oxford; Docent, University of Helsinki, Finland; Honorary Senior Research Fellow at the School of Education, University of Birmingham, UK; Conjoint Professor at Newcastle University, Australia; Visiting Professor at the Irish Centre for Catholic Studies, MIC, Limerick, Ireland; Extraordinary Professor, North-West University, South Africa.

Liam Francis Gearon is Founder-Convenor of the Philosophy, Religion, Education Research Group, providing  a unique interdisciplinary contribution to the research culture of the Department of Education at the University of Oxford. The Philosophy, religion and education Research Group specifically forges theoretical and empirical interconnections between the arts, humanities, philosophy and the social sciences through the common focus of education. Contributions of this research group have been made to matters such as: theories of research policy and impact; the cultural value of research in the arts and humanities; research ethics; the intersection of epistemological and ethical domains in research in schools; religion, radicalisation and counter-terrorism in schools and universities; and the creation of distinctive sub-field of study at the interface of education, security and intelligence studies.

A specialist in the interdisciplinary study of religion in education, and particularly noted for the systematic philosophical and history of ideas analysis on the epistemological foundations of religious education, his framing of the paradigms of religion in education – scriptural-theological; phenomenological; psychological-experiential; philosophical-conceptual; social-cultural; political-historical – has contributed new insights to secularisation theory in numerous, some award-winning, monographs, such as MasterClass in Religious Education (Gearon, 2013); On Holy Ground (Gearon, 2015) [2016 Society of Education Studies Book Prize]; Religious Authority and the Arts: Conversations in Political Theology (Gearon, 2015); and State Religious Education and the State of the Religious Life (Gearon and Prud’homme, 2018).

His theorisations of the politicisation and securitisation of religion in education have been the subject of intense international debate for several years. Landmark publications on security in education – ‘The Counter-Terrorist Classroom’ (2013); ‘The Counter-Terrorist Classroom’ (2017); ‘Terrorism and Counter-Terrorism Policy and Research in UK Universities’ (2018): ‘Research Ethics in the Securitised University’ (Gearon and Parsons, 2019) and ‘The Kill Chain’ (Gearon, 2020) – have enabled empirical, methodological and theoretical advances on elites’ theory, the ethics of security and radicalisation research (Gearon and Kuusisto, 2018; Kuusisto and Gearon, 2017; Benjamin, Gearon, Kuusisto, Koirikivi, 2021).

With cognate research interests in security across all phases of education, Liam has over a decade collaboratively developed an interdisciplinary sub-field at the boundary of universities, security and intelligence studies, including research ethics in the securitised university (Gearon and Parsons, 2019). One of the defining outcomes here is Liam’s quarter of a million-word edited collection arising from the international Colloquium at Oriel College he convened in 2017, the Routledge International Handbook of Universities, Security and Intelligence Studies (Gearon, 2019). Interdisciplinary and inter-agency work in this area has included the Nuffield Foundation funded Universities and National Security: Research and Policy Collaborations 2019-2020, with a cross-disciplinary research team of 14 distinguished Co-Investigators.

With a significant Academy of Finland research grant (2018-2022) with Arniika Kuusisto (Stockholm/Helsinki/ Oxford), we oversee the research of two highly productive early career, post-doctoral researchers on radicalisation. This includes notable social and policy impacts such as the development of a national strategy around extremism through education for the Ministry of Justice in Finland (Activities | Growing up radical? | University of Helsinki). With substantial quantitative and qualitative data gathered, the project has already produced a substantial number of quality research outputs (Publications | Growing up radical? | University of Helsinki).

With a doctorate in English literature, Liam has also drawn on arts and humanities theoretical knowledge and methodological approaches to advance what are now intense cross-disciplinary debates around ‘decolonising the curriculum’ in religious education. From a series of foundational papers addressing the relationship between religious education and postcolonial theory – Gearon (2001a) ‘The Imagined Other: Postcolonial Theory and Religious Education’; Gearon (2001b) ‘A Spirituality of Dissent: Religion, Culture and Postcolonial Criticism’; Gearon (2002a) ‘Human Rights and Religious Education: Some Postcolonial Perspectives’ – he has recently led an international team (UK, Finland, Sweden, South Africa) as Guest Editor of the British Journal of Religious Education, for a high profile special issue on religion and education in postcolonial context (Gearon, Kuusisto, Matemba, Benjamin, Du Preez, Koirikivi, and Simmonds, 2020).

As Principal Investigator, Liam has led funded research projects with the Academy of Finland, the Arts and Humanities Research Council, the British Academy, the Leverhulme Trust, the Nuffield Foundation, the Philosophy of Education Society of Great Britain, and the Society for Educational Studies, a career total of funding exceeding £5,000,000, including a £4.5 million grant to establish a centre for citizenship and human rights at the University of Surrey Roehampton.

Doctoral supervision and Graduate teaching

 PGCE Religious Education (Subject lead)

  • Masters in Learning and Teaching (Subject lead)
  • Comparative and International Education

EXTERNAL POSTS

2020- Docent, Helsinki University, Finland

2020- Extraordinary Professor, Faculty of Education, North-West University, South Africa

2019-2021 Visiting Professor, Irish Institute of Catholic Studies, MIC, Limerick, Ireland

2012-2020 Conjoint Professor, Newcastle University, Australia

2019-2023 Honorary Senior Research Fellow, School of Education, University of Birmingham

 

PREVIOUS EXTERNAL POSTS

2011-2018, Adjunct Professor, Australian Catholic University, Australia

2010-2011, Visiting Professor, Faculty of Education, University of Plymouth

2008-2010, Research Professor, Faculty of Education, University of Plymouth

2006-2008, Professor of Education, University of Roehampton

2000-2006, Reader in Education, University of Surrey Roehampton

2006-2008, Senior Fellow, Centre of Excellence in Human Rights, University of Surrey Roehampton

2005-2008, Vice-President, International Human Rights Education Consortium, New York, USA

2001-2005, Director, Centre for Research in Human Rights, University of Surrey, Roehampton

1996-2000, Senior Lecturer, Faculty of Education, Roehampton, London

 

UK RESEARCH COUNCIL PEER REVIEW COLLEGES

AHRC Expert Group on Covid Research Group and Research Grant Panel ‘Introducer’

AHRC Peer Review College (2019 Gold Standard award, for ‘Recognition of significant contributions to the AHRC Peer Review College’)

ESRC Peer Review College

Universities UK Peer Review College Global Challenges Research Fund (GCRF)

 

INTERNATIONAL RESEARCH COUNCIL PEER REVIEWER

Academy of Finland

Austrian Science Fund (FWF)

EU 7th Framework Program for Research
Hong Kong Research Grants Council’s Public Policy Research Fund (PPR)

Irish Research Council

John Templeton Foundation

National Research Foundation, South Africa

 

PROFESSIONAL AND RESEARCH ASSOCIATIONS

Association of University Lecturers in Religion and Education (AULRE, co-founder and former Chair)

British Educational Research Association (BERA)

European Educational Research Association (EERA)

International Seminar on Religious Education and Values (ISREV)

Philosophy of Education Society of Great Britain (PESGB)

Society for Research in Higher Education (SRHE)
Society for Educational Studies (SES)

Also:

Executive (2019-2022) Oxford Intelligence Group, Nuffield College, University of Oxford

Fellow, Higher Education Academy (FHEA)

Fellow, Royal Society of Arts (FRSA)

Cambridge Intelligence Seminar

 

OTHER ADMINISTRATIVE ROLES AT OXFORD

Elected by Congregation to the University of Oxford Prevent Steering Group

Social Sciences Divisional representative of the Permanent Private Halls Supervisory Committee (PPHSC), a senior committee of the University of Oxford overseeing governance of Blackfriars; Campion Hall; Regent’s Park College; St Benet’s; St Stephen’s House; Wycliffe Hall.

Member, Central University Research Ethics Committee (CUREC)

Chair, Department of Education Research Ethics Committee (DREC)

Member, Inter-Divisional Social Sciences and Humanities Research Ethics Committee (IDREC)

Chair, Bodleian Library Education Committee

Member and occasional Chair Social Sciences Divisional Library Committee

Education Advisory Group, Christ Church College, Oxford

 

EDITORSHIP OF INTERNATIONAL JOURNALS

Gearon, L. (Guest editor) (2021) Literature and Security, Special Issue, Text Matters: A Journal of Literature, Theory and Culture, with a planned formal launch at Lodz, Poland.

Gearon, L., (Lead Guest Editor with editorial team) Kuusisto, A., Matemba, Y., Benjamin, S., Du Preez, P., Koirikivi, P., Simmonds, S. (2020) Decolonising the Religious Education Curriculum: International Perspectives in Theory, Research, and Practice, Special Issue, British Journal of Religious Education.

Gearon, L. (Guest Editor) (2019) Special Issue of Religions 10 (1) on Religion, Security, Education.

Gearon, L. and Williams, E. (Guest Editors) (2019) Special Issue of the British Journal of Educational Studies, Writers and their Education, 67 (3), 283–289.

Gearon, L. and Williams, E. (Guest Editors) (2018) Special Issue of Journal of Philosophy of Education on Philosophy, Literature and Education, 52 (4), 577-777.

Gearon, L. (Guest Editor) (2015) British Journal of Educational Studies, Special Issue, Education, Security and Intelligence Studies, 63 (3) 263-411.

Tirri, K., (Finland) Campbell, E. (Canada), Gearon, L. (UK), Lovat, T. (Australia) (Guest Editors) (2012) The Moral Core of Teaching, Education Research International.

Gearon, L. (Guest Editor) (2008) Citizenship, Human Rights and Religion, British Journal of Religious Education, 30 (2) 93-108.

Gearon, L. (Guest Editor) (2006) Children’s Spirituality and Children’s Rights, International Journal of Children’s Spirituality, 11 (2) 193-310.

Simon Marginson is  Emeritus Professor of Higher Education at the University of Oxford, Director of the ESRC/RE Centre for Global Higher Education (CGHE), and Editor-in-Chief of the journal Higher Education.

Simon led the ESRC Centre for Global Higher Education between November 2015 and April 2024. His research is focused primarily on global and international higher education, higher education in East Asia, the public and social contributions of higher education, and higher education and social equality. He is currently preparing an integrated theorisation of higher education. His scholarship is widely published and cited (Google h-index 67 in September 2019). Books include Higher Education and the Common Good (Melbourne University Publishing, 2016); High Participation Systems of Higher Education, edited with Brendan Cantwell and Anna Smolentseva (Oxford University Press, 2018); Changing Higher Education in East Asia, edited with Xin Xu (Bloomsbury, 2022) and Assessing the Contributions of Higher Education, edited with Brendan Cantwell, Daria Platonova and Anna Smolentseva (Edward Elgar, 2023).

Selected Publications
Books
  • Marginson, S. (2016).The Dream is Over: The crisis of Clark Kerr’s California Idea of higher education. Berkeley: University of California Press.
  • Marginson, S. (2016).Higher Education and the Common Good. Melbourne: Melbourne University Publishing.
  • Tran, L. & Marginson, S. (eds.). (2018).Internationalisation of Vietnamese Higher Education. Dordrecht: Springer Nature.
  • Carnoy, M., Froumin, I., Leshukov, O. & Marginson, S. (eds.). (2018) Higher Education in Federal Countries. New Delhi: Sage.
  • Cantwell, B., Marginson, S. & Smolentseva, A. (eds.). (2018) High Participation Systems of Higher Education. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
  • Callender, C., Locke, W. & Marginson, S. (eds.) (2020). Changing Higher Education for a Changing World. London: Bloomsbury.
  • Chattopadhyay, S., Marginson, S. & Varghese, N.V. (eds.) (2021). Changing Higher Education in India. London: Bloomsbury.
  • Marginson, S. & Xu, X. (eds.) (2022). Changing Higher Education in East Asia. (2022). London: Bloomsbury.
  • Marginson, S., Cantwell, B., Platonova, D. & Smolentseva, A. (eds.) (2023). Assessing the contributions of higher education. Cheltenham: Edward Elgar.
Recent Journal Papers
  • Marginson, S. (2016). The worldwide trend to high participation higher education: Dynamics of social stratification in inclusive systems. Higher Education, 72 (4), 413-435.
  • Marginson, S. (2018). Private/public in higher education: A synthesis of economic and political approaches. Studies in Higher Education, 43 (2), 322-337
  • Marginson, S. (2018) Global trends in higher education financing: The United Kingdom. International J. Educational Development, 58, 26-36
  • Marginson, S. (2018) National/global synergy in the development of higher education and science in China since 1978. Frontiers of Education in China, 13 (4), 486–512
  • Marginson, S. (2019) Limitations of human capital theory. Studies in Higher Education, 44 (2), 287-301
  • Marginson, S. and Yang, L. (2022). Individual and collective outcomes of higher education: A comparison of Anglo-American and Chinese approaches. Globalisation, Societies and Education, 20 (1), 1-32.
  • Marginson, S. (2022). ‘All things are in flux’: China in global science. Higher Education, 83 (4), 881-910.
  • Marginson, S. (2022). What drives global science? The four competing narratives. Studies in Higher Education, 47 (8), 1566-1584.
  • Marginson, S. (2022). Global science and national comparisons: Beyond bibliometrics and scientometrics. Comparative Education, 58 (2), 125-146.
  • Marginson, S. (2022). What is global higher education? Oxford Review of Education, 48 (4), 492-517.
  • Marginson S. (2022). Space and scale in higher education: The glonacal heuristic revisited. Higher Education, 84 (6),1365-1395.
  • Marginson, S. & Xu, X. (2023). Hegemony and inequality in global science: Problems of the center-periphery model. Comparative Education Review, 67 (1). https://doi.org/10.1086/722760
  • Marginson, S. (2023). Student self-formation: An emerging paradigm in higher education. Studies in Higher Education, https://doi.org/10.1080/03075079.2023.2252826 (2023).
  • Marginson, S. (2023). Limitations of the leading definition of ‘internationalisation’ of higher education: Is the idea wrong or is the fault in reality? Globalisation, Societies and Education, https://doi.org/10.1080/14767724.2023.2264223
  • Marginson, S. and Yang ,L. (2023). Has the public good been emptied out of higher education in England? Higher Education. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10734-023-01117-6

Maia Chankseliani is Associate Professor of Comparative and International Education at the University of Oxford where she leads a flagship master’s course in Comparative and International Education. She convenes the Comparative and International Education Research Group at the Department of Education.

Within comparative and international education, Maia Chankseliani works at the intersection of tertiary education and development. She researches societal, institutional, and policy forces that shape tertiary education and the potential of tertiary education and research for transforming societies.

Methodologically, she utilises both qualitative and quantitative methods. Her work often combines secondary data analysis with insights gathered through semi-structured interviews and contextualised case studies.

Maia Chankseliani has published four books in the field of comparative and international education: What Happened to the Soviet University? (2022), Building Research Capacity at Universities: Insights from Post-Soviet Countries (2022), Comparing Post-Socialist Transformations: Purposes, Policies, and Practices in Education (2018), and Fairness in Access to Higher Education in a Global Perspective: Reconciling Excellence, Efficiency, and Justice (2013).

She currently leads a major research project examining the impact of international mobility on world development (funded by the U.S. Department of State). Maia Chankseliani has worked on a number of externally funded research projects and consultancies involving the UK Government agencies responsible for education and skills, UKRI/ESRC, British Council, World Bank, Qatar Foundation, the European Commission.

With a background in education research, teaching, policy-making, leadership, and consultancy, Maia Chankseliani brings to her role extensive experience in diverse international settings. This breadth of experience informs her research and enables her to bridge theory and practice.

Maia Chankseliani engages with governments and gives academic and policy-relevant talks nationally and internationally. Her research regularly features in national and international media.

She holds a BA in Philology from Tbilisi State University (Georgia), an Ed. M in International Education Policy from Harvard University (USA), and a PhD in Education from the University of Cambridge (UK).

Maia Chankseliani serves as the Editor-in-Chief of the International Journal of Educational Research.

Aliya teaches on the Comparative and International Education MSc programme at our Department. She is also a Junior Research Fellow at Lady Margaret Hall. Her research focuses on young people and families’ experiences of education in turbulent times.

For example, educational challenges and rehabilitation during COVID-19 and after the 2022 floods in Pakistan. Her current geographical focus includes ethnically diverse communities (Pakistani and Bangladeshi) in England as well as marginalised communities in Pakistan.

Aliya’s PhD explored the complexities of gender and international education, and her current work focuses on decolonising educational research practices and the experience of Southern-ness globally. Aliya’s specialist areas are parental, mothers’ and young people’s perspectives of and aspirations for education, and their own modalities of agency to fulfil their dreams.

Aliya publishes on the topics of Southern epistemologies and methodologies and teaches on related topics of decolonisation of knowledge production and the politics of representation. She is currently leading multiple projects in England and Pakistan focusing on girls’ education, gender experiences of education, mothers’ perspectives on educating their children, teacher educators, displaced peoples experiences in England and Pakistan.

Aliya is accepting DPhil students interested in these areas:

  • Southern epistemologies and methodologies
  • The capability approach and social justice
  • Negative capability
  • Deconstruction of the silence/violence binary
  • Marginalised peoples’ perspectives
  • Intersectional experiences of marginalisation including those related with gender, race, ethnicity, indigeneity, queerness, disability, class and caste (among others)
  • Decolonisation of knowledge production and representation of the South
  • Qualitative methodologies
  • Theorising from the margins
  • Area focus South Asia particularly Pakistan and Afghanistan
  • Internal displacement

Aliya is the acting Deputy Chair of the United Kingdom Forum for International Education and Training (UKFIET) conference 2023.

Gates Cambridge Biography

 

Research Group Membership

 

Research Projects

1. ‘Understanding the impact of COVID-19 on learning experiences of secondary school going age children among Bangladeshi and Pakistani ethnic minority families’
Funder: Cambridge Humanities Research Grants Scheme
Research team: Professor Nidhi Singal and Dr Aliya Khalid
Status: Complete

2. Gendered Inequalities in Education and Capability Spaces for Women/Girls (and others) in Pakistan: Education and reconstruction after 2022 floods in Pakistan
Funder: British Association for International and Comparative Education (BAICE) Seedcorn Fund
Research team: Aliya Khalid, Soufia Siddiqui, Aditi Chidambaram, Indrani Sigamany
Status: Ongoing

3. Bridging the Local and Global: Women’s Spaces and Collectives’: On becoming caregivers and teachers: Immigrant mothers’ identities and philosophies of education in England during COVID
Team members: Aliya Khalid, Jane Rooney and Ruth Houghton, Lavinia Kamphausen, Kate spencer-Bennet, Alana Farrel
Funder: The British Academy
Status: Complete

4. Collaborative development of faculty for Pakistan undergraduate Teacher Education Colleges: Durbeen and Oxford knowledge exchange project
Team members: Aliya Khalid, Ann Childs, Trevor Mutton, Ian Thompson, Jenni Ingram and Katharine Burn
Funder: Malala Fund
Status: Ongoing

Dr Karen Skilling is an Associate Professor at the Department of Education at the University of Oxford. Karen is currently the Deputy Director of Doctoral Research, Lead of the PGCE mathematics education at the Department of Education, and co-ordinates the Doctoral Teaching Fellows for teacher education. In 2020, Karen established the STEM Discussion Group and also convenes the Subject Pedagogy Group seminars.

Karen’s research interests include: student engagement and motivation in mathematics; integrated STEM learning and project-based STEM activities; and vignette methods. Karen currently sits on the Executive Committee of BSRLM, and is a journal Editor for the Teaching Education Journal (TEJ) and Research in Mathematics Education (RME). Karen has also been co-Editor for several special issues, and a topic study co-lead at the Congress of the European Society for Research in Mathematics Education (CERME). Karen is a Visiting Fellow at King’s College London and been an HEA Fellow since 2016.

Awards include: Australian Postgraduate Award (Industry) (APAI): funded PhD role attached to MYTEAM Project awarded by Australian Research Council (2008 –2012); Postdoctoral Research Fellowship: Department of Education, University of Oxford (2013-14); and nominations for Most Outstanding Contribution to Student Experience at King’s College London (2015, 2016, 2017).

David Mills is an Associate Professor and Director of the Centre for Global Higher Education (CGHE).

His current research focuses on the political economy of the global science system, and its impact on institutional research and publishing cultures in African universities. His most recent book is ‘Who Counts: Ghanaian Academic Publishing and Global Science’, co-written with colleagues from the University of Ghana and Oxford, and available open access from African Minds:  https://www.africanminds.co.za/who-counts/

Trained in Anthropology, and with inter-disciplinary research interests, David uses ethnographic methods to study the inequalities created by global higher education. He is particularly interested in African university research cultures and the role of diamond Open Access scholarly journals within knowledge ecosystems.

He welcomes enquiries from potential doctoral students interested in studying African Higher Education, as well as research and publishing cultures.

Liam Francis Gearon (BA, Hons, MA, MPhil, Cert He, PhD, FHEA, FRSA, Docent) is Associate Professor in Religious Education in the Department of Education, Senior Research Fellow at Harris Manchester College, University of Oxford; Docent, University of Helsinki, Finland; Honorary Senior Research Fellow at the School of Education, University of Birmingham, UK; Conjoint Professor at Newcastle University, Australia; Visiting Professor at the Irish Centre for Catholic Studies, MIC, Limerick, Ireland; Extraordinary Professor, North-West University, South Africa.

Liam Francis Gearon is Founder-Convenor of the Philosophy, Religion, Education Research Group, providing  a unique interdisciplinary contribution to the research culture of the Department of Education at the University of Oxford. The Philosophy, religion and education Research Group specifically forges theoretical and empirical interconnections between the arts, humanities, philosophy and the social sciences through the common focus of education. Contributions of this research group have been made to matters such as: theories of research policy and impact; the cultural value of research in the arts and humanities; research ethics; the intersection of epistemological and ethical domains in research in schools; religion, radicalisation and counter-terrorism in schools and universities; and the creation of distinctive sub-field of study at the interface of education, security and intelligence studies.

A specialist in the interdisciplinary study of religion in education, and particularly noted for the systematic philosophical and history of ideas analysis on the epistemological foundations of religious education, his framing of the paradigms of religion in education – scriptural-theological; phenomenological; psychological-experiential; philosophical-conceptual; social-cultural; political-historical – has contributed new insights to secularisation theory in numerous, some award-winning, monographs, such as MasterClass in Religious Education (Gearon, 2013); On Holy Ground (Gearon, 2015) [2016 Society of Education Studies Book Prize]; Religious Authority and the Arts: Conversations in Political Theology (Gearon, 2015); and State Religious Education and the State of the Religious Life (Gearon and Prud’homme, 2018).

His theorisations of the politicisation and securitisation of religion in education have been the subject of intense international debate for several years. Landmark publications on security in education – ‘The Counter-Terrorist Classroom’ (2013); ‘The Counter-Terrorist Classroom’ (2017); ‘Terrorism and Counter-Terrorism Policy and Research in UK Universities’ (2018): ‘Research Ethics in the Securitised University’ (Gearon and Parsons, 2019) and ‘The Kill Chain’ (Gearon, 2020) – have enabled empirical, methodological and theoretical advances on elites’ theory, the ethics of security and radicalisation research (Gearon and Kuusisto, 2018; Kuusisto and Gearon, 2017; Benjamin, Gearon, Kuusisto, Koirikivi, 2021).

With cognate research interests in security across all phases of education, Liam has over a decade collaboratively developed an interdisciplinary sub-field at the boundary of universities, security and intelligence studies, including research ethics in the securitised university (Gearon and Parsons, 2019). One of the defining outcomes here is Liam’s quarter of a million-word edited collection arising from the international Colloquium at Oriel College he convened in 2017, the Routledge International Handbook of Universities, Security and Intelligence Studies (Gearon, 2019). Interdisciplinary and inter-agency work in this area has included the Nuffield Foundation funded Universities and National Security: Research and Policy Collaborations 2019-2020, with a cross-disciplinary research team of 14 distinguished Co-Investigators.

With a significant Academy of Finland research grant (2018-2022) with Arniika Kuusisto (Stockholm/Helsinki/ Oxford), we oversee the research of two highly productive early career, post-doctoral researchers on radicalisation. This includes notable social and policy impacts such as the development of a national strategy around extremism through education for the Ministry of Justice in Finland (Activities | Growing up radical? | University of Helsinki). With substantial quantitative and qualitative data gathered, the project has already produced a substantial number of quality research outputs (Publications | Growing up radical? | University of Helsinki).

With a doctorate in English literature, Liam has also drawn on arts and humanities theoretical knowledge and methodological approaches to advance what are now intense cross-disciplinary debates around ‘decolonising the curriculum’ in religious education. From a series of foundational papers addressing the relationship between religious education and postcolonial theory – Gearon (2001a) ‘The Imagined Other: Postcolonial Theory and Religious Education’; Gearon (2001b) ‘A Spirituality of Dissent: Religion, Culture and Postcolonial Criticism’; Gearon (2002a) ‘Human Rights and Religious Education: Some Postcolonial Perspectives’ – he has recently led an international team (UK, Finland, Sweden, South Africa) as Guest Editor of the British Journal of Religious Education, for a high profile special issue on religion and education in postcolonial context (Gearon, Kuusisto, Matemba, Benjamin, Du Preez, Koirikivi, and Simmonds, 2020).

As Principal Investigator, Liam has led funded research projects with the Academy of Finland, the Arts and Humanities Research Council, the British Academy, the Leverhulme Trust, the Nuffield Foundation, the Philosophy of Education Society of Great Britain, and the Society for Educational Studies, a career total of funding exceeding £5,000,000, including a £4.5 million grant to establish a centre for citizenship and human rights at the University of Surrey Roehampton.

Doctoral supervision and Graduate teaching

 PGCE Religious Education (Subject lead)

  • Masters in Learning and Teaching (Subject lead)
  • Comparative and International Education

EXTERNAL POSTS

2020- Docent, Helsinki University, Finland

2020- Extraordinary Professor, Faculty of Education, North-West University, South Africa

2019-2021 Visiting Professor, Irish Institute of Catholic Studies, MIC, Limerick, Ireland

2012-2020 Conjoint Professor, Newcastle University, Australia

2019-2023 Honorary Senior Research Fellow, School of Education, University of Birmingham

 

PREVIOUS EXTERNAL POSTS

2011-2018, Adjunct Professor, Australian Catholic University, Australia

2010-2011, Visiting Professor, Faculty of Education, University of Plymouth

2008-2010, Research Professor, Faculty of Education, University of Plymouth

2006-2008, Professor of Education, University of Roehampton

2000-2006, Reader in Education, University of Surrey Roehampton

2006-2008, Senior Fellow, Centre of Excellence in Human Rights, University of Surrey Roehampton

2005-2008, Vice-President, International Human Rights Education Consortium, New York, USA

2001-2005, Director, Centre for Research in Human Rights, University of Surrey, Roehampton

1996-2000, Senior Lecturer, Faculty of Education, Roehampton, London

 

UK RESEARCH COUNCIL PEER REVIEW COLLEGES

AHRC Expert Group on Covid Research Group and Research Grant Panel ‘Introducer’

AHRC Peer Review College (2019 Gold Standard award, for ‘Recognition of significant contributions to the AHRC Peer Review College’)

ESRC Peer Review College

Universities UK Peer Review College Global Challenges Research Fund (GCRF)

 

INTERNATIONAL RESEARCH COUNCIL PEER REVIEWER

Academy of Finland

Austrian Science Fund (FWF)

EU 7th Framework Program for Research
Hong Kong Research Grants Council’s Public Policy Research Fund (PPR)

Irish Research Council

John Templeton Foundation

National Research Foundation, South Africa

 

PROFESSIONAL AND RESEARCH ASSOCIATIONS

Association of University Lecturers in Religion and Education (AULRE, co-founder and former Chair)

British Educational Research Association (BERA)

European Educational Research Association (EERA)

International Seminar on Religious Education and Values (ISREV)

Philosophy of Education Society of Great Britain (PESGB)

Society for Research in Higher Education (SRHE)
Society for Educational Studies (SES)

Also:

Executive (2019-2022) Oxford Intelligence Group, Nuffield College, University of Oxford

Fellow, Higher Education Academy (FHEA)

Fellow, Royal Society of Arts (FRSA)

Cambridge Intelligence Seminar

 

OTHER ADMINISTRATIVE ROLES AT OXFORD

Elected by Congregation to the University of Oxford Prevent Steering Group

Social Sciences Divisional representative of the Permanent Private Halls Supervisory Committee (PPHSC), a senior committee of the University of Oxford overseeing governance of Blackfriars; Campion Hall; Regent’s Park College; St Benet’s; St Stephen’s House; Wycliffe Hall.

Member, Central University Research Ethics Committee (CUREC)

Chair, Department of Education Research Ethics Committee (DREC)

Member, Inter-Divisional Social Sciences and Humanities Research Ethics Committee (IDREC)

Chair, Bodleian Library Education Committee

Member and occasional Chair Social Sciences Divisional Library Committee

Education Advisory Group, Christ Church College, Oxford

 

EDITORSHIP OF INTERNATIONAL JOURNALS

Gearon, L. (Guest editor) (2021) Literature and Security, Special Issue, Text Matters: A Journal of Literature, Theory and Culture, with a planned formal launch at Lodz, Poland.

Gearon, L., (Lead Guest Editor with editorial team) Kuusisto, A., Matemba, Y., Benjamin, S., Du Preez, P., Koirikivi, P., Simmonds, S. (2020) Decolonising the Religious Education Curriculum: International Perspectives in Theory, Research, and Practice, Special Issue, British Journal of Religious Education.

Gearon, L. (Guest Editor) (2019) Special Issue of Religions 10 (1) on Religion, Security, Education.

Gearon, L. and Williams, E. (Guest Editors) (2019) Special Issue of the British Journal of Educational Studies, Writers and their Education, 67 (3), 283–289.

Gearon, L. and Williams, E. (Guest Editors) (2018) Special Issue of Journal of Philosophy of Education on Philosophy, Literature and Education, 52 (4), 577-777.

Gearon, L. (Guest Editor) (2015) British Journal of Educational Studies, Special Issue, Education, Security and Intelligence Studies, 63 (3) 263-411.

Tirri, K., (Finland) Campbell, E. (Canada), Gearon, L. (UK), Lovat, T. (Australia) (Guest Editors) (2012) The Moral Core of Teaching, Education Research International.

Gearon, L. (Guest Editor) (2008) Citizenship, Human Rights and Religion, British Journal of Religious Education, 30 (2) 93-108.

Gearon, L. (Guest Editor) (2006) Children’s Spirituality and Children’s Rights, International Journal of Children’s Spirituality, 11 (2) 193-310.

Simon Marginson is  Emeritus Professor of Higher Education at the University of Oxford, Director of the ESRC/RE Centre for Global Higher Education (CGHE), and Editor-in-Chief of the journal Higher Education.

Simon led the ESRC Centre for Global Higher Education between November 2015 and April 2024. His research is focused primarily on global and international higher education, higher education in East Asia, the public and social contributions of higher education, and higher education and social equality. He is currently preparing an integrated theorisation of higher education. His scholarship is widely published and cited (Google h-index 67 in September 2019). Books include Higher Education and the Common Good (Melbourne University Publishing, 2016); High Participation Systems of Higher Education, edited with Brendan Cantwell and Anna Smolentseva (Oxford University Press, 2018); Changing Higher Education in East Asia, edited with Xin Xu (Bloomsbury, 2022) and Assessing the Contributions of Higher Education, edited with Brendan Cantwell, Daria Platonova and Anna Smolentseva (Edward Elgar, 2023).

Selected Publications
Books
  • Marginson, S. (2016).The Dream is Over: The crisis of Clark Kerr’s California Idea of higher education. Berkeley: University of California Press.
  • Marginson, S. (2016).Higher Education and the Common Good. Melbourne: Melbourne University Publishing.
  • Tran, L. & Marginson, S. (eds.). (2018).Internationalisation of Vietnamese Higher Education. Dordrecht: Springer Nature.
  • Carnoy, M., Froumin, I., Leshukov, O. & Marginson, S. (eds.). (2018) Higher Education in Federal Countries. New Delhi: Sage.
  • Cantwell, B., Marginson, S. & Smolentseva, A. (eds.). (2018) High Participation Systems of Higher Education. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
  • Callender, C., Locke, W. & Marginson, S. (eds.) (2020). Changing Higher Education for a Changing World. London: Bloomsbury.
  • Chattopadhyay, S., Marginson, S. & Varghese, N.V. (eds.) (2021). Changing Higher Education in India. London: Bloomsbury.
  • Marginson, S. & Xu, X. (eds.) (2022). Changing Higher Education in East Asia. (2022). London: Bloomsbury.
  • Marginson, S., Cantwell, B., Platonova, D. & Smolentseva, A. (eds.) (2023). Assessing the contributions of higher education. Cheltenham: Edward Elgar.
Recent Journal Papers
  • Marginson, S. (2016). The worldwide trend to high participation higher education: Dynamics of social stratification in inclusive systems. Higher Education, 72 (4), 413-435.
  • Marginson, S. (2018). Private/public in higher education: A synthesis of economic and political approaches. Studies in Higher Education, 43 (2), 322-337
  • Marginson, S. (2018) Global trends in higher education financing: The United Kingdom. International J. Educational Development, 58, 26-36
  • Marginson, S. (2018) National/global synergy in the development of higher education and science in China since 1978. Frontiers of Education in China, 13 (4), 486–512
  • Marginson, S. (2019) Limitations of human capital theory. Studies in Higher Education, 44 (2), 287-301
  • Marginson, S. and Yang, L. (2022). Individual and collective outcomes of higher education: A comparison of Anglo-American and Chinese approaches. Globalisation, Societies and Education, 20 (1), 1-32.
  • Marginson, S. (2022). ‘All things are in flux’: China in global science. Higher Education, 83 (4), 881-910.
  • Marginson, S. (2022). What drives global science? The four competing narratives. Studies in Higher Education, 47 (8), 1566-1584.
  • Marginson, S. (2022). Global science and national comparisons: Beyond bibliometrics and scientometrics. Comparative Education, 58 (2), 125-146.
  • Marginson, S. (2022). What is global higher education? Oxford Review of Education, 48 (4), 492-517.
  • Marginson S. (2022). Space and scale in higher education: The glonacal heuristic revisited. Higher Education, 84 (6),1365-1395.
  • Marginson, S. & Xu, X. (2023). Hegemony and inequality in global science: Problems of the center-periphery model. Comparative Education Review, 67 (1). https://doi.org/10.1086/722760
  • Marginson, S. (2023). Student self-formation: An emerging paradigm in higher education. Studies in Higher Education, https://doi.org/10.1080/03075079.2023.2252826 (2023).
  • Marginson, S. (2023). Limitations of the leading definition of ‘internationalisation’ of higher education: Is the idea wrong or is the fault in reality? Globalisation, Societies and Education, https://doi.org/10.1080/14767724.2023.2264223
  • Marginson, S. and Yang ,L. (2023). Has the public good been emptied out of higher education in England? Higher Education. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10734-023-01117-6

Maia Chankseliani is Associate Professor of Comparative and International Education at the University of Oxford where she leads a flagship master’s course in Comparative and International Education. She convenes the Comparative and International Education Research Group at the Department of Education.

Within comparative and international education, Maia Chankseliani works at the intersection of tertiary education and development. She researches societal, institutional, and policy forces that shape tertiary education and the potential of tertiary education and research for transforming societies.

Methodologically, she utilises both qualitative and quantitative methods. Her work often combines secondary data analysis with insights gathered through semi-structured interviews and contextualised case studies.

Maia Chankseliani has published four books in the field of comparative and international education: What Happened to the Soviet University? (2022), Building Research Capacity at Universities: Insights from Post-Soviet Countries (2022), Comparing Post-Socialist Transformations: Purposes, Policies, and Practices in Education (2018), and Fairness in Access to Higher Education in a Global Perspective: Reconciling Excellence, Efficiency, and Justice (2013).

She currently leads a major research project examining the impact of international mobility on world development (funded by the U.S. Department of State). Maia Chankseliani has worked on a number of externally funded research projects and consultancies involving the UK Government agencies responsible for education and skills, UKRI/ESRC, British Council, World Bank, Qatar Foundation, the European Commission.

With a background in education research, teaching, policy-making, leadership, and consultancy, Maia Chankseliani brings to her role extensive experience in diverse international settings. This breadth of experience informs her research and enables her to bridge theory and practice.

Maia Chankseliani engages with governments and gives academic and policy-relevant talks nationally and internationally. Her research regularly features in national and international media.

She holds a BA in Philology from Tbilisi State University (Georgia), an Ed. M in International Education Policy from Harvard University (USA), and a PhD in Education from the University of Cambridge (UK).

Maia Chankseliani serves as the Editor-in-Chief of the International Journal of Educational Research.

Aliya teaches on the Comparative and International Education MSc programme at our Department. She is also a Junior Research Fellow at Lady Margaret Hall. Her research focuses on young people and families’ experiences of education in turbulent times.

For example, educational challenges and rehabilitation during COVID-19 and after the 2022 floods in Pakistan. Her current geographical focus includes ethnically diverse communities (Pakistani and Bangladeshi) in England as well as marginalised communities in Pakistan.

Aliya’s PhD explored the complexities of gender and international education, and her current work focuses on decolonising educational research practices and the experience of Southern-ness globally. Aliya’s specialist areas are parental, mothers’ and young people’s perspectives of and aspirations for education, and their own modalities of agency to fulfil their dreams.

Aliya publishes on the topics of Southern epistemologies and methodologies and teaches on related topics of decolonisation of knowledge production and the politics of representation. She is currently leading multiple projects in England and Pakistan focusing on girls’ education, gender experiences of education, mothers’ perspectives on educating their children, teacher educators, displaced peoples experiences in England and Pakistan.

Aliya is accepting DPhil students interested in these areas:

  • Southern epistemologies and methodologies
  • The capability approach and social justice
  • Negative capability
  • Deconstruction of the silence/violence binary
  • Marginalised peoples’ perspectives
  • Intersectional experiences of marginalisation including those related with gender, race, ethnicity, indigeneity, queerness, disability, class and caste (among others)
  • Decolonisation of knowledge production and representation of the South
  • Qualitative methodologies
  • Theorising from the margins
  • Area focus South Asia particularly Pakistan and Afghanistan
  • Internal displacement

Aliya is the acting Deputy Chair of the United Kingdom Forum for International Education and Training (UKFIET) conference 2023.

Gates Cambridge Biography

 

Research Group Membership

 

Research Projects

1. ‘Understanding the impact of COVID-19 on learning experiences of secondary school going age children among Bangladeshi and Pakistani ethnic minority families’
Funder: Cambridge Humanities Research Grants Scheme
Research team: Professor Nidhi Singal and Dr Aliya Khalid
Status: Complete

2. Gendered Inequalities in Education and Capability Spaces for Women/Girls (and others) in Pakistan: Education and reconstruction after 2022 floods in Pakistan
Funder: British Association for International and Comparative Education (BAICE) Seedcorn Fund
Research team: Aliya Khalid, Soufia Siddiqui, Aditi Chidambaram, Indrani Sigamany
Status: Ongoing

3. Bridging the Local and Global: Women’s Spaces and Collectives’: On becoming caregivers and teachers: Immigrant mothers’ identities and philosophies of education in England during COVID
Team members: Aliya Khalid, Jane Rooney and Ruth Houghton, Lavinia Kamphausen, Kate spencer-Bennet, Alana Farrel
Funder: The British Academy
Status: Complete

4. Collaborative development of faculty for Pakistan undergraduate Teacher Education Colleges: Durbeen and Oxford knowledge exchange project
Team members: Aliya Khalid, Ann Childs, Trevor Mutton, Ian Thompson, Jenni Ingram and Katharine Burn
Funder: Malala Fund
Status: Ongoing

Dr Karen Skilling is an Associate Professor at the Department of Education at the University of Oxford. Karen is currently the Deputy Director of Doctoral Research, Lead of the PGCE mathematics education at the Department of Education, and co-ordinates the Doctoral Teaching Fellows for teacher education. In 2020, Karen established the STEM Discussion Group and also convenes the Subject Pedagogy Group seminars.

Karen’s research interests include: student engagement and motivation in mathematics; integrated STEM learning and project-based STEM activities; and vignette methods. Karen currently sits on the Executive Committee of BSRLM, and is a journal Editor for the Teaching Education Journal (TEJ) and Research in Mathematics Education (RME). Karen has also been co-Editor for several special issues, and a topic study co-lead at the Congress of the European Society for Research in Mathematics Education (CERME). Karen is a Visiting Fellow at King’s College London and been an HEA Fellow since 2016.

Awards include: Australian Postgraduate Award (Industry) (APAI): funded PhD role attached to MYTEAM Project awarded by Australian Research Council (2008 –2012); Postdoctoral Research Fellowship: Department of Education, University of Oxford (2013-14); and nominations for Most Outstanding Contribution to Student Experience at King’s College London (2015, 2016, 2017).

David Mills is an Associate Professor and Director of the Centre for Global Higher Education (CGHE).

His current research focuses on the political economy of the global science system, and its impact on institutional research and publishing cultures in African universities. His most recent book is ‘Who Counts: Ghanaian Academic Publishing and Global Science’, co-written with colleagues from the University of Ghana and Oxford, and available open access from African Minds:  https://www.africanminds.co.za/who-counts/

Trained in Anthropology, and with inter-disciplinary research interests, David uses ethnographic methods to study the inequalities created by global higher education. He is particularly interested in African university research cultures and the role of diamond Open Access scholarly journals within knowledge ecosystems.

He welcomes enquiries from potential doctoral students interested in studying African Higher Education, as well as research and publishing cultures.

Liam Francis Gearon (BA, Hons, MA, MPhil, Cert He, PhD, FHEA, FRSA, Docent) is Associate Professor in Religious Education in the Department of Education, Senior Research Fellow at Harris Manchester College, University of Oxford; Docent, University of Helsinki, Finland; Honorary Senior Research Fellow at the School of Education, University of Birmingham, UK; Conjoint Professor at Newcastle University, Australia; Visiting Professor at the Irish Centre for Catholic Studies, MIC, Limerick, Ireland; Extraordinary Professor, North-West University, South Africa.

Liam Francis Gearon is Founder-Convenor of the Philosophy, Religion, Education Research Group, providing  a unique interdisciplinary contribution to the research culture of the Department of Education at the University of Oxford. The Philosophy, religion and education Research Group specifically forges theoretical and empirical interconnections between the arts, humanities, philosophy and the social sciences through the common focus of education. Contributions of this research group have been made to matters such as: theories of research policy and impact; the cultural value of research in the arts and humanities; research ethics; the intersection of epistemological and ethical domains in research in schools; religion, radicalisation and counter-terrorism in schools and universities; and the creation of distinctive sub-field of study at the interface of education, security and intelligence studies.

A specialist in the interdisciplinary study of religion in education, and particularly noted for the systematic philosophical and history of ideas analysis on the epistemological foundations of religious education, his framing of the paradigms of religion in education – scriptural-theological; phenomenological; psychological-experiential; philosophical-conceptual; social-cultural; political-historical – has contributed new insights to secularisation theory in numerous, some award-winning, monographs, such as MasterClass in Religious Education (Gearon, 2013); On Holy Ground (Gearon, 2015) [2016 Society of Education Studies Book Prize]; Religious Authority and the Arts: Conversations in Political Theology (Gearon, 2015); and State Religious Education and the State of the Religious Life (Gearon and Prud’homme, 2018).

His theorisations of the politicisation and securitisation of religion in education have been the subject of intense international debate for several years. Landmark publications on security in education – ‘The Counter-Terrorist Classroom’ (2013); ‘The Counter-Terrorist Classroom’ (2017); ‘Terrorism and Counter-Terrorism Policy and Research in UK Universities’ (2018): ‘Research Ethics in the Securitised University’ (Gearon and Parsons, 2019) and ‘The Kill Chain’ (Gearon, 2020) – have enabled empirical, methodological and theoretical advances on elites’ theory, the ethics of security and radicalisation research (Gearon and Kuusisto, 2018; Kuusisto and Gearon, 2017; Benjamin, Gearon, Kuusisto, Koirikivi, 2021).

With cognate research interests in security across all phases of education, Liam has over a decade collaboratively developed an interdisciplinary sub-field at the boundary of universities, security and intelligence studies, including research ethics in the securitised university (Gearon and Parsons, 2019). One of the defining outcomes here is Liam’s quarter of a million-word edited collection arising from the international Colloquium at Oriel College he convened in 2017, the Routledge International Handbook of Universities, Security and Intelligence Studies (Gearon, 2019). Interdisciplinary and inter-agency work in this area has included the Nuffield Foundation funded Universities and National Security: Research and Policy Collaborations 2019-2020, with a cross-disciplinary research team of 14 distinguished Co-Investigators.

With a significant Academy of Finland research grant (2018-2022) with Arniika Kuusisto (Stockholm/Helsinki/ Oxford), we oversee the research of two highly productive early career, post-doctoral researchers on radicalisation. This includes notable social and policy impacts such as the development of a national strategy around extremism through education for the Ministry of Justice in Finland (Activities | Growing up radical? | University of Helsinki). With substantial quantitative and qualitative data gathered, the project has already produced a substantial number of quality research outputs (Publications | Growing up radical? | University of Helsinki).

With a doctorate in English literature, Liam has also drawn on arts and humanities theoretical knowledge and methodological approaches to advance what are now intense cross-disciplinary debates around ‘decolonising the curriculum’ in religious education. From a series of foundational papers addressing the relationship between religious education and postcolonial theory – Gearon (2001a) ‘The Imagined Other: Postcolonial Theory and Religious Education’; Gearon (2001b) ‘A Spirituality of Dissent: Religion, Culture and Postcolonial Criticism’; Gearon (2002a) ‘Human Rights and Religious Education: Some Postcolonial Perspectives’ – he has recently led an international team (UK, Finland, Sweden, South Africa) as Guest Editor of the British Journal of Religious Education, for a high profile special issue on religion and education in postcolonial context (Gearon, Kuusisto, Matemba, Benjamin, Du Preez, Koirikivi, and Simmonds, 2020).

As Principal Investigator, Liam has led funded research projects with the Academy of Finland, the Arts and Humanities Research Council, the British Academy, the Leverhulme Trust, the Nuffield Foundation, the Philosophy of Education Society of Great Britain, and the Society for Educational Studies, a career total of funding exceeding £5,000,000, including a £4.5 million grant to establish a centre for citizenship and human rights at the University of Surrey Roehampton.

Doctoral supervision and Graduate teaching

 PGCE Religious Education (Subject lead)

  • Masters in Learning and Teaching (Subject lead)
  • Comparative and International Education

EXTERNAL POSTS

2020- Docent, Helsinki University, Finland

2020- Extraordinary Professor, Faculty of Education, North-West University, South Africa

2019-2021 Visiting Professor, Irish Institute of Catholic Studies, MIC, Limerick, Ireland

2012-2020 Conjoint Professor, Newcastle University, Australia

2019-2023 Honorary Senior Research Fellow, School of Education, University of Birmingham

 

PREVIOUS EXTERNAL POSTS

2011-2018, Adjunct Professor, Australian Catholic University, Australia

2010-2011, Visiting Professor, Faculty of Education, University of Plymouth

2008-2010, Research Professor, Faculty of Education, University of Plymouth

2006-2008, Professor of Education, University of Roehampton

2000-2006, Reader in Education, University of Surrey Roehampton

2006-2008, Senior Fellow, Centre of Excellence in Human Rights, University of Surrey Roehampton

2005-2008, Vice-President, International Human Rights Education Consortium, New York, USA

2001-2005, Director, Centre for Research in Human Rights, University of Surrey, Roehampton

1996-2000, Senior Lecturer, Faculty of Education, Roehampton, London

 

UK RESEARCH COUNCIL PEER REVIEW COLLEGES

AHRC Expert Group on Covid Research Group and Research Grant Panel ‘Introducer’

AHRC Peer Review College (2019 Gold Standard award, for ‘Recognition of significant contributions to the AHRC Peer Review College’)

ESRC Peer Review College

Universities UK Peer Review College Global Challenges Research Fund (GCRF)

 

INTERNATIONAL RESEARCH COUNCIL PEER REVIEWER

Academy of Finland

Austrian Science Fund (FWF)

EU 7th Framework Program for Research
Hong Kong Research Grants Council’s Public Policy Research Fund (PPR)

Irish Research Council

John Templeton Foundation

National Research Foundation, South Africa

 

PROFESSIONAL AND RESEARCH ASSOCIATIONS

Association of University Lecturers in Religion and Education (AULRE, co-founder and former Chair)

British Educational Research Association (BERA)

European Educational Research Association (EERA)

International Seminar on Religious Education and Values (ISREV)

Philosophy of Education Society of Great Britain (PESGB)

Society for Research in Higher Education (SRHE)
Society for Educational Studies (SES)

Also:

Executive (2019-2022) Oxford Intelligence Group, Nuffield College, University of Oxford

Fellow, Higher Education Academy (FHEA)

Fellow, Royal Society of Arts (FRSA)

Cambridge Intelligence Seminar

 

OTHER ADMINISTRATIVE ROLES AT OXFORD

Elected by Congregation to the University of Oxford Prevent Steering Group

Social Sciences Divisional representative of the Permanent Private Halls Supervisory Committee (PPHSC), a senior committee of the University of Oxford overseeing governance of Blackfriars; Campion Hall; Regent’s Park College; St Benet’s; St Stephen’s House; Wycliffe Hall.

Member, Central University Research Ethics Committee (CUREC)

Chair, Department of Education Research Ethics Committee (DREC)

Member, Inter-Divisional Social Sciences and Humanities Research Ethics Committee (IDREC)

Chair, Bodleian Library Education Committee

Member and occasional Chair Social Sciences Divisional Library Committee

Education Advisory Group, Christ Church College, Oxford

 

EDITORSHIP OF INTERNATIONAL JOURNALS

Gearon, L. (Guest editor) (2021) Literature and Security, Special Issue, Text Matters: A Journal of Literature, Theory and Culture, with a planned formal launch at Lodz, Poland.

Gearon, L., (Lead Guest Editor with editorial team) Kuusisto, A., Matemba, Y., Benjamin, S., Du Preez, P., Koirikivi, P., Simmonds, S. (2020) Decolonising the Religious Education Curriculum: International Perspectives in Theory, Research, and Practice, Special Issue, British Journal of Religious Education.

Gearon, L. (Guest Editor) (2019) Special Issue of Religions 10 (1) on Religion, Security, Education.

Gearon, L. and Williams, E. (Guest Editors) (2019) Special Issue of the British Journal of Educational Studies, Writers and their Education, 67 (3), 283–289.

Gearon, L. and Williams, E. (Guest Editors) (2018) Special Issue of Journal of Philosophy of Education on Philosophy, Literature and Education, 52 (4), 577-777.

Gearon, L. (Guest Editor) (2015) British Journal of Educational Studies, Special Issue, Education, Security and Intelligence Studies, 63 (3) 263-411.

Tirri, K., (Finland) Campbell, E. (Canada), Gearon, L. (UK), Lovat, T. (Australia) (Guest Editors) (2012) The Moral Core of Teaching, Education Research International.

Gearon, L. (Guest Editor) (2008) Citizenship, Human Rights and Religion, British Journal of Religious Education, 30 (2) 93-108.

Gearon, L. (Guest Editor) (2006) Children’s Spirituality and Children’s Rights, International Journal of Children’s Spirituality, 11 (2) 193-310.

Simon Marginson is  Emeritus Professor of Higher Education at the University of Oxford, Director of the ESRC/RE Centre for Global Higher Education (CGHE), and Editor-in-Chief of the journal Higher Education.

Simon led the ESRC Centre for Global Higher Education between November 2015 and April 2024. His research is focused primarily on global and international higher education, higher education in East Asia, the public and social contributions of higher education, and higher education and social equality. He is currently preparing an integrated theorisation of higher education. His scholarship is widely published and cited (Google h-index 67 in September 2019). Books include Higher Education and the Common Good (Melbourne University Publishing, 2016); High Participation Systems of Higher Education, edited with Brendan Cantwell and Anna Smolentseva (Oxford University Press, 2018); Changing Higher Education in East Asia, edited with Xin Xu (Bloomsbury, 2022) and Assessing the Contributions of Higher Education, edited with Brendan Cantwell, Daria Platonova and Anna Smolentseva (Edward Elgar, 2023).

Selected Publications
Books
  • Marginson, S. (2016).The Dream is Over: The crisis of Clark Kerr’s California Idea of higher education. Berkeley: University of California Press.
  • Marginson, S. (2016).Higher Education and the Common Good. Melbourne: Melbourne University Publishing.
  • Tran, L. & Marginson, S. (eds.). (2018).Internationalisation of Vietnamese Higher Education. Dordrecht: Springer Nature.
  • Carnoy, M., Froumin, I., Leshukov, O. & Marginson, S. (eds.). (2018) Higher Education in Federal Countries. New Delhi: Sage.
  • Cantwell, B., Marginson, S. & Smolentseva, A. (eds.). (2018) High Participation Systems of Higher Education. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
  • Callender, C., Locke, W. & Marginson, S. (eds.) (2020). Changing Higher Education for a Changing World. London: Bloomsbury.
  • Chattopadhyay, S., Marginson, S. & Varghese, N.V. (eds.) (2021). Changing Higher Education in India. London: Bloomsbury.
  • Marginson, S. & Xu, X. (eds.) (2022). Changing Higher Education in East Asia. (2022). London: Bloomsbury.
  • Marginson, S., Cantwell, B., Platonova, D. & Smolentseva, A. (eds.) (2023). Assessing the contributions of higher education. Cheltenham: Edward Elgar.
Recent Journal Papers
  • Marginson, S. (2016). The worldwide trend to high participation higher education: Dynamics of social stratification in inclusive systems. Higher Education, 72 (4), 413-435.
  • Marginson, S. (2018). Private/public in higher education: A synthesis of economic and political approaches. Studies in Higher Education, 43 (2), 322-337
  • Marginson, S. (2018) Global trends in higher education financing: The United Kingdom. International J. Educational Development, 58, 26-36
  • Marginson, S. (2018) National/global synergy in the development of higher education and science in China since 1978. Frontiers of Education in China, 13 (4), 486–512
  • Marginson, S. (2019) Limitations of human capital theory. Studies in Higher Education, 44 (2), 287-301
  • Marginson, S. and Yang, L. (2022). Individual and collective outcomes of higher education: A comparison of Anglo-American and Chinese approaches. Globalisation, Societies and Education, 20 (1), 1-32.
  • Marginson, S. (2022). ‘All things are in flux’: China in global science. Higher Education, 83 (4), 881-910.
  • Marginson, S. (2022). What drives global science? The four competing narratives. Studies in Higher Education, 47 (8), 1566-1584.
  • Marginson, S. (2022). Global science and national comparisons: Beyond bibliometrics and scientometrics. Comparative Education, 58 (2), 125-146.
  • Marginson, S. (2022). What is global higher education? Oxford Review of Education, 48 (4), 492-517.
  • Marginson S. (2022). Space and scale in higher education: The glonacal heuristic revisited. Higher Education, 84 (6),1365-1395.
  • Marginson, S. & Xu, X. (2023). Hegemony and inequality in global science: Problems of the center-periphery model. Comparative Education Review, 67 (1). https://doi.org/10.1086/722760
  • Marginson, S. (2023). Student self-formation: An emerging paradigm in higher education. Studies in Higher Education, https://doi.org/10.1080/03075079.2023.2252826 (2023).
  • Marginson, S. (2023). Limitations of the leading definition of ‘internationalisation’ of higher education: Is the idea wrong or is the fault in reality? Globalisation, Societies and Education, https://doi.org/10.1080/14767724.2023.2264223
  • Marginson, S. and Yang ,L. (2023). Has the public good been emptied out of higher education in England? Higher Education. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10734-023-01117-6

Maia Chankseliani is Associate Professor of Comparative and International Education at the University of Oxford where she leads a flagship master’s course in Comparative and International Education. She convenes the Comparative and International Education Research Group at the Department of Education.

Within comparative and international education, Maia Chankseliani works at the intersection of tertiary education and development. She researches societal, institutional, and policy forces that shape tertiary education and the potential of tertiary education and research for transforming societies.

Methodologically, she utilises both qualitative and quantitative methods. Her work often combines secondary data analysis with insights gathered through semi-structured interviews and contextualised case studies.

Maia Chankseliani has published four books in the field of comparative and international education: What Happened to the Soviet University? (2022), Building Research Capacity at Universities: Insights from Post-Soviet Countries (2022), Comparing Post-Socialist Transformations: Purposes, Policies, and Practices in Education (2018), and Fairness in Access to Higher Education in a Global Perspective: Reconciling Excellence, Efficiency, and Justice (2013).

She currently leads a major research project examining the impact of international mobility on world development (funded by the U.S. Department of State). Maia Chankseliani has worked on a number of externally funded research projects and consultancies involving the UK Government agencies responsible for education and skills, UKRI/ESRC, British Council, World Bank, Qatar Foundation, the European Commission.

With a background in education research, teaching, policy-making, leadership, and consultancy, Maia Chankseliani brings to her role extensive experience in diverse international settings. This breadth of experience informs her research and enables her to bridge theory and practice.

Maia Chankseliani engages with governments and gives academic and policy-relevant talks nationally and internationally. Her research regularly features in national and international media.

She holds a BA in Philology from Tbilisi State University (Georgia), an Ed. M in International Education Policy from Harvard University (USA), and a PhD in Education from the University of Cambridge (UK).

Maia Chankseliani serves as the Editor-in-Chief of the International Journal of Educational Research.

Aliya teaches on the Comparative and International Education MSc programme at our Department. She is also a Junior Research Fellow at Lady Margaret Hall. Her research focuses on young people and families’ experiences of education in turbulent times.

For example, educational challenges and rehabilitation during COVID-19 and after the 2022 floods in Pakistan. Her current geographical focus includes ethnically diverse communities (Pakistani and Bangladeshi) in England as well as marginalised communities in Pakistan.

Aliya’s PhD explored the complexities of gender and international education, and her current work focuses on decolonising educational research practices and the experience of Southern-ness globally. Aliya’s specialist areas are parental, mothers’ and young people’s perspectives of and aspirations for education, and their own modalities of agency to fulfil their dreams.

Aliya publishes on the topics of Southern epistemologies and methodologies and teaches on related topics of decolonisation of knowledge production and the politics of representation. She is currently leading multiple projects in England and Pakistan focusing on girls’ education, gender experiences of education, mothers’ perspectives on educating their children, teacher educators, displaced peoples experiences in England and Pakistan.

Aliya is accepting DPhil students interested in these areas:

  • Southern epistemologies and methodologies
  • The capability approach and social justice
  • Negative capability
  • Deconstruction of the silence/violence binary
  • Marginalised peoples’ perspectives
  • Intersectional experiences of marginalisation including those related with gender, race, ethnicity, indigeneity, queerness, disability, class and caste (among others)
  • Decolonisation of knowledge production and representation of the South
  • Qualitative methodologies
  • Theorising from the margins
  • Area focus South Asia particularly Pakistan and Afghanistan
  • Internal displacement

Aliya is the acting Deputy Chair of the United Kingdom Forum for International Education and Training (UKFIET) conference 2023.

Gates Cambridge Biography

 

Research Group Membership

 

Research Projects

1. ‘Understanding the impact of COVID-19 on learning experiences of secondary school going age children among Bangladeshi and Pakistani ethnic minority families’
Funder: Cambridge Humanities Research Grants Scheme
Research team: Professor Nidhi Singal and Dr Aliya Khalid
Status: Complete

2. Gendered Inequalities in Education and Capability Spaces for Women/Girls (and others) in Pakistan: Education and reconstruction after 2022 floods in Pakistan
Funder: British Association for International and Comparative Education (BAICE) Seedcorn Fund
Research team: Aliya Khalid, Soufia Siddiqui, Aditi Chidambaram, Indrani Sigamany
Status: Ongoing

3. Bridging the Local and Global: Women’s Spaces and Collectives’: On becoming caregivers and teachers: Immigrant mothers’ identities and philosophies of education in England during COVID
Team members: Aliya Khalid, Jane Rooney and Ruth Houghton, Lavinia Kamphausen, Kate spencer-Bennet, Alana Farrel
Funder: The British Academy
Status: Complete

4. Collaborative development of faculty for Pakistan undergraduate Teacher Education Colleges: Durbeen and Oxford knowledge exchange project
Team members: Aliya Khalid, Ann Childs, Trevor Mutton, Ian Thompson, Jenni Ingram and Katharine Burn
Funder: Malala Fund
Status: Ongoing

Dr Karen Skilling is an Associate Professor at the Department of Education at the University of Oxford. Karen is currently the Deputy Director of Doctoral Research, Lead of the PGCE mathematics education at the Department of Education, and co-ordinates the Doctoral Teaching Fellows for teacher education. In 2020, Karen established the STEM Discussion Group and also convenes the Subject Pedagogy Group seminars.

Karen’s research interests include: student engagement and motivation in mathematics; integrated STEM learning and project-based STEM activities; and vignette methods. Karen currently sits on the Executive Committee of BSRLM, and is a journal Editor for the Teaching Education Journal (TEJ) and Research in Mathematics Education (RME). Karen has also been co-Editor for several special issues, and a topic study co-lead at the Congress of the European Society for Research in Mathematics Education (CERME). Karen is a Visiting Fellow at King’s College London and been an HEA Fellow since 2016.

Awards include: Australian Postgraduate Award (Industry) (APAI): funded PhD role attached to MYTEAM Project awarded by Australian Research Council (2008 –2012); Postdoctoral Research Fellowship: Department of Education, University of Oxford (2013-14); and nominations for Most Outstanding Contribution to Student Experience at King’s College London (2015, 2016, 2017).

David Mills is an Associate Professor and Director of the Centre for Global Higher Education (CGHE).

His current research focuses on the political economy of the global science system, and its impact on institutional research and publishing cultures in African universities. His most recent book is ‘Who Counts: Ghanaian Academic Publishing and Global Science’, co-written with colleagues from the University of Ghana and Oxford, and available open access from African Minds:  https://www.africanminds.co.za/who-counts/

Trained in Anthropology, and with inter-disciplinary research interests, David uses ethnographic methods to study the inequalities created by global higher education. He is particularly interested in African university research cultures and the role of diamond Open Access scholarly journals within knowledge ecosystems.

He welcomes enquiries from potential doctoral students interested in studying African Higher Education, as well as research and publishing cultures.

Liam Francis Gearon (BA, Hons, MA, MPhil, Cert He, PhD, FHEA, FRSA, Docent) is Associate Professor in Religious Education in the Department of Education, Senior Research Fellow at Harris Manchester College, University of Oxford; Docent, University of Helsinki, Finland; Honorary Senior Research Fellow at the School of Education, University of Birmingham, UK; Conjoint Professor at Newcastle University, Australia; Visiting Professor at the Irish Centre for Catholic Studies, MIC, Limerick, Ireland; Extraordinary Professor, North-West University, South Africa.

Liam Francis Gearon is Founder-Convenor of the Philosophy, Religion, Education Research Group, providing  a unique interdisciplinary contribution to the research culture of the Department of Education at the University of Oxford. The Philosophy, religion and education Research Group specifically forges theoretical and empirical interconnections between the arts, humanities, philosophy and the social sciences through the common focus of education. Contributions of this research group have been made to matters such as: theories of research policy and impact; the cultural value of research in the arts and humanities; research ethics; the intersection of epistemological and ethical domains in research in schools; religion, radicalisation and counter-terrorism in schools and universities; and the creation of distinctive sub-field of study at the interface of education, security and intelligence studies.

A specialist in the interdisciplinary study of religion in education, and particularly noted for the systematic philosophical and history of ideas analysis on the epistemological foundations of religious education, his framing of the paradigms of religion in education – scriptural-theological; phenomenological; psychological-experiential; philosophical-conceptual; social-cultural; political-historical – has contributed new insights to secularisation theory in numerous, some award-winning, monographs, such as MasterClass in Religious Education (Gearon, 2013); On Holy Ground (Gearon, 2015) [2016 Society of Education Studies Book Prize]; Religious Authority and the Arts: Conversations in Political Theology (Gearon, 2015); and State Religious Education and the State of the Religious Life (Gearon and Prud’homme, 2018).

His theorisations of the politicisation and securitisation of religion in education have been the subject of intense international debate for several years. Landmark publications on security in education – ‘The Counter-Terrorist Classroom’ (2013); ‘The Counter-Terrorist Classroom’ (2017); ‘Terrorism and Counter-Terrorism Policy and Research in UK Universities’ (2018): ‘Research Ethics in the Securitised University’ (Gearon and Parsons, 2019) and ‘The Kill Chain’ (Gearon, 2020) – have enabled empirical, methodological and theoretical advances on elites’ theory, the ethics of security and radicalisation research (Gearon and Kuusisto, 2018; Kuusisto and Gearon, 2017; Benjamin, Gearon, Kuusisto, Koirikivi, 2021).

With cognate research interests in security across all phases of education, Liam has over a decade collaboratively developed an interdisciplinary sub-field at the boundary of universities, security and intelligence studies, including research ethics in the securitised university (Gearon and Parsons, 2019). One of the defining outcomes here is Liam’s quarter of a million-word edited collection arising from the international Colloquium at Oriel College he convened in 2017, the Routledge International Handbook of Universities, Security and Intelligence Studies (Gearon, 2019). Interdisciplinary and inter-agency work in this area has included the Nuffield Foundation funded Universities and National Security: Research and Policy Collaborations 2019-2020, with a cross-disciplinary research team of 14 distinguished Co-Investigators.

With a significant Academy of Finland research grant (2018-2022) with Arniika Kuusisto (Stockholm/Helsinki/ Oxford), we oversee the research of two highly productive early career, post-doctoral researchers on radicalisation. This includes notable social and policy impacts such as the development of a national strategy around extremism through education for the Ministry of Justice in Finland (Activities | Growing up radical? | University of Helsinki). With substantial quantitative and qualitative data gathered, the project has already produced a substantial number of quality research outputs (Publications | Growing up radical? | University of Helsinki).

With a doctorate in English literature, Liam has also drawn on arts and humanities theoretical knowledge and methodological approaches to advance what are now intense cross-disciplinary debates around ‘decolonising the curriculum’ in religious education. From a series of foundational papers addressing the relationship between religious education and postcolonial theory – Gearon (2001a) ‘The Imagined Other: Postcolonial Theory and Religious Education’; Gearon (2001b) ‘A Spirituality of Dissent: Religion, Culture and Postcolonial Criticism’; Gearon (2002a) ‘Human Rights and Religious Education: Some Postcolonial Perspectives’ – he has recently led an international team (UK, Finland, Sweden, South Africa) as Guest Editor of the British Journal of Religious Education, for a high profile special issue on religion and education in postcolonial context (Gearon, Kuusisto, Matemba, Benjamin, Du Preez, Koirikivi, and Simmonds, 2020).

As Principal Investigator, Liam has led funded research projects with the Academy of Finland, the Arts and Humanities Research Council, the British Academy, the Leverhulme Trust, the Nuffield Foundation, the Philosophy of Education Society of Great Britain, and the Society for Educational Studies, a career total of funding exceeding £5,000,000, including a £4.5 million grant to establish a centre for citizenship and human rights at the University of Surrey Roehampton.

Doctoral supervision and Graduate teaching

 PGCE Religious Education (Subject lead)

  • Masters in Learning and Teaching (Subject lead)
  • Comparative and International Education

EXTERNAL POSTS

2020- Docent, Helsinki University, Finland

2020- Extraordinary Professor, Faculty of Education, North-West University, South Africa

2019-2021 Visiting Professor, Irish Institute of Catholic Studies, MIC, Limerick, Ireland

2012-2020 Conjoint Professor, Newcastle University, Australia

2019-2023 Honorary Senior Research Fellow, School of Education, University of Birmingham

 

PREVIOUS EXTERNAL POSTS

2011-2018, Adjunct Professor, Australian Catholic University, Australia

2010-2011, Visiting Professor, Faculty of Education, University of Plymouth

2008-2010, Research Professor, Faculty of Education, University of Plymouth

2006-2008, Professor of Education, University of Roehampton

2000-2006, Reader in Education, University of Surrey Roehampton

2006-2008, Senior Fellow, Centre of Excellence in Human Rights, University of Surrey Roehampton

2005-2008, Vice-President, International Human Rights Education Consortium, New York, USA

2001-2005, Director, Centre for Research in Human Rights, University of Surrey, Roehampton

1996-2000, Senior Lecturer, Faculty of Education, Roehampton, London

 

UK RESEARCH COUNCIL PEER REVIEW COLLEGES

AHRC Expert Group on Covid Research Group and Research Grant Panel ‘Introducer’

AHRC Peer Review College (2019 Gold Standard award, for ‘Recognition of significant contributions to the AHRC Peer Review College’)

ESRC Peer Review College

Universities UK Peer Review College Global Challenges Research Fund (GCRF)

 

INTERNATIONAL RESEARCH COUNCIL PEER REVIEWER

Academy of Finland

Austrian Science Fund (FWF)

EU 7th Framework Program for Research
Hong Kong Research Grants Council’s Public Policy Research Fund (PPR)

Irish Research Council

John Templeton Foundation

National Research Foundation, South Africa

 

PROFESSIONAL AND RESEARCH ASSOCIATIONS

Association of University Lecturers in Religion and Education (AULRE, co-founder and former Chair)

British Educational Research Association (BERA)

European Educational Research Association (EERA)

International Seminar on Religious Education and Values (ISREV)

Philosophy of Education Society of Great Britain (PESGB)

Society for Research in Higher Education (SRHE)
Society for Educational Studies (SES)

Also:

Executive (2019-2022) Oxford Intelligence Group, Nuffield College, University of Oxford

Fellow, Higher Education Academy (FHEA)

Fellow, Royal Society of Arts (FRSA)

Cambridge Intelligence Seminar

 

OTHER ADMINISTRATIVE ROLES AT OXFORD

Elected by Congregation to the University of Oxford Prevent Steering Group

Social Sciences Divisional representative of the Permanent Private Halls Supervisory Committee (PPHSC), a senior committee of the University of Oxford overseeing governance of Blackfriars; Campion Hall; Regent’s Park College; St Benet’s; St Stephen’s House; Wycliffe Hall.

Member, Central University Research Ethics Committee (CUREC)

Chair, Department of Education Research Ethics Committee (DREC)

Member, Inter-Divisional Social Sciences and Humanities Research Ethics Committee (IDREC)

Chair, Bodleian Library Education Committee

Member and occasional Chair Social Sciences Divisional Library Committee

Education Advisory Group, Christ Church College, Oxford

 

EDITORSHIP OF INTERNATIONAL JOURNALS

Gearon, L. (Guest editor) (2021) Literature and Security, Special Issue, Text Matters: A Journal of Literature, Theory and Culture, with a planned formal launch at Lodz, Poland.

Gearon, L., (Lead Guest Editor with editorial team) Kuusisto, A., Matemba, Y., Benjamin, S., Du Preez, P., Koirikivi, P., Simmonds, S. (2020) Decolonising the Religious Education Curriculum: International Perspectives in Theory, Research, and Practice, Special Issue, British Journal of Religious Education.

Gearon, L. (Guest Editor) (2019) Special Issue of Religions 10 (1) on Religion, Security, Education.

Gearon, L. and Williams, E. (Guest Editors) (2019) Special Issue of the British Journal of Educational Studies, Writers and their Education, 67 (3), 283–289.

Gearon, L. and Williams, E. (Guest Editors) (2018) Special Issue of Journal of Philosophy of Education on Philosophy, Literature and Education, 52 (4), 577-777.

Gearon, L. (Guest Editor) (2015) British Journal of Educational Studies, Special Issue, Education, Security and Intelligence Studies, 63 (3) 263-411.

Tirri, K., (Finland) Campbell, E. (Canada), Gearon, L. (UK), Lovat, T. (Australia) (Guest Editors) (2012) The Moral Core of Teaching, Education Research International.

Gearon, L. (Guest Editor) (2008) Citizenship, Human Rights and Religion, British Journal of Religious Education, 30 (2) 93-108.

Gearon, L. (Guest Editor) (2006) Children’s Spirituality and Children’s Rights, International Journal of Children’s Spirituality, 11 (2) 193-310.

Simon Marginson is  Emeritus Professor of Higher Education at the University of Oxford, Director of the ESRC/RE Centre for Global Higher Education (CGHE), and Editor-in-Chief of the journal Higher Education.

Simon led the ESRC Centre for Global Higher Education between November 2015 and April 2024. His research is focused primarily on global and international higher education, higher education in East Asia, the public and social contributions of higher education, and higher education and social equality. He is currently preparing an integrated theorisation of higher education. His scholarship is widely published and cited (Google h-index 67 in September 2019). Books include Higher Education and the Common Good (Melbourne University Publishing, 2016); High Participation Systems of Higher Education, edited with Brendan Cantwell and Anna Smolentseva (Oxford University Press, 2018); Changing Higher Education in East Asia, edited with Xin Xu (Bloomsbury, 2022) and Assessing the Contributions of Higher Education, edited with Brendan Cantwell, Daria Platonova and Anna Smolentseva (Edward Elgar, 2023).

Selected Publications
Books
  • Marginson, S. (2016).The Dream is Over: The crisis of Clark Kerr’s California Idea of higher education. Berkeley: University of California Press.
  • Marginson, S. (2016).Higher Education and the Common Good. Melbourne: Melbourne University Publishing.
  • Tran, L. & Marginson, S. (eds.). (2018).Internationalisation of Vietnamese Higher Education. Dordrecht: Springer Nature.
  • Carnoy, M., Froumin, I., Leshukov, O. & Marginson, S. (eds.). (2018) Higher Education in Federal Countries. New Delhi: Sage.
  • Cantwell, B., Marginson, S. & Smolentseva, A. (eds.). (2018) High Participation Systems of Higher Education. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
  • Callender, C., Locke, W. & Marginson, S. (eds.) (2020). Changing Higher Education for a Changing World. London: Bloomsbury.
  • Chattopadhyay, S., Marginson, S. & Varghese, N.V. (eds.) (2021). Changing Higher Education in India. London: Bloomsbury.
  • Marginson, S. & Xu, X. (eds.) (2022). Changing Higher Education in East Asia. (2022). London: Bloomsbury.
  • Marginson, S., Cantwell, B., Platonova, D. & Smolentseva, A. (eds.) (2023). Assessing the contributions of higher education. Cheltenham: Edward Elgar.
Recent Journal Papers
  • Marginson, S. (2016). The worldwide trend to high participation higher education: Dynamics of social stratification in inclusive systems. Higher Education, 72 (4), 413-435.
  • Marginson, S. (2018). Private/public in higher education: A synthesis of economic and political approaches. Studies in Higher Education, 43 (2), 322-337
  • Marginson, S. (2018) Global trends in higher education financing: The United Kingdom. International J. Educational Development, 58, 26-36
  • Marginson, S. (2018) National/global synergy in the development of higher education and science in China since 1978. Frontiers of Education in China, 13 (4), 486–512
  • Marginson, S. (2019) Limitations of human capital theory. Studies in Higher Education, 44 (2), 287-301
  • Marginson, S. and Yang, L. (2022). Individual and collective outcomes of higher education: A comparison of Anglo-American and Chinese approaches. Globalisation, Societies and Education, 20 (1), 1-32.
  • Marginson, S. (2022). ‘All things are in flux’: China in global science. Higher Education, 83 (4), 881-910.
  • Marginson, S. (2022). What drives global science? The four competing narratives. Studies in Higher Education, 47 (8), 1566-1584.
  • Marginson, S. (2022). Global science and national comparisons: Beyond bibliometrics and scientometrics. Comparative Education, 58 (2), 125-146.
  • Marginson, S. (2022). What is global higher education? Oxford Review of Education, 48 (4), 492-517.
  • Marginson S. (2022). Space and scale in higher education: The glonacal heuristic revisited. Higher Education, 84 (6),1365-1395.
  • Marginson, S. & Xu, X. (2023). Hegemony and inequality in global science: Problems of the center-periphery model. Comparative Education Review, 67 (1). https://doi.org/10.1086/722760
  • Marginson, S. (2023). Student self-formation: An emerging paradigm in higher education. Studies in Higher Education, https://doi.org/10.1080/03075079.2023.2252826 (2023).
  • Marginson, S. (2023). Limitations of the leading definition of ‘internationalisation’ of higher education: Is the idea wrong or is the fault in reality? Globalisation, Societies and Education, https://doi.org/10.1080/14767724.2023.2264223
  • Marginson, S. and Yang ,L. (2023). Has the public good been emptied out of higher education in England? Higher Education. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10734-023-01117-6

Maia Chankseliani is Associate Professor of Comparative and International Education at the University of Oxford where she leads a flagship master’s course in Comparative and International Education. She convenes the Comparative and International Education Research Group at the Department of Education.

Within comparative and international education, Maia Chankseliani works at the intersection of tertiary education and development. She researches societal, institutional, and policy forces that shape tertiary education and the potential of tertiary education and research for transforming societies.

Methodologically, she utilises both qualitative and quantitative methods. Her work often combines secondary data analysis with insights gathered through semi-structured interviews and contextualised case studies.

Maia Chankseliani has published four books in the field of comparative and international education: What Happened to the Soviet University? (2022), Building Research Capacity at Universities: Insights from Post-Soviet Countries (2022), Comparing Post-Socialist Transformations: Purposes, Policies, and Practices in Education (2018), and Fairness in Access to Higher Education in a Global Perspective: Reconciling Excellence, Efficiency, and Justice (2013).

She currently leads a major research project examining the impact of international mobility on world development (funded by the U.S. Department of State). Maia Chankseliani has worked on a number of externally funded research projects and consultancies involving the UK Government agencies responsible for education and skills, UKRI/ESRC, British Council, World Bank, Qatar Foundation, the European Commission.

With a background in education research, teaching, policy-making, leadership, and consultancy, Maia Chankseliani brings to her role extensive experience in diverse international settings. This breadth of experience informs her research and enables her to bridge theory and practice.

Maia Chankseliani engages with governments and gives academic and policy-relevant talks nationally and internationally. Her research regularly features in national and international media.

She holds a BA in Philology from Tbilisi State University (Georgia), an Ed. M in International Education Policy from Harvard University (USA), and a PhD in Education from the University of Cambridge (UK).

Maia Chankseliani serves as the Editor-in-Chief of the International Journal of Educational Research.

Aliya teaches on the Comparative and International Education MSc programme at our Department. She is also a Junior Research Fellow at Lady Margaret Hall. Her research focuses on young people and families’ experiences of education in turbulent times.

For example, educational challenges and rehabilitation during COVID-19 and after the 2022 floods in Pakistan. Her current geographical focus includes ethnically diverse communities (Pakistani and Bangladeshi) in England as well as marginalised communities in Pakistan.

Aliya’s PhD explored the complexities of gender and international education, and her current work focuses on decolonising educational research practices and the experience of Southern-ness globally. Aliya’s specialist areas are parental, mothers’ and young people’s perspectives of and aspirations for education, and their own modalities of agency to fulfil their dreams.

Aliya publishes on the topics of Southern epistemologies and methodologies and teaches on related topics of decolonisation of knowledge production and the politics of representation. She is currently leading multiple projects in England and Pakistan focusing on girls’ education, gender experiences of education, mothers’ perspectives on educating their children, teacher educators, displaced peoples experiences in England and Pakistan.

Aliya is accepting DPhil students interested in these areas:

  • Southern epistemologies and methodologies
  • The capability approach and social justice
  • Negative capability
  • Deconstruction of the silence/violence binary
  • Marginalised peoples’ perspectives
  • Intersectional experiences of marginalisation including those related with gender, race, ethnicity, indigeneity, queerness, disability, class and caste (among others)
  • Decolonisation of knowledge production and representation of the South
  • Qualitative methodologies
  • Theorising from the margins
  • Area focus South Asia particularly Pakistan and Afghanistan
  • Internal displacement

Aliya is the acting Deputy Chair of the United Kingdom Forum for International Education and Training (UKFIET) conference 2023.

Gates Cambridge Biography

 

Research Group Membership

 

Research Projects

1. ‘Understanding the impact of COVID-19 on learning experiences of secondary school going age children among Bangladeshi and Pakistani ethnic minority families’
Funder: Cambridge Humanities Research Grants Scheme
Research team: Professor Nidhi Singal and Dr Aliya Khalid
Status: Complete

2. Gendered Inequalities in Education and Capability Spaces for Women/Girls (and others) in Pakistan: Education and reconstruction after 2022 floods in Pakistan
Funder: British Association for International and Comparative Education (BAICE) Seedcorn Fund
Research team: Aliya Khalid, Soufia Siddiqui, Aditi Chidambaram, Indrani Sigamany
Status: Ongoing

3. Bridging the Local and Global: Women’s Spaces and Collectives’: On becoming caregivers and teachers: Immigrant mothers’ identities and philosophies of education in England during COVID
Team members: Aliya Khalid, Jane Rooney and Ruth Houghton, Lavinia Kamphausen, Kate spencer-Bennet, Alana Farrel
Funder: The British Academy
Status: Complete

4. Collaborative development of faculty for Pakistan undergraduate Teacher Education Colleges: Durbeen and Oxford knowledge exchange project
Team members: Aliya Khalid, Ann Childs, Trevor Mutton, Ian Thompson, Jenni Ingram and Katharine Burn
Funder: Malala Fund
Status: Ongoing

Dr Karen Skilling is an Associate Professor at the Department of Education at the University of Oxford. Karen is currently the Deputy Director of Doctoral Research, Lead of the PGCE mathematics education at the Department of Education, and co-ordinates the Doctoral Teaching Fellows for teacher education. In 2020, Karen established the STEM Discussion Group and also convenes the Subject Pedagogy Group seminars.

Karen’s research interests include: student engagement and motivation in mathematics; integrated STEM learning and project-based STEM activities; and vignette methods. Karen currently sits on the Executive Committee of BSRLM, and is a journal Editor for the Teaching Education Journal (TEJ) and Research in Mathematics Education (RME). Karen has also been co-Editor for several special issues, and a topic study co-lead at the Congress of the European Society for Research in Mathematics Education (CERME). Karen is a Visiting Fellow at King’s College London and been an HEA Fellow since 2016.

Awards include: Australian Postgraduate Award (Industry) (APAI): funded PhD role attached to MYTEAM Project awarded by Australian Research Council (2008 –2012); Postdoctoral Research Fellowship: Department of Education, University of Oxford (2013-14); and nominations for Most Outstanding Contribution to Student Experience at King’s College London (2015, 2016, 2017).

David Mills is an Associate Professor and Director of the Centre for Global Higher Education (CGHE).

His current research focuses on the political economy of the global science system, and its impact on institutional research and publishing cultures in African universities. His most recent book is ‘Who Counts: Ghanaian Academic Publishing and Global Science’, co-written with colleagues from the University of Ghana and Oxford, and available open access from African Minds:  https://www.africanminds.co.za/who-counts/

Trained in Anthropology, and with inter-disciplinary research interests, David uses ethnographic methods to study the inequalities created by global higher education. He is particularly interested in African university research cultures and the role of diamond Open Access scholarly journals within knowledge ecosystems.

He welcomes enquiries from potential doctoral students interested in studying African Higher Education, as well as research and publishing cultures.

Liam Francis Gearon (BA, Hons, MA, MPhil, Cert He, PhD, FHEA, FRSA, Docent) is Associate Professor in Religious Education in the Department of Education, Senior Research Fellow at Harris Manchester College, University of Oxford; Docent, University of Helsinki, Finland; Honorary Senior Research Fellow at the School of Education, University of Birmingham, UK; Conjoint Professor at Newcastle University, Australia; Visiting Professor at the Irish Centre for Catholic Studies, MIC, Limerick, Ireland; Extraordinary Professor, North-West University, South Africa.

Liam Francis Gearon is Founder-Convenor of the Philosophy, Religion, Education Research Group, providing  a unique interdisciplinary contribution to the research culture of the Department of Education at the University of Oxford. The Philosophy, religion and education Research Group specifically forges theoretical and empirical interconnections between the arts, humanities, philosophy and the social sciences through the common focus of education. Contributions of this research group have been made to matters such as: theories of research policy and impact; the cultural value of research in the arts and humanities; research ethics; the intersection of epistemological and ethical domains in research in schools; religion, radicalisation and counter-terrorism in schools and universities; and the creation of distinctive sub-field of study at the interface of education, security and intelligence studies.

A specialist in the interdisciplinary study of religion in education, and particularly noted for the systematic philosophical and history of ideas analysis on the epistemological foundations of religious education, his framing of the paradigms of religion in education – scriptural-theological; phenomenological; psychological-experiential; philosophical-conceptual; social-cultural; political-historical – has contributed new insights to secularisation theory in numerous, some award-winning, monographs, such as MasterClass in Religious Education (Gearon, 2013); On Holy Ground (Gearon, 2015) [2016 Society of Education Studies Book Prize]; Religious Authority and the Arts: Conversations in Political Theology (Gearon, 2015); and State Religious Education and the State of the Religious Life (Gearon and Prud’homme, 2018).

His theorisations of the politicisation and securitisation of religion in education have been the subject of intense international debate for several years. Landmark publications on security in education – ‘The Counter-Terrorist Classroom’ (2013); ‘The Counter-Terrorist Classroom’ (2017); ‘Terrorism and Counter-Terrorism Policy and Research in UK Universities’ (2018): ‘Research Ethics in the Securitised University’ (Gearon and Parsons, 2019) and ‘The Kill Chain’ (Gearon, 2020) – have enabled empirical, methodological and theoretical advances on elites’ theory, the ethics of security and radicalisation research (Gearon and Kuusisto, 2018; Kuusisto and Gearon, 2017; Benjamin, Gearon, Kuusisto, Koirikivi, 2021).

With cognate research interests in security across all phases of education, Liam has over a decade collaboratively developed an interdisciplinary sub-field at the boundary of universities, security and intelligence studies, including research ethics in the securitised university (Gearon and Parsons, 2019). One of the defining outcomes here is Liam’s quarter of a million-word edited collection arising from the international Colloquium at Oriel College he convened in 2017, the Routledge International Handbook of Universities, Security and Intelligence Studies (Gearon, 2019). Interdisciplinary and inter-agency work in this area has included the Nuffield Foundation funded Universities and National Security: Research and Policy Collaborations 2019-2020, with a cross-disciplinary research team of 14 distinguished Co-Investigators.

With a significant Academy of Finland research grant (2018-2022) with Arniika Kuusisto (Stockholm/Helsinki/ Oxford), we oversee the research of two highly productive early career, post-doctoral researchers on radicalisation. This includes notable social and policy impacts such as the development of a national strategy around extremism through education for the Ministry of Justice in Finland (Activities | Growing up radical? | University of Helsinki). With substantial quantitative and qualitative data gathered, the project has already produced a substantial number of quality research outputs (Publications | Growing up radical? | University of Helsinki).

With a doctorate in English literature, Liam has also drawn on arts and humanities theoretical knowledge and methodological approaches to advance what are now intense cross-disciplinary debates around ‘decolonising the curriculum’ in religious education. From a series of foundational papers addressing the relationship between religious education and postcolonial theory – Gearon (2001a) ‘The Imagined Other: Postcolonial Theory and Religious Education’; Gearon (2001b) ‘A Spirituality of Dissent: Religion, Culture and Postcolonial Criticism’; Gearon (2002a) ‘Human Rights and Religious Education: Some Postcolonial Perspectives’ – he has recently led an international team (UK, Finland, Sweden, South Africa) as Guest Editor of the British Journal of Religious Education, for a high profile special issue on religion and education in postcolonial context (Gearon, Kuusisto, Matemba, Benjamin, Du Preez, Koirikivi, and Simmonds, 2020).

As Principal Investigator, Liam has led funded research projects with the Academy of Finland, the Arts and Humanities Research Council, the British Academy, the Leverhulme Trust, the Nuffield Foundation, the Philosophy of Education Society of Great Britain, and the Society for Educational Studies, a career total of funding exceeding £5,000,000, including a £4.5 million grant to establish a centre for citizenship and human rights at the University of Surrey Roehampton.

Doctoral supervision and Graduate teaching

 PGCE Religious Education (Subject lead)

  • Masters in Learning and Teaching (Subject lead)
  • Comparative and International Education

EXTERNAL POSTS

2020- Docent, Helsinki University, Finland

2020- Extraordinary Professor, Faculty of Education, North-West University, South Africa

2019-2021 Visiting Professor, Irish Institute of Catholic Studies, MIC, Limerick, Ireland

2012-2020 Conjoint Professor, Newcastle University, Australia

2019-2023 Honorary Senior Research Fellow, School of Education, University of Birmingham

 

PREVIOUS EXTERNAL POSTS

2011-2018, Adjunct Professor, Australian Catholic University, Australia

2010-2011, Visiting Professor, Faculty of Education, University of Plymouth

2008-2010, Research Professor, Faculty of Education, University of Plymouth

2006-2008, Professor of Education, University of Roehampton

2000-2006, Reader in Education, University of Surrey Roehampton

2006-2008, Senior Fellow, Centre of Excellence in Human Rights, University of Surrey Roehampton

2005-2008, Vice-President, International Human Rights Education Consortium, New York, USA

2001-2005, Director, Centre for Research in Human Rights, University of Surrey, Roehampton

1996-2000, Senior Lecturer, Faculty of Education, Roehampton, London

 

UK RESEARCH COUNCIL PEER REVIEW COLLEGES

AHRC Expert Group on Covid Research Group and Research Grant Panel ‘Introducer’

AHRC Peer Review College (2019 Gold Standard award, for ‘Recognition of significant contributions to the AHRC Peer Review College’)

ESRC Peer Review College

Universities UK Peer Review College Global Challenges Research Fund (GCRF)

 

INTERNATIONAL RESEARCH COUNCIL PEER REVIEWER

Academy of Finland

Austrian Science Fund (FWF)

EU 7th Framework Program for Research
Hong Kong Research Grants Council’s Public Policy Research Fund (PPR)

Irish Research Council

John Templeton Foundation

National Research Foundation, South Africa

 

PROFESSIONAL AND RESEARCH ASSOCIATIONS

Association of University Lecturers in Religion and Education (AULRE, co-founder and former Chair)

British Educational Research Association (BERA)

European Educational Research Association (EERA)

International Seminar on Religious Education and Values (ISREV)

Philosophy of Education Society of Great Britain (PESGB)

Society for Research in Higher Education (SRHE)
Society for Educational Studies (SES)

Also:

Executive (2019-2022) Oxford Intelligence Group, Nuffield College, University of Oxford

Fellow, Higher Education Academy (FHEA)

Fellow, Royal Society of Arts (FRSA)

Cambridge Intelligence Seminar

 

OTHER ADMINISTRATIVE ROLES AT OXFORD

Elected by Congregation to the University of Oxford Prevent Steering Group

Social Sciences Divisional representative of the Permanent Private Halls Supervisory Committee (PPHSC), a senior committee of the University of Oxford overseeing governance of Blackfriars; Campion Hall; Regent’s Park College; St Benet’s; St Stephen’s House; Wycliffe Hall.

Member, Central University Research Ethics Committee (CUREC)

Chair, Department of Education Research Ethics Committee (DREC)

Member, Inter-Divisional Social Sciences and Humanities Research Ethics Committee (IDREC)

Chair, Bodleian Library Education Committee

Member and occasional Chair Social Sciences Divisional Library Committee

Education Advisory Group, Christ Church College, Oxford

 

EDITORSHIP OF INTERNATIONAL JOURNALS

Gearon, L. (Guest editor) (2021) Literature and Security, Special Issue, Text Matters: A Journal of Literature, Theory and Culture, with a planned formal launch at Lodz, Poland.

Gearon, L., (Lead Guest Editor with editorial team) Kuusisto, A., Matemba, Y., Benjamin, S., Du Preez, P., Koirikivi, P., Simmonds, S. (2020) Decolonising the Religious Education Curriculum: International Perspectives in Theory, Research, and Practice, Special Issue, British Journal of Religious Education.

Gearon, L. (Guest Editor) (2019) Special Issue of Religions 10 (1) on Religion, Security, Education.

Gearon, L. and Williams, E. (Guest Editors) (2019) Special Issue of the British Journal of Educational Studies, Writers and their Education, 67 (3), 283–289.

Gearon, L. and Williams, E. (Guest Editors) (2018) Special Issue of Journal of Philosophy of Education on Philosophy, Literature and Education, 52 (4), 577-777.

Gearon, L. (Guest Editor) (2015) British Journal of Educational Studies, Special Issue, Education, Security and Intelligence Studies, 63 (3) 263-411.

Tirri, K., (Finland) Campbell, E. (Canada), Gearon, L. (UK), Lovat, T. (Australia) (Guest Editors) (2012) The Moral Core of Teaching, Education Research International.

Gearon, L. (Guest Editor) (2008) Citizenship, Human Rights and Religion, British Journal of Religious Education, 30 (2) 93-108.

Gearon, L. (Guest Editor) (2006) Children’s Spirituality and Children’s Rights, International Journal of Children’s Spirituality, 11 (2) 193-310.

Simon Marginson is  Emeritus Professor of Higher Education at the University of Oxford, Director of the ESRC/RE Centre for Global Higher Education (CGHE), and Editor-in-Chief of the journal Higher Education.

Simon led the ESRC Centre for Global Higher Education between November 2015 and April 2024. His research is focused primarily on global and international higher education, higher education in East Asia, the public and social contributions of higher education, and higher education and social equality. He is currently preparing an integrated theorisation of higher education. His scholarship is widely published and cited (Google h-index 67 in September 2019). Books include Higher Education and the Common Good (Melbourne University Publishing, 2016); High Participation Systems of Higher Education, edited with Brendan Cantwell and Anna Smolentseva (Oxford University Press, 2018); Changing Higher Education in East Asia, edited with Xin Xu (Bloomsbury, 2022) and Assessing the Contributions of Higher Education, edited with Brendan Cantwell, Daria Platonova and Anna Smolentseva (Edward Elgar, 2023).

Selected Publications
Books
  • Marginson, S. (2016).The Dream is Over: The crisis of Clark Kerr’s California Idea of higher education. Berkeley: University of California Press.
  • Marginson, S. (2016).Higher Education and the Common Good. Melbourne: Melbourne University Publishing.
  • Tran, L. & Marginson, S. (eds.). (2018).Internationalisation of Vietnamese Higher Education. Dordrecht: Springer Nature.
  • Carnoy, M., Froumin, I., Leshukov, O. & Marginson, S. (eds.). (2018) Higher Education in Federal Countries. New Delhi: Sage.
  • Cantwell, B., Marginson, S. & Smolentseva, A. (eds.). (2018) High Participation Systems of Higher Education. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
  • Callender, C., Locke, W. & Marginson, S. (eds.) (2020). Changing Higher Education for a Changing World. London: Bloomsbury.
  • Chattopadhyay, S., Marginson, S. & Varghese, N.V. (eds.) (2021). Changing Higher Education in India. London: Bloomsbury.
  • Marginson, S. & Xu, X. (eds.) (2022). Changing Higher Education in East Asia. (2022). London: Bloomsbury.
  • Marginson, S., Cantwell, B., Platonova, D. & Smolentseva, A. (eds.) (2023). Assessing the contributions of higher education. Cheltenham: Edward Elgar.
Recent Journal Papers
  • Marginson, S. (2016). The worldwide trend to high participation higher education: Dynamics of social stratification in inclusive systems. Higher Education, 72 (4), 413-435.
  • Marginson, S. (2018). Private/public in higher education: A synthesis of economic and political approaches. Studies in Higher Education, 43 (2), 322-337
  • Marginson, S. (2018) Global trends in higher education financing: The United Kingdom. International J. Educational Development, 58, 26-36
  • Marginson, S. (2018) National/global synergy in the development of higher education and science in China since 1978. Frontiers of Education in China, 13 (4), 486–512
  • Marginson, S. (2019) Limitations of human capital theory. Studies in Higher Education, 44 (2), 287-301
  • Marginson, S. and Yang, L. (2022). Individual and collective outcomes of higher education: A comparison of Anglo-American and Chinese approaches. Globalisation, Societies and Education, 20 (1), 1-32.
  • Marginson, S. (2022). ‘All things are in flux’: China in global science. Higher Education, 83 (4), 881-910.
  • Marginson, S. (2022). What drives global science? The four competing narratives. Studies in Higher Education, 47 (8), 1566-1584.
  • Marginson, S. (2022). Global science and national comparisons: Beyond bibliometrics and scientometrics. Comparative Education, 58 (2), 125-146.
  • Marginson, S. (2022). What is global higher education? Oxford Review of Education, 48 (4), 492-517.
  • Marginson S. (2022). Space and scale in higher education: The glonacal heuristic revisited. Higher Education, 84 (6),1365-1395.
  • Marginson, S. & Xu, X. (2023). Hegemony and inequality in global science: Problems of the center-periphery model. Comparative Education Review, 67 (1). https://doi.org/10.1086/722760
  • Marginson, S. (2023). Student self-formation: An emerging paradigm in higher education. Studies in Higher Education, https://doi.org/10.1080/03075079.2023.2252826 (2023).
  • Marginson, S. (2023). Limitations of the leading definition of ‘internationalisation’ of higher education: Is the idea wrong or is the fault in reality? Globalisation, Societies and Education, https://doi.org/10.1080/14767724.2023.2264223
  • Marginson, S. and Yang ,L. (2023). Has the public good been emptied out of higher education in England? Higher Education. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10734-023-01117-6

Maia Chankseliani is Associate Professor of Comparative and International Education at the University of Oxford where she leads a flagship master’s course in Comparative and International Education. She convenes the Comparative and International Education Research Group at the Department of Education.

Within comparative and international education, Maia Chankseliani works at the intersection of tertiary education and development. She researches societal, institutional, and policy forces that shape tertiary education and the potential of tertiary education and research for transforming societies.

Methodologically, she utilises both qualitative and quantitative methods. Her work often combines secondary data analysis with insights gathered through semi-structured interviews and contextualised case studies.

Maia Chankseliani has published four books in the field of comparative and international education: What Happened to the Soviet University? (2022), Building Research Capacity at Universities: Insights from Post-Soviet Countries (2022), Comparing Post-Socialist Transformations: Purposes, Policies, and Practices in Education (2018), and Fairness in Access to Higher Education in a Global Perspective: Reconciling Excellence, Efficiency, and Justice (2013).

She currently leads a major research project examining the impact of international mobility on world development (funded by the U.S. Department of State). Maia Chankseliani has worked on a number of externally funded research projects and consultancies involving the UK Government agencies responsible for education and skills, UKRI/ESRC, British Council, World Bank, Qatar Foundation, the European Commission.

With a background in education research, teaching, policy-making, leadership, and consultancy, Maia Chankseliani brings to her role extensive experience in diverse international settings. This breadth of experience informs her research and enables her to bridge theory and practice.

Maia Chankseliani engages with governments and gives academic and policy-relevant talks nationally and internationally. Her research regularly features in national and international media.

She holds a BA in Philology from Tbilisi State University (Georgia), an Ed. M in International Education Policy from Harvard University (USA), and a PhD in Education from the University of Cambridge (UK).

Maia Chankseliani serves as the Editor-in-Chief of the International Journal of Educational Research.

Aliya teaches on the Comparative and International Education MSc programme at our Department. She is also a Junior Research Fellow at Lady Margaret Hall. Her research focuses on young people and families’ experiences of education in turbulent times.

For example, educational challenges and rehabilitation during COVID-19 and after the 2022 floods in Pakistan. Her current geographical focus includes ethnically diverse communities (Pakistani and Bangladeshi) in England as well as marginalised communities in Pakistan.

Aliya’s PhD explored the complexities of gender and international education, and her current work focuses on decolonising educational research practices and the experience of Southern-ness globally. Aliya’s specialist areas are parental, mothers’ and young people’s perspectives of and aspirations for education, and their own modalities of agency to fulfil their dreams.

Aliya publishes on the topics of Southern epistemologies and methodologies and teaches on related topics of decolonisation of knowledge production and the politics of representation. She is currently leading multiple projects in England and Pakistan focusing on girls’ education, gender experiences of education, mothers’ perspectives on educating their children, teacher educators, displaced peoples experiences in England and Pakistan.

Aliya is accepting DPhil students interested in these areas:

  • Southern epistemologies and methodologies
  • The capability approach and social justice
  • Negative capability
  • Deconstruction of the silence/violence binary
  • Marginalised peoples’ perspectives
  • Intersectional experiences of marginalisation including those related with gender, race, ethnicity, indigeneity, queerness, disability, class and caste (among others)
  • Decolonisation of knowledge production and representation of the South
  • Qualitative methodologies
  • Theorising from the margins
  • Area focus South Asia particularly Pakistan and Afghanistan
  • Internal displacement

Aliya is the acting Deputy Chair of the United Kingdom Forum for International Education and Training (UKFIET) conference 2023.

Gates Cambridge Biography

 

Research Group Membership

 

Research Projects

1. ‘Understanding the impact of COVID-19 on learning experiences of secondary school going age children among Bangladeshi and Pakistani ethnic minority families’
Funder: Cambridge Humanities Research Grants Scheme
Research team: Professor Nidhi Singal and Dr Aliya Khalid
Status: Complete

2. Gendered Inequalities in Education and Capability Spaces for Women/Girls (and others) in Pakistan: Education and reconstruction after 2022 floods in Pakistan
Funder: British Association for International and Comparative Education (BAICE) Seedcorn Fund
Research team: Aliya Khalid, Soufia Siddiqui, Aditi Chidambaram, Indrani Sigamany
Status: Ongoing

3. Bridging the Local and Global: Women’s Spaces and Collectives’: On becoming caregivers and teachers: Immigrant mothers’ identities and philosophies of education in England during COVID
Team members: Aliya Khalid, Jane Rooney and Ruth Houghton, Lavinia Kamphausen, Kate spencer-Bennet, Alana Farrel
Funder: The British Academy
Status: Complete

4. Collaborative development of faculty for Pakistan undergraduate Teacher Education Colleges: Durbeen and Oxford knowledge exchange project
Team members: Aliya Khalid, Ann Childs, Trevor Mutton, Ian Thompson, Jenni Ingram and Katharine Burn
Funder: Malala Fund
Status: Ongoing

Dr Karen Skilling is an Associate Professor at the Department of Education at the University of Oxford. Karen is currently the Deputy Director of Doctoral Research, Lead of the PGCE mathematics education at the Department of Education, and co-ordinates the Doctoral Teaching Fellows for teacher education. In 2020, Karen established the STEM Discussion Group and also convenes the Subject Pedagogy Group seminars.

Karen’s research interests include: student engagement and motivation in mathematics; integrated STEM learning and project-based STEM activities; and vignette methods. Karen currently sits on the Executive Committee of BSRLM, and is a journal Editor for the Teaching Education Journal (TEJ) and Research in Mathematics Education (RME). Karen has also been co-Editor for several special issues, and a topic study co-lead at the Congress of the European Society for Research in Mathematics Education (CERME). Karen is a Visiting Fellow at King’s College London and been an HEA Fellow since 2016.

Awards include: Australian Postgraduate Award (Industry) (APAI): funded PhD role attached to MYTEAM Project awarded by Australian Research Council (2008 –2012); Postdoctoral Research Fellowship: Department of Education, University of Oxford (2013-14); and nominations for Most Outstanding Contribution to Student Experience at King’s College London (2015, 2016, 2017).

David Mills is an Associate Professor and Director of the Centre for Global Higher Education (CGHE).

His current research focuses on the political economy of the global science system, and its impact on institutional research and publishing cultures in African universities. His most recent book is ‘Who Counts: Ghanaian Academic Publishing and Global Science’, co-written with colleagues from the University of Ghana and Oxford, and available open access from African Minds:  https://www.africanminds.co.za/who-counts/

Trained in Anthropology, and with inter-disciplinary research interests, David uses ethnographic methods to study the inequalities created by global higher education. He is particularly interested in African university research cultures and the role of diamond Open Access scholarly journals within knowledge ecosystems.

He welcomes enquiries from potential doctoral students interested in studying African Higher Education, as well as research and publishing cultures.

Liam Francis Gearon (BA, Hons, MA, MPhil, Cert He, PhD, FHEA, FRSA, Docent) is Associate Professor in Religious Education in the Department of Education, Senior Research Fellow at Harris Manchester College, University of Oxford; Docent, University of Helsinki, Finland; Honorary Senior Research Fellow at the School of Education, University of Birmingham, UK; Conjoint Professor at Newcastle University, Australia; Visiting Professor at the Irish Centre for Catholic Studies, MIC, Limerick, Ireland; Extraordinary Professor, North-West University, South Africa.

Liam Francis Gearon is Founder-Convenor of the Philosophy, Religion, Education Research Group, providing  a unique interdisciplinary contribution to the research culture of the Department of Education at the University of Oxford. The Philosophy, religion and education Research Group specifically forges theoretical and empirical interconnections between the arts, humanities, philosophy and the social sciences through the common focus of education. Contributions of this research group have been made to matters such as: theories of research policy and impact; the cultural value of research in the arts and humanities; research ethics; the intersection of epistemological and ethical domains in research in schools; religion, radicalisation and counter-terrorism in schools and universities; and the creation of distinctive sub-field of study at the interface of education, security and intelligence studies.

A specialist in the interdisciplinary study of religion in education, and particularly noted for the systematic philosophical and history of ideas analysis on the epistemological foundations of religious education, his framing of the paradigms of religion in education – scriptural-theological; phenomenological; psychological-experiential; philosophical-conceptual; social-cultural; political-historical – has contributed new insights to secularisation theory in numerous, some award-winning, monographs, such as MasterClass in Religious Education (Gearon, 2013); On Holy Ground (Gearon, 2015) [2016 Society of Education Studies Book Prize]; Religious Authority and the Arts: Conversations in Political Theology (Gearon, 2015); and State Religious Education and the State of the Religious Life (Gearon and Prud’homme, 2018).

His theorisations of the politicisation and securitisation of religion in education have been the subject of intense international debate for several years. Landmark publications on security in education – ‘The Counter-Terrorist Classroom’ (2013); ‘The Counter-Terrorist Classroom’ (2017); ‘Terrorism and Counter-Terrorism Policy and Research in UK Universities’ (2018): ‘Research Ethics in the Securitised University’ (Gearon and Parsons, 2019) and ‘The Kill Chain’ (Gearon, 2020) – have enabled empirical, methodological and theoretical advances on elites’ theory, the ethics of security and radicalisation research (Gearon and Kuusisto, 2018; Kuusisto and Gearon, 2017; Benjamin, Gearon, Kuusisto, Koirikivi, 2021).

With cognate research interests in security across all phases of education, Liam has over a decade collaboratively developed an interdisciplinary sub-field at the boundary of universities, security and intelligence studies, including research ethics in the securitised university (Gearon and Parsons, 2019). One of the defining outcomes here is Liam’s quarter of a million-word edited collection arising from the international Colloquium at Oriel College he convened in 2017, the Routledge International Handbook of Universities, Security and Intelligence Studies (Gearon, 2019). Interdisciplinary and inter-agency work in this area has included the Nuffield Foundation funded Universities and National Security: Research and Policy Collaborations 2019-2020, with a cross-disciplinary research team of 14 distinguished Co-Investigators.

With a significant Academy of Finland research grant (2018-2022) with Arniika Kuusisto (Stockholm/Helsinki/ Oxford), we oversee the research of two highly productive early career, post-doctoral researchers on radicalisation. This includes notable social and policy impacts such as the development of a national strategy around extremism through education for the Ministry of Justice in Finland (Activities | Growing up radical? | University of Helsinki). With substantial quantitative and qualitative data gathered, the project has already produced a substantial number of quality research outputs (Publications | Growing up radical? | University of Helsinki).

With a doctorate in English literature, Liam has also drawn on arts and humanities theoretical knowledge and methodological approaches to advance what are now intense cross-disciplinary debates around ‘decolonising the curriculum’ in religious education. From a series of foundational papers addressing the relationship between religious education and postcolonial theory – Gearon (2001a) ‘The Imagined Other: Postcolonial Theory and Religious Education’; Gearon (2001b) ‘A Spirituality of Dissent: Religion, Culture and Postcolonial Criticism’; Gearon (2002a) ‘Human Rights and Religious Education: Some Postcolonial Perspectives’ – he has recently led an international team (UK, Finland, Sweden, South Africa) as Guest Editor of the British Journal of Religious Education, for a high profile special issue on religion and education in postcolonial context (Gearon, Kuusisto, Matemba, Benjamin, Du Preez, Koirikivi, and Simmonds, 2020).

As Principal Investigator, Liam has led funded research projects with the Academy of Finland, the Arts and Humanities Research Council, the British Academy, the Leverhulme Trust, the Nuffield Foundation, the Philosophy of Education Society of Great Britain, and the Society for Educational Studies, a career total of funding exceeding £5,000,000, including a £4.5 million grant to establish a centre for citizenship and human rights at the University of Surrey Roehampton.

Doctoral supervision and Graduate teaching

 PGCE Religious Education (Subject lead)

  • Masters in Learning and Teaching (Subject lead)
  • Comparative and International Education

EXTERNAL POSTS

2020- Docent, Helsinki University, Finland

2020- Extraordinary Professor, Faculty of Education, North-West University, South Africa

2019-2021 Visiting Professor, Irish Institute of Catholic Studies, MIC, Limerick, Ireland

2012-2020 Conjoint Professor, Newcastle University, Australia

2019-2023 Honorary Senior Research Fellow, School of Education, University of Birmingham

 

PREVIOUS EXTERNAL POSTS

2011-2018, Adjunct Professor, Australian Catholic University, Australia

2010-2011, Visiting Professor, Faculty of Education, University of Plymouth

2008-2010, Research Professor, Faculty of Education, University of Plymouth

2006-2008, Professor of Education, University of Roehampton

2000-2006, Reader in Education, University of Surrey Roehampton

2006-2008, Senior Fellow, Centre of Excellence in Human Rights, University of Surrey Roehampton

2005-2008, Vice-President, International Human Rights Education Consortium, New York, USA

2001-2005, Director, Centre for Research in Human Rights, University of Surrey, Roehampton

1996-2000, Senior Lecturer, Faculty of Education, Roehampton, London

 

UK RESEARCH COUNCIL PEER REVIEW COLLEGES

AHRC Expert Group on Covid Research Group and Research Grant Panel ‘Introducer’

AHRC Peer Review College (2019 Gold Standard award, for ‘Recognition of significant contributions to the AHRC Peer Review College’)

ESRC Peer Review College

Universities UK Peer Review College Global Challenges Research Fund (GCRF)

 

INTERNATIONAL RESEARCH COUNCIL PEER REVIEWER

Academy of Finland

Austrian Science Fund (FWF)

EU 7th Framework Program for Research
Hong Kong Research Grants Council’s Public Policy Research Fund (PPR)

Irish Research Council

John Templeton Foundation

National Research Foundation, South Africa

 

PROFESSIONAL AND RESEARCH ASSOCIATIONS

Association of University Lecturers in Religion and Education (AULRE, co-founder and former Chair)

British Educational Research Association (BERA)

European Educational Research Association (EERA)

International Seminar on Religious Education and Values (ISREV)

Philosophy of Education Society of Great Britain (PESGB)

Society for Research in Higher Education (SRHE)
Society for Educational Studies (SES)

Also:

Executive (2019-2022) Oxford Intelligence Group, Nuffield College, University of Oxford

Fellow, Higher Education Academy (FHEA)

Fellow, Royal Society of Arts (FRSA)

Cambridge Intelligence Seminar

 

OTHER ADMINISTRATIVE ROLES AT OXFORD

Elected by Congregation to the University of Oxford Prevent Steering Group

Social Sciences Divisional representative of the Permanent Private Halls Supervisory Committee (PPHSC), a senior committee of the University of Oxford overseeing governance of Blackfriars; Campion Hall; Regent’s Park College; St Benet’s; St Stephen’s House; Wycliffe Hall.

Member, Central University Research Ethics Committee (CUREC)

Chair, Department of Education Research Ethics Committee (DREC)

Member, Inter-Divisional Social Sciences and Humanities Research Ethics Committee (IDREC)

Chair, Bodleian Library Education Committee

Member and occasional Chair Social Sciences Divisional Library Committee

Education Advisory Group, Christ Church College, Oxford

 

EDITORSHIP OF INTERNATIONAL JOURNALS

Gearon, L. (Guest editor) (2021) Literature and Security, Special Issue, Text Matters: A Journal of Literature, Theory and Culture, with a planned formal launch at Lodz, Poland.

Gearon, L., (Lead Guest Editor with editorial team) Kuusisto, A., Matemba, Y., Benjamin, S., Du Preez, P., Koirikivi, P., Simmonds, S. (2020) Decolonising the Religious Education Curriculum: International Perspectives in Theory, Research, and Practice, Special Issue, British Journal of Religious Education.

Gearon, L. (Guest Editor) (2019) Special Issue of Religions 10 (1) on Religion, Security, Education.

Gearon, L. and Williams, E. (Guest Editors) (2019) Special Issue of the British Journal of Educational Studies, Writers and their Education, 67 (3), 283–289.

Gearon, L. and Williams, E. (Guest Editors) (2018) Special Issue of Journal of Philosophy of Education on Philosophy, Literature and Education, 52 (4), 577-777.

Gearon, L. (Guest Editor) (2015) British Journal of Educational Studies, Special Issue, Education, Security and Intelligence Studies, 63 (3) 263-411.

Tirri, K., (Finland) Campbell, E. (Canada), Gearon, L. (UK), Lovat, T. (Australia) (Guest Editors) (2012) The Moral Core of Teaching, Education Research International.

Gearon, L. (Guest Editor) (2008) Citizenship, Human Rights and Religion, British Journal of Religious Education, 30 (2) 93-108.

Gearon, L. (Guest Editor) (2006) Children’s Spirituality and Children’s Rights, International Journal of Children’s Spirituality, 11 (2) 193-310.

Simon Marginson is  Emeritus Professor of Higher Education at the University of Oxford, Director of the ESRC/RE Centre for Global Higher Education (CGHE), and Editor-in-Chief of the journal Higher Education.

Simon led the ESRC Centre for Global Higher Education between November 2015 and April 2024. His research is focused primarily on global and international higher education, higher education in East Asia, the public and social contributions of higher education, and higher education and social equality. He is currently preparing an integrated theorisation of higher education. His scholarship is widely published and cited (Google h-index 67 in September 2019). Books include Higher Education and the Common Good (Melbourne University Publishing, 2016); High Participation Systems of Higher Education, edited with Brendan Cantwell and Anna Smolentseva (Oxford University Press, 2018); Changing Higher Education in East Asia, edited with Xin Xu (Bloomsbury, 2022) and Assessing the Contributions of Higher Education, edited with Brendan Cantwell, Daria Platonova and Anna Smolentseva (Edward Elgar, 2023).

Selected Publications
Books
  • Marginson, S. (2016).The Dream is Over: The crisis of Clark Kerr’s California Idea of higher education. Berkeley: University of California Press.
  • Marginson, S. (2016).Higher Education and the Common Good. Melbourne: Melbourne University Publishing.
  • Tran, L. & Marginson, S. (eds.). (2018).Internationalisation of Vietnamese Higher Education. Dordrecht: Springer Nature.
  • Carnoy, M., Froumin, I., Leshukov, O. & Marginson, S. (eds.). (2018) Higher Education in Federal Countries. New Delhi: Sage.
  • Cantwell, B., Marginson, S. & Smolentseva, A. (eds.). (2018) High Participation Systems of Higher Education. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
  • Callender, C., Locke, W. & Marginson, S. (eds.) (2020). Changing Higher Education for a Changing World. London: Bloomsbury.
  • Chattopadhyay, S., Marginson, S. & Varghese, N.V. (eds.) (2021). Changing Higher Education in India. London: Bloomsbury.
  • Marginson, S. & Xu, X. (eds.) (2022). Changing Higher Education in East Asia. (2022). London: Bloomsbury.
  • Marginson, S., Cantwell, B., Platonova, D. & Smolentseva, A. (eds.) (2023). Assessing the contributions of higher education. Cheltenham: Edward Elgar.
Recent Journal Papers
  • Marginson, S. (2016). The worldwide trend to high participation higher education: Dynamics of social stratification in inclusive systems. Higher Education, 72 (4), 413-435.
  • Marginson, S. (2018). Private/public in higher education: A synthesis of economic and political approaches. Studies in Higher Education, 43 (2), 322-337
  • Marginson, S. (2018) Global trends in higher education financing: The United Kingdom. International J. Educational Development, 58, 26-36
  • Marginson, S. (2018) National/global synergy in the development of higher education and science in China since 1978. Frontiers of Education in China, 13 (4), 486–512
  • Marginson, S. (2019) Limitations of human capital theory. Studies in Higher Education, 44 (2), 287-301
  • Marginson, S. and Yang, L. (2022). Individual and collective outcomes of higher education: A comparison of Anglo-American and Chinese approaches. Globalisation, Societies and Education, 20 (1), 1-32.
  • Marginson, S. (2022). ‘All things are in flux’: China in global science. Higher Education, 83 (4), 881-910.
  • Marginson, S. (2022). What drives global science? The four competing narratives. Studies in Higher Education, 47 (8), 1566-1584.
  • Marginson, S. (2022). Global science and national comparisons: Beyond bibliometrics and scientometrics. Comparative Education, 58 (2), 125-146.
  • Marginson, S. (2022). What is global higher education? Oxford Review of Education, 48 (4), 492-517.
  • Marginson S. (2022). Space and scale in higher education: The glonacal heuristic revisited. Higher Education, 84 (6),1365-1395.
  • Marginson, S. & Xu, X. (2023). Hegemony and inequality in global science: Problems of the center-periphery model. Comparative Education Review, 67 (1). https://doi.org/10.1086/722760
  • Marginson, S. (2023). Student self-formation: An emerging paradigm in higher education. Studies in Higher Education, https://doi.org/10.1080/03075079.2023.2252826 (2023).
  • Marginson, S. (2023). Limitations of the leading definition of ‘internationalisation’ of higher education: Is the idea wrong or is the fault in reality? Globalisation, Societies and Education, https://doi.org/10.1080/14767724.2023.2264223
  • Marginson, S. and Yang ,L. (2023). Has the public good been emptied out of higher education in England? Higher Education. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10734-023-01117-6

Maia Chankseliani is Associate Professor of Comparative and International Education at the University of Oxford where she leads a flagship master’s course in Comparative and International Education. She convenes the Comparative and International Education Research Group at the Department of Education.

Within comparative and international education, Maia Chankseliani works at the intersection of tertiary education and development. She researches societal, institutional, and policy forces that shape tertiary education and the potential of tertiary education and research for transforming societies.

Methodologically, she utilises both qualitative and quantitative methods. Her work often combines secondary data analysis with insights gathered through semi-structured interviews and contextualised case studies.

Maia Chankseliani has published four books in the field of comparative and international education: What Happened to the Soviet University? (2022), Building Research Capacity at Universities: Insights from Post-Soviet Countries (2022), Comparing Post-Socialist Transformations: Purposes, Policies, and Practices in Education (2018), and Fairness in Access to Higher Education in a Global Perspective: Reconciling Excellence, Efficiency, and Justice (2013).

She currently leads a major research project examining the impact of international mobility on world development (funded by the U.S. Department of State). Maia Chankseliani has worked on a number of externally funded research projects and consultancies involving the UK Government agencies responsible for education and skills, UKRI/ESRC, British Council, World Bank, Qatar Foundation, the European Commission.

With a background in education research, teaching, policy-making, leadership, and consultancy, Maia Chankseliani brings to her role extensive experience in diverse international settings. This breadth of experience informs her research and enables her to bridge theory and practice.

Maia Chankseliani engages with governments and gives academic and policy-relevant talks nationally and internationally. Her research regularly features in national and international media.

She holds a BA in Philology from Tbilisi State University (Georgia), an Ed. M in International Education Policy from Harvard University (USA), and a PhD in Education from the University of Cambridge (UK).

Maia Chankseliani serves as the Editor-in-Chief of the International Journal of Educational Research.

Aliya teaches on the Comparative and International Education MSc programme at our Department. She is also a Junior Research Fellow at Lady Margaret Hall. Her research focuses on young people and families’ experiences of education in turbulent times.

For example, educational challenges and rehabilitation during COVID-19 and after the 2022 floods in Pakistan. Her current geographical focus includes ethnically diverse communities (Pakistani and Bangladeshi) in England as well as marginalised communities in Pakistan.

Aliya’s PhD explored the complexities of gender and international education, and her current work focuses on decolonising educational research practices and the experience of Southern-ness globally. Aliya’s specialist areas are parental, mothers’ and young people’s perspectives of and aspirations for education, and their own modalities of agency to fulfil their dreams.

Aliya publishes on the topics of Southern epistemologies and methodologies and teaches on related topics of decolonisation of knowledge production and the politics of representation. She is currently leading multiple projects in England and Pakistan focusing on girls’ education, gender experiences of education, mothers’ perspectives on educating their children, teacher educators, displaced peoples experiences in England and Pakistan.

Aliya is accepting DPhil students interested in these areas:

  • Southern epistemologies and methodologies
  • The capability approach and social justice
  • Negative capability
  • Deconstruction of the silence/violence binary
  • Marginalised peoples’ perspectives
  • Intersectional experiences of marginalisation including those related with gender, race, ethnicity, indigeneity, queerness, disability, class and caste (among others)
  • Decolonisation of knowledge production and representation of the South
  • Qualitative methodologies
  • Theorising from the margins
  • Area focus South Asia particularly Pakistan and Afghanistan
  • Internal displacement

Aliya is the acting Deputy Chair of the United Kingdom Forum for International Education and Training (UKFIET) conference 2023.

Gates Cambridge Biography

 

Research Group Membership

 

Research Projects

1. ‘Understanding the impact of COVID-19 on learning experiences of secondary school going age children among Bangladeshi and Pakistani ethnic minority families’
Funder: Cambridge Humanities Research Grants Scheme
Research team: Professor Nidhi Singal and Dr Aliya Khalid
Status: Complete

2. Gendered Inequalities in Education and Capability Spaces for Women/Girls (and others) in Pakistan: Education and reconstruction after 2022 floods in Pakistan
Funder: British Association for International and Comparative Education (BAICE) Seedcorn Fund
Research team: Aliya Khalid, Soufia Siddiqui, Aditi Chidambaram, Indrani Sigamany
Status: Ongoing

3. Bridging the Local and Global: Women’s Spaces and Collectives’: On becoming caregivers and teachers: Immigrant mothers’ identities and philosophies of education in England during COVID
Team members: Aliya Khalid, Jane Rooney and Ruth Houghton, Lavinia Kamphausen, Kate spencer-Bennet, Alana Farrel
Funder: The British Academy
Status: Complete

4. Collaborative development of faculty for Pakistan undergraduate Teacher Education Colleges: Durbeen and Oxford knowledge exchange project
Team members: Aliya Khalid, Ann Childs, Trevor Mutton, Ian Thompson, Jenni Ingram and Katharine Burn
Funder: Malala Fund
Status: Ongoing

Dr Karen Skilling is an Associate Professor at the Department of Education at the University of Oxford. Karen is currently the Deputy Director of Doctoral Research, Lead of the PGCE mathematics education at the Department of Education, and co-ordinates the Doctoral Teaching Fellows for teacher education. In 2020, Karen established the STEM Discussion Group and also convenes the Subject Pedagogy Group seminars.

Karen’s research interests include: student engagement and motivation in mathematics; integrated STEM learning and project-based STEM activities; and vignette methods. Karen currently sits on the Executive Committee of BSRLM, and is a journal Editor for the Teaching Education Journal (TEJ) and Research in Mathematics Education (RME). Karen has also been co-Editor for several special issues, and a topic study co-lead at the Congress of the European Society for Research in Mathematics Education (CERME). Karen is a Visiting Fellow at King’s College London and been an HEA Fellow since 2016.

Awards include: Australian Postgraduate Award (Industry) (APAI): funded PhD role attached to MYTEAM Project awarded by Australian Research Council (2008 –2012); Postdoctoral Research Fellowship: Department of Education, University of Oxford (2013-14); and nominations for Most Outstanding Contribution to Student Experience at King’s College London (2015, 2016, 2017).

David Mills is an Associate Professor and Director of the Centre for Global Higher Education (CGHE).

His current research focuses on the political economy of the global science system, and its impact on institutional research and publishing cultures in African universities. His most recent book is ‘Who Counts: Ghanaian Academic Publishing and Global Science’, co-written with colleagues from the University of Ghana and Oxford, and available open access from African Minds:  https://www.africanminds.co.za/who-counts/

Trained in Anthropology, and with inter-disciplinary research interests, David uses ethnographic methods to study the inequalities created by global higher education. He is particularly interested in African university research cultures and the role of diamond Open Access scholarly journals within knowledge ecosystems.

He welcomes enquiries from potential doctoral students interested in studying African Higher Education, as well as research and publishing cultures.

Liam Francis Gearon (BA, Hons, MA, MPhil, Cert He, PhD, FHEA, FRSA, Docent) is Associate Professor in Religious Education in the Department of Education, Senior Research Fellow at Harris Manchester College, University of Oxford; Docent, University of Helsinki, Finland; Honorary Senior Research Fellow at the School of Education, University of Birmingham, UK; Conjoint Professor at Newcastle University, Australia; Visiting Professor at the Irish Centre for Catholic Studies, MIC, Limerick, Ireland; Extraordinary Professor, North-West University, South Africa.

Liam Francis Gearon is Founder-Convenor of the Philosophy, Religion, Education Research Group, providing  a unique interdisciplinary contribution to the research culture of the Department of Education at the University of Oxford. The Philosophy, religion and education Research Group specifically forges theoretical and empirical interconnections between the arts, humanities, philosophy and the social sciences through the common focus of education. Contributions of this research group have been made to matters such as: theories of research policy and impact; the cultural value of research in the arts and humanities; research ethics; the intersection of epistemological and ethical domains in research in schools; religion, radicalisation and counter-terrorism in schools and universities; and the creation of distinctive sub-field of study at the interface of education, security and intelligence studies.

A specialist in the interdisciplinary study of religion in education, and particularly noted for the systematic philosophical and history of ideas analysis on the epistemological foundations of religious education, his framing of the paradigms of religion in education – scriptural-theological; phenomenological; psychological-experiential; philosophical-conceptual; social-cultural; political-historical – has contributed new insights to secularisation theory in numerous, some award-winning, monographs, such as MasterClass in Religious Education (Gearon, 2013); On Holy Ground (Gearon, 2015) [2016 Society of Education Studies Book Prize]; Religious Authority and the Arts: Conversations in Political Theology (Gearon, 2015); and State Religious Education and the State of the Religious Life (Gearon and Prud’homme, 2018).

His theorisations of the politicisation and securitisation of religion in education have been the subject of intense international debate for several years. Landmark publications on security in education – ‘The Counter-Terrorist Classroom’ (2013); ‘The Counter-Terrorist Classroom’ (2017); ‘Terrorism and Counter-Terrorism Policy and Research in UK Universities’ (2018): ‘Research Ethics in the Securitised University’ (Gearon and Parsons, 2019) and ‘The Kill Chain’ (Gearon, 2020) – have enabled empirical, methodological and theoretical advances on elites’ theory, the ethics of security and radicalisation research (Gearon and Kuusisto, 2018; Kuusisto and Gearon, 2017; Benjamin, Gearon, Kuusisto, Koirikivi, 2021).

With cognate research interests in security across all phases of education, Liam has over a decade collaboratively developed an interdisciplinary sub-field at the boundary of universities, security and intelligence studies, including research ethics in the securitised university (Gearon and Parsons, 2019). One of the defining outcomes here is Liam’s quarter of a million-word edited collection arising from the international Colloquium at Oriel College he convened in 2017, the Routledge International Handbook of Universities, Security and Intelligence Studies (Gearon, 2019). Interdisciplinary and inter-agency work in this area has included the Nuffield Foundation funded Universities and National Security: Research and Policy Collaborations 2019-2020, with a cross-disciplinary research team of 14 distinguished Co-Investigators.

With a significant Academy of Finland research grant (2018-2022) with Arniika Kuusisto (Stockholm/Helsinki/ Oxford), we oversee the research of two highly productive early career, post-doctoral researchers on radicalisation. This includes notable social and policy impacts such as the development of a national strategy around extremism through education for the Ministry of Justice in Finland (Activities | Growing up radical? | University of Helsinki). With substantial quantitative and qualitative data gathered, the project has already produced a substantial number of quality research outputs (Publications | Growing up radical? | University of Helsinki).

With a doctorate in English literature, Liam has also drawn on arts and humanities theoretical knowledge and methodological approaches to advance what are now intense cross-disciplinary debates around ‘decolonising the curriculum’ in religious education. From a series of foundational papers addressing the relationship between religious education and postcolonial theory – Gearon (2001a) ‘The Imagined Other: Postcolonial Theory and Religious Education’; Gearon (2001b) ‘A Spirituality of Dissent: Religion, Culture and Postcolonial Criticism’; Gearon (2002a) ‘Human Rights and Religious Education: Some Postcolonial Perspectives’ – he has recently led an international team (UK, Finland, Sweden, South Africa) as Guest Editor of the British Journal of Religious Education, for a high profile special issue on religion and education in postcolonial context (Gearon, Kuusisto, Matemba, Benjamin, Du Preez, Koirikivi, and Simmonds, 2020).

As Principal Investigator, Liam has led funded research projects with the Academy of Finland, the Arts and Humanities Research Council, the British Academy, the Leverhulme Trust, the Nuffield Foundation, the Philosophy of Education Society of Great Britain, and the Society for Educational Studies, a career total of funding exceeding £5,000,000, including a £4.5 million grant to establish a centre for citizenship and human rights at the University of Surrey Roehampton.

Doctoral supervision and Graduate teaching

 PGCE Religious Education (Subject lead)

  • Masters in Learning and Teaching (Subject lead)
  • Comparative and International Education

EXTERNAL POSTS

2020- Docent, Helsinki University, Finland

2020- Extraordinary Professor, Faculty of Education, North-West University, South Africa

2019-2021 Visiting Professor, Irish Institute of Catholic Studies, MIC, Limerick, Ireland

2012-2020 Conjoint Professor, Newcastle University, Australia

2019-2023 Honorary Senior Research Fellow, School of Education, University of Birmingham

 

PREVIOUS EXTERNAL POSTS

2011-2018, Adjunct Professor, Australian Catholic University, Australia

2010-2011, Visiting Professor, Faculty of Education, University of Plymouth

2008-2010, Research Professor, Faculty of Education, University of Plymouth

2006-2008, Professor of Education, University of Roehampton

2000-2006, Reader in Education, University of Surrey Roehampton

2006-2008, Senior Fellow, Centre of Excellence in Human Rights, University of Surrey Roehampton

2005-2008, Vice-President, International Human Rights Education Consortium, New York, USA

2001-2005, Director, Centre for Research in Human Rights, University of Surrey, Roehampton

1996-2000, Senior Lecturer, Faculty of Education, Roehampton, London

 

UK RESEARCH COUNCIL PEER REVIEW COLLEGES

AHRC Expert Group on Covid Research Group and Research Grant Panel ‘Introducer’

AHRC Peer Review College (2019 Gold Standard award, for ‘Recognition of significant contributions to the AHRC Peer Review College’)

ESRC Peer Review College

Universities UK Peer Review College Global Challenges Research Fund (GCRF)

 

INTERNATIONAL RESEARCH COUNCIL PEER REVIEWER

Academy of Finland

Austrian Science Fund (FWF)

EU 7th Framework Program for Research
Hong Kong Research Grants Council’s Public Policy Research Fund (PPR)

Irish Research Council

John Templeton Foundation

National Research Foundation, South Africa

 

PROFESSIONAL AND RESEARCH ASSOCIATIONS

Association of University Lecturers in Religion and Education (AULRE, co-founder and former Chair)

British Educational Research Association (BERA)

European Educational Research Association (EERA)

International Seminar on Religious Education and Values (ISREV)

Philosophy of Education Society of Great Britain (PESGB)

Society for Research in Higher Education (SRHE)
Society for Educational Studies (SES)

Also:

Executive (2019-2022) Oxford Intelligence Group, Nuffield College, University of Oxford

Fellow, Higher Education Academy (FHEA)

Fellow, Royal Society of Arts (FRSA)

Cambridge Intelligence Seminar

 

OTHER ADMINISTRATIVE ROLES AT OXFORD

Elected by Congregation to the University of Oxford Prevent Steering Group

Social Sciences Divisional representative of the Permanent Private Halls Supervisory Committee (PPHSC), a senior committee of the University of Oxford overseeing governance of Blackfriars; Campion Hall; Regent’s Park College; St Benet’s; St Stephen’s House; Wycliffe Hall.

Member, Central University Research Ethics Committee (CUREC)

Chair, Department of Education Research Ethics Committee (DREC)

Member, Inter-Divisional Social Sciences and Humanities Research Ethics Committee (IDREC)

Chair, Bodleian Library Education Committee

Member and occasional Chair Social Sciences Divisional Library Committee

Education Advisory Group, Christ Church College, Oxford

 

EDITORSHIP OF INTERNATIONAL JOURNALS

Gearon, L. (Guest editor) (2021) Literature and Security, Special Issue, Text Matters: A Journal of Literature, Theory and Culture, with a planned formal launch at Lodz, Poland.

Gearon, L., (Lead Guest Editor with editorial team) Kuusisto, A., Matemba, Y., Benjamin, S., Du Preez, P., Koirikivi, P., Simmonds, S. (2020) Decolonising the Religious Education Curriculum: International Perspectives in Theory, Research, and Practice, Special Issue, British Journal of Religious Education.

Gearon, L. (Guest Editor) (2019) Special Issue of Religions 10 (1) on Religion, Security, Education.

Gearon, L. and Williams, E. (Guest Editors) (2019) Special Issue of the British Journal of Educational Studies, Writers and their Education, 67 (3), 283–289.

Gearon, L. and Williams, E. (Guest Editors) (2018) Special Issue of Journal of Philosophy of Education on Philosophy, Literature and Education, 52 (4), 577-777.

Gearon, L. (Guest Editor) (2015) British Journal of Educational Studies, Special Issue, Education, Security and Intelligence Studies, 63 (3) 263-411.

Tirri, K., (Finland) Campbell, E. (Canada), Gearon, L. (UK), Lovat, T. (Australia) (Guest Editors) (2012) The Moral Core of Teaching, Education Research International.

Gearon, L. (Guest Editor) (2008) Citizenship, Human Rights and Religion, British Journal of Religious Education, 30 (2) 93-108.

Gearon, L. (Guest Editor) (2006) Children’s Spirituality and Children’s Rights, International Journal of Children’s Spirituality, 11 (2) 193-310.

Simon Marginson is  Emeritus Professor of Higher Education at the University of Oxford, Director of the ESRC/RE Centre for Global Higher Education (CGHE), and Editor-in-Chief of the journal Higher Education.

Simon led the ESRC Centre for Global Higher Education between November 2015 and April 2024. His research is focused primarily on global and international higher education, higher education in East Asia, the public and social contributions of higher education, and higher education and social equality. He is currently preparing an integrated theorisation of higher education. His scholarship is widely published and cited (Google h-index 67 in September 2019). Books include Higher Education and the Common Good (Melbourne University Publishing, 2016); High Participation Systems of Higher Education, edited with Brendan Cantwell and Anna Smolentseva (Oxford University Press, 2018); Changing Higher Education in East Asia, edited with Xin Xu (Bloomsbury, 2022) and Assessing the Contributions of Higher Education, edited with Brendan Cantwell, Daria Platonova and Anna Smolentseva (Edward Elgar, 2023).

Selected Publications
Books
  • Marginson, S. (2016).The Dream is Over: The crisis of Clark Kerr’s California Idea of higher education. Berkeley: University of California Press.
  • Marginson, S. (2016).Higher Education and the Common Good. Melbourne: Melbourne University Publishing.
  • Tran, L. & Marginson, S. (eds.). (2018).Internationalisation of Vietnamese Higher Education. Dordrecht: Springer Nature.
  • Carnoy, M., Froumin, I., Leshukov, O. & Marginson, S. (eds.). (2018) Higher Education in Federal Countries. New Delhi: Sage.
  • Cantwell, B., Marginson, S. & Smolentseva, A. (eds.). (2018) High Participation Systems of Higher Education. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
  • Callender, C., Locke, W. & Marginson, S. (eds.) (2020). Changing Higher Education for a Changing World. London: Bloomsbury.
  • Chattopadhyay, S., Marginson, S. & Varghese, N.V. (eds.) (2021). Changing Higher Education in India. London: Bloomsbury.
  • Marginson, S. & Xu, X. (eds.) (2022). Changing Higher Education in East Asia. (2022). London: Bloomsbury.
  • Marginson, S., Cantwell, B., Platonova, D. & Smolentseva, A. (eds.) (2023). Assessing the contributions of higher education. Cheltenham: Edward Elgar.
Recent Journal Papers
  • Marginson, S. (2016). The worldwide trend to high participation higher education: Dynamics of social stratification in inclusive systems. Higher Education, 72 (4), 413-435.
  • Marginson, S. (2018). Private/public in higher education: A synthesis of economic and political approaches. Studies in Higher Education, 43 (2), 322-337
  • Marginson, S. (2018) Global trends in higher education financing: The United Kingdom. International J. Educational Development, 58, 26-36
  • Marginson, S. (2018) National/global synergy in the development of higher education and science in China since 1978. Frontiers of Education in China, 13 (4), 486–512
  • Marginson, S. (2019) Limitations of human capital theory. Studies in Higher Education, 44 (2), 287-301
  • Marginson, S. and Yang, L. (2022). Individual and collective outcomes of higher education: A comparison of Anglo-American and Chinese approaches. Globalisation, Societies and Education, 20 (1), 1-32.
  • Marginson, S. (2022). ‘All things are in flux’: China in global science. Higher Education, 83 (4), 881-910.
  • Marginson, S. (2022). What drives global science? The four competing narratives. Studies in Higher Education, 47 (8), 1566-1584.
  • Marginson, S. (2022). Global science and national comparisons: Beyond bibliometrics and scientometrics. Comparative Education, 58 (2), 125-146.
  • Marginson, S. (2022). What is global higher education? Oxford Review of Education, 48 (4), 492-517.
  • Marginson S. (2022). Space and scale in higher education: The glonacal heuristic revisited. Higher Education, 84 (6),1365-1395.
  • Marginson, S. & Xu, X. (2023). Hegemony and inequality in global science: Problems of the center-periphery model. Comparative Education Review, 67 (1). https://doi.org/10.1086/722760
  • Marginson, S. (2023). Student self-formation: An emerging paradigm in higher education. Studies in Higher Education, https://doi.org/10.1080/03075079.2023.2252826 (2023).
  • Marginson, S. (2023). Limitations of the leading definition of ‘internationalisation’ of higher education: Is the idea wrong or is the fault in reality? Globalisation, Societies and Education, https://doi.org/10.1080/14767724.2023.2264223
  • Marginson, S. and Yang ,L. (2023). Has the public good been emptied out of higher education in England? Higher Education. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10734-023-01117-6

Maia Chankseliani is Associate Professor of Comparative and International Education at the University of Oxford where she leads a flagship master’s course in Comparative and International Education. She convenes the Comparative and International Education Research Group at the Department of Education.

Within comparative and international education, Maia Chankseliani works at the intersection of tertiary education and development. She researches societal, institutional, and policy forces that shape tertiary education and the potential of tertiary education and research for transforming societies.

Methodologically, she utilises both qualitative and quantitative methods. Her work often combines secondary data analysis with insights gathered through semi-structured interviews and contextualised case studies.

Maia Chankseliani has published four books in the field of comparative and international education: What Happened to the Soviet University? (2022), Building Research Capacity at Universities: Insights from Post-Soviet Countries (2022), Comparing Post-Socialist Transformations: Purposes, Policies, and Practices in Education (2018), and Fairness in Access to Higher Education in a Global Perspective: Reconciling Excellence, Efficiency, and Justice (2013).

She currently leads a major research project examining the impact of international mobility on world development (funded by the U.S. Department of State). Maia Chankseliani has worked on a number of externally funded research projects and consultancies involving the UK Government agencies responsible for education and skills, UKRI/ESRC, British Council, World Bank, Qatar Foundation, the European Commission.

With a background in education research, teaching, policy-making, leadership, and consultancy, Maia Chankseliani brings to her role extensive experience in diverse international settings. This breadth of experience informs her research and enables her to bridge theory and practice.

Maia Chankseliani engages with governments and gives academic and policy-relevant talks nationally and internationally. Her research regularly features in national and international media.

She holds a BA in Philology from Tbilisi State University (Georgia), an Ed. M in International Education Policy from Harvard University (USA), and a PhD in Education from the University of Cambridge (UK).

Maia Chankseliani serves as the Editor-in-Chief of the International Journal of Educational Research.

Aliya teaches on the Comparative and International Education MSc programme at our Department. She is also a Junior Research Fellow at Lady Margaret Hall. Her research focuses on young people and families’ experiences of education in turbulent times.

For example, educational challenges and rehabilitation during COVID-19 and after the 2022 floods in Pakistan. Her current geographical focus includes ethnically diverse communities (Pakistani and Bangladeshi) in England as well as marginalised communities in Pakistan.

Aliya’s PhD explored the complexities of gender and international education, and her current work focuses on decolonising educational research practices and the experience of Southern-ness globally. Aliya’s specialist areas are parental, mothers’ and young people’s perspectives of and aspirations for education, and their own modalities of agency to fulfil their dreams.

Aliya publishes on the topics of Southern epistemologies and methodologies and teaches on related topics of decolonisation of knowledge production and the politics of representation. She is currently leading multiple projects in England and Pakistan focusing on girls’ education, gender experiences of education, mothers’ perspectives on educating their children, teacher educators, displaced peoples experiences in England and Pakistan.

Aliya is accepting DPhil students interested in these areas:

  • Southern epistemologies and methodologies
  • The capability approach and social justice
  • Negative capability
  • Deconstruction of the silence/violence binary
  • Marginalised peoples’ perspectives
  • Intersectional experiences of marginalisation including those related with gender, race, ethnicity, indigeneity, queerness, disability, class and caste (among others)
  • Decolonisation of knowledge production and representation of the South
  • Qualitative methodologies
  • Theorising from the margins
  • Area focus South Asia particularly Pakistan and Afghanistan
  • Internal displacement

Aliya is the acting Deputy Chair of the United Kingdom Forum for International Education and Training (UKFIET) conference 2023.

Gates Cambridge Biography

 

Research Group Membership

 

Research Projects

1. ‘Understanding the impact of COVID-19 on learning experiences of secondary school going age children among Bangladeshi and Pakistani ethnic minority families’
Funder: Cambridge Humanities Research Grants Scheme
Research team: Professor Nidhi Singal and Dr Aliya Khalid
Status: Complete

2. Gendered Inequalities in Education and Capability Spaces for Women/Girls (and others) in Pakistan: Education and reconstruction after 2022 floods in Pakistan
Funder: British Association for International and Comparative Education (BAICE) Seedcorn Fund
Research team: Aliya Khalid, Soufia Siddiqui, Aditi Chidambaram, Indrani Sigamany
Status: Ongoing

3. Bridging the Local and Global: Women’s Spaces and Collectives’: On becoming caregivers and teachers: Immigrant mothers’ identities and philosophies of education in England during COVID
Team members: Aliya Khalid, Jane Rooney and Ruth Houghton, Lavinia Kamphausen, Kate spencer-Bennet, Alana Farrel
Funder: The British Academy
Status: Complete

4. Collaborative development of faculty for Pakistan undergraduate Teacher Education Colleges: Durbeen and Oxford knowledge exchange project
Team members: Aliya Khalid, Ann Childs, Trevor Mutton, Ian Thompson, Jenni Ingram and Katharine Burn
Funder: Malala Fund
Status: Ongoing

Dr Karen Skilling is an Associate Professor at the Department of Education at the University of Oxford. Karen is currently the Deputy Director of Doctoral Research, Lead of the PGCE mathematics education at the Department of Education, and co-ordinates the Doctoral Teaching Fellows for teacher education. In 2020, Karen established the STEM Discussion Group and also convenes the Subject Pedagogy Group seminars.

Karen’s research interests include: student engagement and motivation in mathematics; integrated STEM learning and project-based STEM activities; and vignette methods. Karen currently sits on the Executive Committee of BSRLM, and is a journal Editor for the Teaching Education Journal (TEJ) and Research in Mathematics Education (RME). Karen has also been co-Editor for several special issues, and a topic study co-lead at the Congress of the European Society for Research in Mathematics Education (CERME). Karen is a Visiting Fellow at King’s College London and been an HEA Fellow since 2016.

Awards include: Australian Postgraduate Award (Industry) (APAI): funded PhD role attached to MYTEAM Project awarded by Australian Research Council (2008 –2012); Postdoctoral Research Fellowship: Department of Education, University of Oxford (2013-14); and nominations for Most Outstanding Contribution to Student Experience at King’s College London (2015, 2016, 2017).

David Mills is an Associate Professor and Director of the Centre for Global Higher Education (CGHE).

His current research focuses on the political economy of the global science system, and its impact on institutional research and publishing cultures in African universities. His most recent book is ‘Who Counts: Ghanaian Academic Publishing and Global Science’, co-written with colleagues from the University of Ghana and Oxford, and available open access from African Minds:  https://www.africanminds.co.za/who-counts/

Trained in Anthropology, and with inter-disciplinary research interests, David uses ethnographic methods to study the inequalities created by global higher education. He is particularly interested in African university research cultures and the role of diamond Open Access scholarly journals within knowledge ecosystems.

He welcomes enquiries from potential doctoral students interested in studying African Higher Education, as well as research and publishing cultures.

Liam Francis Gearon (BA, Hons, MA, MPhil, Cert He, PhD, FHEA, FRSA, Docent) is Associate Professor in Religious Education in the Department of Education, Senior Research Fellow at Harris Manchester College, University of Oxford; Docent, University of Helsinki, Finland; Honorary Senior Research Fellow at the School of Education, University of Birmingham, UK; Conjoint Professor at Newcastle University, Australia; Visiting Professor at the Irish Centre for Catholic Studies, MIC, Limerick, Ireland; Extraordinary Professor, North-West University, South Africa.

Liam Francis Gearon is Founder-Convenor of the Philosophy, Religion, Education Research Group, providing  a unique interdisciplinary contribution to the research culture of the Department of Education at the University of Oxford. The Philosophy, religion and education Research Group specifically forges theoretical and empirical interconnections between the arts, humanities, philosophy and the social sciences through the common focus of education. Contributions of this research group have been made to matters such as: theories of research policy and impact; the cultural value of research in the arts and humanities; research ethics; the intersection of epistemological and ethical domains in research in schools; religion, radicalisation and counter-terrorism in schools and universities; and the creation of distinctive sub-field of study at the interface of education, security and intelligence studies.

A specialist in the interdisciplinary study of religion in education, and particularly noted for the systematic philosophical and history of ideas analysis on the epistemological foundations of religious education, his framing of the paradigms of religion in education – scriptural-theological; phenomenological; psychological-experiential; philosophical-conceptual; social-cultural; political-historical – has contributed new insights to secularisation theory in numerous, some award-winning, monographs, such as MasterClass in Religious Education (Gearon, 2013); On Holy Ground (Gearon, 2015) [2016 Society of Education Studies Book Prize]; Religious Authority and the Arts: Conversations in Political Theology (Gearon, 2015); and State Religious Education and the State of the Religious Life (Gearon and Prud’homme, 2018).

His theorisations of the politicisation and securitisation of religion in education have been the subject of intense international debate for several years. Landmark publications on security in education – ‘The Counter-Terrorist Classroom’ (2013); ‘The Counter-Terrorist Classroom’ (2017); ‘Terrorism and Counter-Terrorism Policy and Research in UK Universities’ (2018): ‘Research Ethics in the Securitised University’ (Gearon and Parsons, 2019) and ‘The Kill Chain’ (Gearon, 2020) – have enabled empirical, methodological and theoretical advances on elites’ theory, the ethics of security and radicalisation research (Gearon and Kuusisto, 2018; Kuusisto and Gearon, 2017; Benjamin, Gearon, Kuusisto, Koirikivi, 2021).

With cognate research interests in security across all phases of education, Liam has over a decade collaboratively developed an interdisciplinary sub-field at the boundary of universities, security and intelligence studies, including research ethics in the securitised university (Gearon and Parsons, 2019). One of the defining outcomes here is Liam’s quarter of a million-word edited collection arising from the international Colloquium at Oriel College he convened in 2017, the Routledge International Handbook of Universities, Security and Intelligence Studies (Gearon, 2019). Interdisciplinary and inter-agency work in this area has included the Nuffield Foundation funded Universities and National Security: Research and Policy Collaborations 2019-2020, with a cross-disciplinary research team of 14 distinguished Co-Investigators.

With a significant Academy of Finland research grant (2018-2022) with Arniika Kuusisto (Stockholm/Helsinki/ Oxford), we oversee the research of two highly productive early career, post-doctoral researchers on radicalisation. This includes notable social and policy impacts such as the development of a national strategy around extremism through education for the Ministry of Justice in Finland (Activities | Growing up radical? | University of Helsinki). With substantial quantitative and qualitative data gathered, the project has already produced a substantial number of quality research outputs (Publications | Growing up radical? | University of Helsinki).

With a doctorate in English literature, Liam has also drawn on arts and humanities theoretical knowledge and methodological approaches to advance what are now intense cross-disciplinary debates around ‘decolonising the curriculum’ in religious education. From a series of foundational papers addressing the relationship between religious education and postcolonial theory – Gearon (2001a) ‘The Imagined Other: Postcolonial Theory and Religious Education’; Gearon (2001b) ‘A Spirituality of Dissent: Religion, Culture and Postcolonial Criticism’; Gearon (2002a) ‘Human Rights and Religious Education: Some Postcolonial Perspectives’ – he has recently led an international team (UK, Finland, Sweden, South Africa) as Guest Editor of the British Journal of Religious Education, for a high profile special issue on religion and education in postcolonial context (Gearon, Kuusisto, Matemba, Benjamin, Du Preez, Koirikivi, and Simmonds, 2020).

As Principal Investigator, Liam has led funded research projects with the Academy of Finland, the Arts and Humanities Research Council, the British Academy, the Leverhulme Trust, the Nuffield Foundation, the Philosophy of Education Society of Great Britain, and the Society for Educational Studies, a career total of funding exceeding £5,000,000, including a £4.5 million grant to establish a centre for citizenship and human rights at the University of Surrey Roehampton.

Doctoral supervision and Graduate teaching

 PGCE Religious Education (Subject lead)

  • Masters in Learning and Teaching (Subject lead)
  • Comparative and International Education

EXTERNAL POSTS

2020- Docent, Helsinki University, Finland

2020- Extraordinary Professor, Faculty of Education, North-West University, South Africa

2019-2021 Visiting Professor, Irish Institute of Catholic Studies, MIC, Limerick, Ireland

2012-2020 Conjoint Professor, Newcastle University, Australia

2019-2023 Honorary Senior Research Fellow, School of Education, University of Birmingham

 

PREVIOUS EXTERNAL POSTS

2011-2018, Adjunct Professor, Australian Catholic University, Australia

2010-2011, Visiting Professor, Faculty of Education, University of Plymouth

2008-2010, Research Professor, Faculty of Education, University of Plymouth

2006-2008, Professor of Education, University of Roehampton

2000-2006, Reader in Education, University of Surrey Roehampton

2006-2008, Senior Fellow, Centre of Excellence in Human Rights, University of Surrey Roehampton

2005-2008, Vice-President, International Human Rights Education Consortium, New York, USA

2001-2005, Director, Centre for Research in Human Rights, University of Surrey, Roehampton

1996-2000, Senior Lecturer, Faculty of Education, Roehampton, London

 

UK RESEARCH COUNCIL PEER REVIEW COLLEGES

AHRC Expert Group on Covid Research Group and Research Grant Panel ‘Introducer’

AHRC Peer Review College (2019 Gold Standard award, for ‘Recognition of significant contributions to the AHRC Peer Review College’)

ESRC Peer Review College

Universities UK Peer Review College Global Challenges Research Fund (GCRF)

 

INTERNATIONAL RESEARCH COUNCIL PEER REVIEWER

Academy of Finland

Austrian Science Fund (FWF)

EU 7th Framework Program for Research
Hong Kong Research Grants Council’s Public Policy Research Fund (PPR)

Irish Research Council

John Templeton Foundation

National Research Foundation, South Africa

 

PROFESSIONAL AND RESEARCH ASSOCIATIONS

Association of University Lecturers in Religion and Education (AULRE, co-founder and former Chair)

British Educational Research Association (BERA)

European Educational Research Association (EERA)

International Seminar on Religious Education and Values (ISREV)

Philosophy of Education Society of Great Britain (PESGB)

Society for Research in Higher Education (SRHE)
Society for Educational Studies (SES)

Also:

Executive (2019-2022) Oxford Intelligence Group, Nuffield College, University of Oxford

Fellow, Higher Education Academy (FHEA)

Fellow, Royal Society of Arts (FRSA)

Cambridge Intelligence Seminar

 

OTHER ADMINISTRATIVE ROLES AT OXFORD

Elected by Congregation to the University of Oxford Prevent Steering Group

Social Sciences Divisional representative of the Permanent Private Halls Supervisory Committee (PPHSC), a senior committee of the University of Oxford overseeing governance of Blackfriars; Campion Hall; Regent’s Park College; St Benet’s; St Stephen’s House; Wycliffe Hall.

Member, Central University Research Ethics Committee (CUREC)

Chair, Department of Education Research Ethics Committee (DREC)

Member, Inter-Divisional Social Sciences and Humanities Research Ethics Committee (IDREC)

Chair, Bodleian Library Education Committee

Member and occasional Chair Social Sciences Divisional Library Committee

Education Advisory Group, Christ Church College, Oxford

 

EDITORSHIP OF INTERNATIONAL JOURNALS

Gearon, L. (Guest editor) (2021) Literature and Security, Special Issue, Text Matters: A Journal of Literature, Theory and Culture, with a planned formal launch at Lodz, Poland.

Gearon, L., (Lead Guest Editor with editorial team) Kuusisto, A., Matemba, Y., Benjamin, S., Du Preez, P., Koirikivi, P., Simmonds, S. (2020) Decolonising the Religious Education Curriculum: International Perspectives in Theory, Research, and Practice, Special Issue, British Journal of Religious Education.

Gearon, L. (Guest Editor) (2019) Special Issue of Religions 10 (1) on Religion, Security, Education.

Gearon, L. and Williams, E. (Guest Editors) (2019) Special Issue of the British Journal of Educational Studies, Writers and their Education, 67 (3), 283–289.

Gearon, L. and Williams, E. (Guest Editors) (2018) Special Issue of Journal of Philosophy of Education on Philosophy, Literature and Education, 52 (4), 577-777.

Gearon, L. (Guest Editor) (2015) British Journal of Educational Studies, Special Issue, Education, Security and Intelligence Studies, 63 (3) 263-411.

Tirri, K., (Finland) Campbell, E. (Canada), Gearon, L. (UK), Lovat, T. (Australia) (Guest Editors) (2012) The Moral Core of Teaching, Education Research International.

Gearon, L. (Guest Editor) (2008) Citizenship, Human Rights and Religion, British Journal of Religious Education, 30 (2) 93-108.

Gearon, L. (Guest Editor) (2006) Children’s Spirituality and Children’s Rights, International Journal of Children’s Spirituality, 11 (2) 193-310.

Simon Marginson is  Emeritus Professor of Higher Education at the University of Oxford, Director of the ESRC/RE Centre for Global Higher Education (CGHE), and Editor-in-Chief of the journal Higher Education.

Simon led the ESRC Centre for Global Higher Education between November 2015 and April 2024. His research is focused primarily on global and international higher education, higher education in East Asia, the public and social contributions of higher education, and higher education and social equality. He is currently preparing an integrated theorisation of higher education. His scholarship is widely published and cited (Google h-index 67 in September 2019). Books include Higher Education and the Common Good (Melbourne University Publishing, 2016); High Participation Systems of Higher Education, edited with Brendan Cantwell and Anna Smolentseva (Oxford University Press, 2018); Changing Higher Education in East Asia, edited with Xin Xu (Bloomsbury, 2022) and Assessing the Contributions of Higher Education, edited with Brendan Cantwell, Daria Platonova and Anna Smolentseva (Edward Elgar, 2023).

Selected Publications
Books
  • Marginson, S. (2016).The Dream is Over: The crisis of Clark Kerr’s California Idea of higher education. Berkeley: University of California Press.
  • Marginson, S. (2016).Higher Education and the Common Good. Melbourne: Melbourne University Publishing.
  • Tran, L. & Marginson, S. (eds.). (2018).Internationalisation of Vietnamese Higher Education. Dordrecht: Springer Nature.
  • Carnoy, M., Froumin, I., Leshukov, O. & Marginson, S. (eds.). (2018) Higher Education in Federal Countries. New Delhi: Sage.
  • Cantwell, B., Marginson, S. & Smolentseva, A. (eds.). (2018) High Participation Systems of Higher Education. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
  • Callender, C., Locke, W. & Marginson, S. (eds.) (2020). Changing Higher Education for a Changing World. London: Bloomsbury.
  • Chattopadhyay, S., Marginson, S. & Varghese, N.V. (eds.) (2021). Changing Higher Education in India. London: Bloomsbury.
  • Marginson, S. & Xu, X. (eds.) (2022). Changing Higher Education in East Asia. (2022). London: Bloomsbury.
  • Marginson, S., Cantwell, B., Platonova, D. & Smolentseva, A. (eds.) (2023). Assessing the contributions of higher education. Cheltenham: Edward Elgar.
Recent Journal Papers
  • Marginson, S. (2016). The worldwide trend to high participation higher education: Dynamics of social stratification in inclusive systems. Higher Education, 72 (4), 413-435.
  • Marginson, S. (2018). Private/public in higher education: A synthesis of economic and political approaches. Studies in Higher Education, 43 (2), 322-337
  • Marginson, S. (2018) Global trends in higher education financing: The United Kingdom. International J. Educational Development, 58, 26-36
  • Marginson, S. (2018) National/global synergy in the development of higher education and science in China since 1978. Frontiers of Education in China, 13 (4), 486–512
  • Marginson, S. (2019) Limitations of human capital theory. Studies in Higher Education, 44 (2), 287-301
  • Marginson, S. and Yang, L. (2022). Individual and collective outcomes of higher education: A comparison of Anglo-American and Chinese approaches. Globalisation, Societies and Education, 20 (1), 1-32.
  • Marginson, S. (2022). ‘All things are in flux’: China in global science. Higher Education, 83 (4), 881-910.
  • Marginson, S. (2022). What drives global science? The four competing narratives. Studies in Higher Education, 47 (8), 1566-1584.
  • Marginson, S. (2022). Global science and national comparisons: Beyond bibliometrics and scientometrics. Comparative Education, 58 (2), 125-146.
  • Marginson, S. (2022). What is global higher education? Oxford Review of Education, 48 (4), 492-517.
  • Marginson S. (2022). Space and scale in higher education: The glonacal heuristic revisited. Higher Education, 84 (6),1365-1395.
  • Marginson, S. & Xu, X. (2023). Hegemony and inequality in global science: Problems of the center-periphery model. Comparative Education Review, 67 (1). https://doi.org/10.1086/722760
  • Marginson, S. (2023). Student self-formation: An emerging paradigm in higher education. Studies in Higher Education, https://doi.org/10.1080/03075079.2023.2252826 (2023).
  • Marginson, S. (2023). Limitations of the leading definition of ‘internationalisation’ of higher education: Is the idea wrong or is the fault in reality? Globalisation, Societies and Education, https://doi.org/10.1080/14767724.2023.2264223
  • Marginson, S. and Yang ,L. (2023). Has the public good been emptied out of higher education in England? Higher Education. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10734-023-01117-6

Maia Chankseliani is Associate Professor of Comparative and International Education at the University of Oxford where she leads a flagship master’s course in Comparative and International Education. She convenes the Comparative and International Education Research Group at the Department of Education.

Within comparative and international education, Maia Chankseliani works at the intersection of tertiary education and development. She researches societal, institutional, and policy forces that shape tertiary education and the potential of tertiary education and research for transforming societies.

Methodologically, she utilises both qualitative and quantitative methods. Her work often combines secondary data analysis with insights gathered through semi-structured interviews and contextualised case studies.

Maia Chankseliani has published four books in the field of comparative and international education: What Happened to the Soviet University? (2022), Building Research Capacity at Universities: Insights from Post-Soviet Countries (2022), Comparing Post-Socialist Transformations: Purposes, Policies, and Practices in Education (2018), and Fairness in Access to Higher Education in a Global Perspective: Reconciling Excellence, Efficiency, and Justice (2013).

She currently leads a major research project examining the impact of international mobility on world development (funded by the U.S. Department of State). Maia Chankseliani has worked on a number of externally funded research projects and consultancies involving the UK Government agencies responsible for education and skills, UKRI/ESRC, British Council, World Bank, Qatar Foundation, the European Commission.

With a background in education research, teaching, policy-making, leadership, and consultancy, Maia Chankseliani brings to her role extensive experience in diverse international settings. This breadth of experience informs her research and enables her to bridge theory and practice.

Maia Chankseliani engages with governments and gives academic and policy-relevant talks nationally and internationally. Her research regularly features in national and international media.

She holds a BA in Philology from Tbilisi State University (Georgia), an Ed. M in International Education Policy from Harvard University (USA), and a PhD in Education from the University of Cambridge (UK).

Maia Chankseliani serves as the Editor-in-Chief of the International Journal of Educational Research.

Aliya teaches on the Comparative and International Education MSc programme at our Department. She is also a Junior Research Fellow at Lady Margaret Hall. Her research focuses on young people and families’ experiences of education in turbulent times.

For example, educational challenges and rehabilitation during COVID-19 and after the 2022 floods in Pakistan. Her current geographical focus includes ethnically diverse communities (Pakistani and Bangladeshi) in England as well as marginalised communities in Pakistan.

Aliya’s PhD explored the complexities of gender and international education, and her current work focuses on decolonising educational research practices and the experience of Southern-ness globally. Aliya’s specialist areas are parental, mothers’ and young people’s perspectives of and aspirations for education, and their own modalities of agency to fulfil their dreams.

Aliya publishes on the topics of Southern epistemologies and methodologies and teaches on related topics of decolonisation of knowledge production and the politics of representation. She is currently leading multiple projects in England and Pakistan focusing on girls’ education, gender experiences of education, mothers’ perspectives on educating their children, teacher educators, displaced peoples experiences in England and Pakistan.

Aliya is accepting DPhil students interested in these areas:

  • Southern epistemologies and methodologies
  • The capability approach and social justice
  • Negative capability
  • Deconstruction of the silence/violence binary
  • Marginalised peoples’ perspectives
  • Intersectional experiences of marginalisation including those related with gender, race, ethnicity, indigeneity, queerness, disability, class and caste (among others)
  • Decolonisation of knowledge production and representation of the South
  • Qualitative methodologies
  • Theorising from the margins
  • Area focus South Asia particularly Pakistan and Afghanistan
  • Internal displacement

Aliya is the acting Deputy Chair of the United Kingdom Forum for International Education and Training (UKFIET) conference 2023.

Gates Cambridge Biography

 

Research Group Membership

 

Research Projects

1. ‘Understanding the impact of COVID-19 on learning experiences of secondary school going age children among Bangladeshi and Pakistani ethnic minority families’
Funder: Cambridge Humanities Research Grants Scheme
Research team: Professor Nidhi Singal and Dr Aliya Khalid
Status: Complete

2. Gendered Inequalities in Education and Capability Spaces for Women/Girls (and others) in Pakistan: Education and reconstruction after 2022 floods in Pakistan
Funder: British Association for International and Comparative Education (BAICE) Seedcorn Fund
Research team: Aliya Khalid, Soufia Siddiqui, Aditi Chidambaram, Indrani Sigamany
Status: Ongoing

3. Bridging the Local and Global: Women’s Spaces and Collectives’: On becoming caregivers and teachers: Immigrant mothers’ identities and philosophies of education in England during COVID
Team members: Aliya Khalid, Jane Rooney and Ruth Houghton, Lavinia Kamphausen, Kate spencer-Bennet, Alana Farrel
Funder: The British Academy
Status: Complete

4. Collaborative development of faculty for Pakistan undergraduate Teacher Education Colleges: Durbeen and Oxford knowledge exchange project
Team members: Aliya Khalid, Ann Childs, Trevor Mutton, Ian Thompson, Jenni Ingram and Katharine Burn
Funder: Malala Fund
Status: Ongoing

Dr Karen Skilling is an Associate Professor at the Department of Education at the University of Oxford. Karen is currently the Deputy Director of Doctoral Research, Lead of the PGCE mathematics education at the Department of Education, and co-ordinates the Doctoral Teaching Fellows for teacher education. In 2020, Karen established the STEM Discussion Group and also convenes the Subject Pedagogy Group seminars.

Karen’s research interests include: student engagement and motivation in mathematics; integrated STEM learning and project-based STEM activities; and vignette methods. Karen currently sits on the Executive Committee of BSRLM, and is a journal Editor for the Teaching Education Journal (TEJ) and Research in Mathematics Education (RME). Karen has also been co-Editor for several special issues, and a topic study co-lead at the Congress of the European Society for Research in Mathematics Education (CERME). Karen is a Visiting Fellow at King’s College London and been an HEA Fellow since 2016.

Awards include: Australian Postgraduate Award (Industry) (APAI): funded PhD role attached to MYTEAM Project awarded by Australian Research Council (2008 –2012); Postdoctoral Research Fellowship: Department of Education, University of Oxford (2013-14); and nominations for Most Outstanding Contribution to Student Experience at King’s College London (2015, 2016, 2017).

David Mills is an Associate Professor and Director of the Centre for Global Higher Education (CGHE).

His current research focuses on the political economy of the global science system, and its impact on institutional research and publishing cultures in African universities. His most recent book is ‘Who Counts: Ghanaian Academic Publishing and Global Science’, co-written with colleagues from the University of Ghana and Oxford, and available open access from African Minds:  https://www.africanminds.co.za/who-counts/

Trained in Anthropology, and with inter-disciplinary research interests, David uses ethnographic methods to study the inequalities created by global higher education. He is particularly interested in African university research cultures and the role of diamond Open Access scholarly journals within knowledge ecosystems.

He welcomes enquiries from potential doctoral students interested in studying African Higher Education, as well as research and publishing cultures.

Liam Francis Gearon (BA, Hons, MA, MPhil, Cert He, PhD, FHEA, FRSA, Docent) is Associate Professor in Religious Education in the Department of Education, Senior Research Fellow at Harris Manchester College, University of Oxford; Docent, University of Helsinki, Finland; Honorary Senior Research Fellow at the School of Education, University of Birmingham, UK; Conjoint Professor at Newcastle University, Australia; Visiting Professor at the Irish Centre for Catholic Studies, MIC, Limerick, Ireland; Extraordinary Professor, North-West University, South Africa.

Liam Francis Gearon is Founder-Convenor of the Philosophy, Religion, Education Research Group, providing  a unique interdisciplinary contribution to the research culture of the Department of Education at the University of Oxford. The Philosophy, religion and education Research Group specifically forges theoretical and empirical interconnections between the arts, humanities, philosophy and the social sciences through the common focus of education. Contributions of this research group have been made to matters such as: theories of research policy and impact; the cultural value of research in the arts and humanities; research ethics; the intersection of epistemological and ethical domains in research in schools; religion, radicalisation and counter-terrorism in schools and universities; and the creation of distinctive sub-field of study at the interface of education, security and intelligence studies.

A specialist in the interdisciplinary study of religion in education, and particularly noted for the systematic philosophical and history of ideas analysis on the epistemological foundations of religious education, his framing of the paradigms of religion in education – scriptural-theological; phenomenological; psychological-experiential; philosophical-conceptual; social-cultural; political-historical – has contributed new insights to secularisation theory in numerous, some award-winning, monographs, such as MasterClass in Religious Education (Gearon, 2013); On Holy Ground (Gearon, 2015) [2016 Society of Education Studies Book Prize]; Religious Authority and the Arts: Conversations in Political Theology (Gearon, 2015); and State Religious Education and the State of the Religious Life (Gearon and Prud’homme, 2018).

His theorisations of the politicisation and securitisation of religion in education have been the subject of intense international debate for several years. Landmark publications on security in education – ‘The Counter-Terrorist Classroom’ (2013); ‘The Counter-Terrorist Classroom’ (2017); ‘Terrorism and Counter-Terrorism Policy and Research in UK Universities’ (2018): ‘Research Ethics in the Securitised University’ (Gearon and Parsons, 2019) and ‘The Kill Chain’ (Gearon, 2020) – have enabled empirical, methodological and theoretical advances on elites’ theory, the ethics of security and radicalisation research (Gearon and Kuusisto, 2018; Kuusisto and Gearon, 2017; Benjamin, Gearon, Kuusisto, Koirikivi, 2021).

With cognate research interests in security across all phases of education, Liam has over a decade collaboratively developed an interdisciplinary sub-field at the boundary of universities, security and intelligence studies, including research ethics in the securitised university (Gearon and Parsons, 2019). One of the defining outcomes here is Liam’s quarter of a million-word edited collection arising from the international Colloquium at Oriel College he convened in 2017, the Routledge International Handbook of Universities, Security and Intelligence Studies (Gearon, 2019). Interdisciplinary and inter-agency work in this area has included the Nuffield Foundation funded Universities and National Security: Research and Policy Collaborations 2019-2020, with a cross-disciplinary research team of 14 distinguished Co-Investigators.

With a significant Academy of Finland research grant (2018-2022) with Arniika Kuusisto (Stockholm/Helsinki/ Oxford), we oversee the research of two highly productive early career, post-doctoral researchers on radicalisation. This includes notable social and policy impacts such as the development of a national strategy around extremism through education for the Ministry of Justice in Finland (Activities | Growing up radical? | University of Helsinki). With substantial quantitative and qualitative data gathered, the project has already produced a substantial number of quality research outputs (Publications | Growing up radical? | University of Helsinki).

With a doctorate in English literature, Liam has also drawn on arts and humanities theoretical knowledge and methodological approaches to advance what are now intense cross-disciplinary debates around ‘decolonising the curriculum’ in religious education. From a series of foundational papers addressing the relationship between religious education and postcolonial theory – Gearon (2001a) ‘The Imagined Other: Postcolonial Theory and Religious Education’; Gearon (2001b) ‘A Spirituality of Dissent: Religion, Culture and Postcolonial Criticism’; Gearon (2002a) ‘Human Rights and Religious Education: Some Postcolonial Perspectives’ – he has recently led an international team (UK, Finland, Sweden, South Africa) as Guest Editor of the British Journal of Religious Education, for a high profile special issue on religion and education in postcolonial context (Gearon, Kuusisto, Matemba, Benjamin, Du Preez, Koirikivi, and Simmonds, 2020).

As Principal Investigator, Liam has led funded research projects with the Academy of Finland, the Arts and Humanities Research Council, the British Academy, the Leverhulme Trust, the Nuffield Foundation, the Philosophy of Education Society of Great Britain, and the Society for Educational Studies, a career total of funding exceeding £5,000,000, including a £4.5 million grant to establish a centre for citizenship and human rights at the University of Surrey Roehampton.

Doctoral supervision and Graduate teaching

 PGCE Religious Education (Subject lead)

  • Masters in Learning and Teaching (Subject lead)
  • Comparative and International Education

EXTERNAL POSTS

2020- Docent, Helsinki University, Finland

2020- Extraordinary Professor, Faculty of Education, North-West University, South Africa

2019-2021 Visiting Professor, Irish Institute of Catholic Studies, MIC, Limerick, Ireland

2012-2020 Conjoint Professor, Newcastle University, Australia

2019-2023 Honorary Senior Research Fellow, School of Education, University of Birmingham

 

PREVIOUS EXTERNAL POSTS

2011-2018, Adjunct Professor, Australian Catholic University, Australia

2010-2011, Visiting Professor, Faculty of Education, University of Plymouth

2008-2010, Research Professor, Faculty of Education, University of Plymouth

2006-2008, Professor of Education, University of Roehampton

2000-2006, Reader in Education, University of Surrey Roehampton

2006-2008, Senior Fellow, Centre of Excellence in Human Rights, University of Surrey Roehampton

2005-2008, Vice-President, International Human Rights Education Consortium, New York, USA

2001-2005, Director, Centre for Research in Human Rights, University of Surrey, Roehampton

1996-2000, Senior Lecturer, Faculty of Education, Roehampton, London

 

UK RESEARCH COUNCIL PEER REVIEW COLLEGES

AHRC Expert Group on Covid Research Group and Research Grant Panel ‘Introducer’

AHRC Peer Review College (2019 Gold Standard award, for ‘Recognition of significant contributions to the AHRC Peer Review College’)

ESRC Peer Review College

Universities UK Peer Review College Global Challenges Research Fund (GCRF)

 

INTERNATIONAL RESEARCH COUNCIL PEER REVIEWER

Academy of Finland

Austrian Science Fund (FWF)

EU 7th Framework Program for Research
Hong Kong Research Grants Council’s Public Policy Research Fund (PPR)

Irish Research Council

John Templeton Foundation

National Research Foundation, South Africa

 

PROFESSIONAL AND RESEARCH ASSOCIATIONS

Association of University Lecturers in Religion and Education (AULRE, co-founder and former Chair)

British Educational Research Association (BERA)

European Educational Research Association (EERA)

International Seminar on Religious Education and Values (ISREV)

Philosophy of Education Society of Great Britain (PESGB)

Society for Research in Higher Education (SRHE)
Society for Educational Studies (SES)

Also:

Executive (2019-2022) Oxford Intelligence Group, Nuffield College, University of Oxford

Fellow, Higher Education Academy (FHEA)

Fellow, Royal Society of Arts (FRSA)

Cambridge Intelligence Seminar

 

OTHER ADMINISTRATIVE ROLES AT OXFORD

Elected by Congregation to the University of Oxford Prevent Steering Group

Social Sciences Divisional representative of the Permanent Private Halls Supervisory Committee (PPHSC), a senior committee of the University of Oxford overseeing governance of Blackfriars; Campion Hall; Regent’s Park College; St Benet’s; St Stephen’s House; Wycliffe Hall.

Member, Central University Research Ethics Committee (CUREC)

Chair, Department of Education Research Ethics Committee (DREC)

Member, Inter-Divisional Social Sciences and Humanities Research Ethics Committee (IDREC)

Chair, Bodleian Library Education Committee

Member and occasional Chair Social Sciences Divisional Library Committee

Education Advisory Group, Christ Church College, Oxford

 

EDITORSHIP OF INTERNATIONAL JOURNALS

Gearon, L. (Guest editor) (2021) Literature and Security, Special Issue, Text Matters: A Journal of Literature, Theory and Culture, with a planned formal launch at Lodz, Poland.

Gearon, L., (Lead Guest Editor with editorial team) Kuusisto, A., Matemba, Y., Benjamin, S., Du Preez, P., Koirikivi, P., Simmonds, S. (2020) Decolonising the Religious Education Curriculum: International Perspectives in Theory, Research, and Practice, Special Issue, British Journal of Religious Education.

Gearon, L. (Guest Editor) (2019) Special Issue of Religions 10 (1) on Religion, Security, Education.

Gearon, L. and Williams, E. (Guest Editors) (2019) Special Issue of the British Journal of Educational Studies, Writers and their Education, 67 (3), 283–289.

Gearon, L. and Williams, E. (Guest Editors) (2018) Special Issue of Journal of Philosophy of Education on Philosophy, Literature and Education, 52 (4), 577-777.

Gearon, L. (Guest Editor) (2015) British Journal of Educational Studies, Special Issue, Education, Security and Intelligence Studies, 63 (3) 263-411.

Tirri, K., (Finland) Campbell, E. (Canada), Gearon, L. (UK), Lovat, T. (Australia) (Guest Editors) (2012) The Moral Core of Teaching, Education Research International.

Gearon, L. (Guest Editor) (2008) Citizenship, Human Rights and Religion, British Journal of Religious Education, 30 (2) 93-108.

Gearon, L. (Guest Editor) (2006) Children’s Spirituality and Children’s Rights, International Journal of Children’s Spirituality, 11 (2) 193-310.

Simon Marginson is  Emeritus Professor of Higher Education at the University of Oxford, Director of the ESRC/RE Centre for Global Higher Education (CGHE), and Editor-in-Chief of the journal Higher Education.

Simon led the ESRC Centre for Global Higher Education between November 2015 and April 2024. His research is focused primarily on global and international higher education, higher education in East Asia, the public and social contributions of higher education, and higher education and social equality. He is currently preparing an integrated theorisation of higher education. His scholarship is widely published and cited (Google h-index 67 in September 2019). Books include Higher Education and the Common Good (Melbourne University Publishing, 2016); High Participation Systems of Higher Education, edited with Brendan Cantwell and Anna Smolentseva (Oxford University Press, 2018); Changing Higher Education in East Asia, edited with Xin Xu (Bloomsbury, 2022) and Assessing the Contributions of Higher Education, edited with Brendan Cantwell, Daria Platonova and Anna Smolentseva (Edward Elgar, 2023).

Selected Publications
Books
  • Marginson, S. (2016).The Dream is Over: The crisis of Clark Kerr’s California Idea of higher education. Berkeley: University of California Press.
  • Marginson, S. (2016).Higher Education and the Common Good. Melbourne: Melbourne University Publishing.
  • Tran, L. & Marginson, S. (eds.). (2018).Internationalisation of Vietnamese Higher Education. Dordrecht: Springer Nature.
  • Carnoy, M., Froumin, I., Leshukov, O. & Marginson, S. (eds.). (2018) Higher Education in Federal Countries. New Delhi: Sage.
  • Cantwell, B., Marginson, S. & Smolentseva, A. (eds.). (2018) High Participation Systems of Higher Education. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
  • Callender, C., Locke, W. & Marginson, S. (eds.) (2020). Changing Higher Education for a Changing World. London: Bloomsbury.
  • Chattopadhyay, S., Marginson, S. & Varghese, N.V. (eds.) (2021). Changing Higher Education in India. London: Bloomsbury.
  • Marginson, S. & Xu, X. (eds.) (2022). Changing Higher Education in East Asia. (2022). London: Bloomsbury.
  • Marginson, S., Cantwell, B., Platonova, D. & Smolentseva, A. (eds.) (2023). Assessing the contributions of higher education. Cheltenham: Edward Elgar.
Recent Journal Papers
  • Marginson, S. (2016). The worldwide trend to high participation higher education: Dynamics of social stratification in inclusive systems. Higher Education, 72 (4), 413-435.
  • Marginson, S. (2018). Private/public in higher education: A synthesis of economic and political approaches. Studies in Higher Education, 43 (2), 322-337
  • Marginson, S. (2018) Global trends in higher education financing: The United Kingdom. International J. Educational Development, 58, 26-36
  • Marginson, S. (2018) National/global synergy in the development of higher education and science in China since 1978. Frontiers of Education in China, 13 (4), 486–512
  • Marginson, S. (2019) Limitations of human capital theory. Studies in Higher Education, 44 (2), 287-301
  • Marginson, S. and Yang, L. (2022). Individual and collective outcomes of higher education: A comparison of Anglo-American and Chinese approaches. Globalisation, Societies and Education, 20 (1), 1-32.
  • Marginson, S. (2022). ‘All things are in flux’: China in global science. Higher Education, 83 (4), 881-910.
  • Marginson, S. (2022). What drives global science? The four competing narratives. Studies in Higher Education, 47 (8), 1566-1584.
  • Marginson, S. (2022). Global science and national comparisons: Beyond bibliometrics and scientometrics. Comparative Education, 58 (2), 125-146.
  • Marginson, S. (2022). What is global higher education? Oxford Review of Education, 48 (4), 492-517.
  • Marginson S. (2022). Space and scale in higher education: The glonacal heuristic revisited. Higher Education, 84 (6),1365-1395.
  • Marginson, S. & Xu, X. (2023). Hegemony and inequality in global science: Problems of the center-periphery model. Comparative Education Review, 67 (1). https://doi.org/10.1086/722760
  • Marginson, S. (2023). Student self-formation: An emerging paradigm in higher education. Studies in Higher Education, https://doi.org/10.1080/03075079.2023.2252826 (2023).
  • Marginson, S. (2023). Limitations of the leading definition of ‘internationalisation’ of higher education: Is the idea wrong or is the fault in reality? Globalisation, Societies and Education, https://doi.org/10.1080/14767724.2023.2264223
  • Marginson, S. and Yang ,L. (2023). Has the public good been emptied out of higher education in England? Higher Education. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10734-023-01117-6

Maia Chankseliani is Associate Professor of Comparative and International Education at the University of Oxford where she leads a flagship master’s course in Comparative and International Education. She convenes the Comparative and International Education Research Group at the Department of Education.

Within comparative and international education, Maia Chankseliani works at the intersection of tertiary education and development. She researches societal, institutional, and policy forces that shape tertiary education and the potential of tertiary education and research for transforming societies.

Methodologically, she utilises both qualitative and quantitative methods. Her work often combines secondary data analysis with insights gathered through semi-structured interviews and contextualised case studies.

Maia Chankseliani has published four books in the field of comparative and international education: What Happened to the Soviet University? (2022), Building Research Capacity at Universities: Insights from Post-Soviet Countries (2022), Comparing Post-Socialist Transformations: Purposes, Policies, and Practices in Education (2018), and Fairness in Access to Higher Education in a Global Perspective: Reconciling Excellence, Efficiency, and Justice (2013).

She currently leads a major research project examining the impact of international mobility on world development (funded by the U.S. Department of State). Maia Chankseliani has worked on a number of externally funded research projects and consultancies involving the UK Government agencies responsible for education and skills, UKRI/ESRC, British Council, World Bank, Qatar Foundation, the European Commission.

With a background in education research, teaching, policy-making, leadership, and consultancy, Maia Chankseliani brings to her role extensive experience in diverse international settings. This breadth of experience informs her research and enables her to bridge theory and practice.

Maia Chankseliani engages with governments and gives academic and policy-relevant talks nationally and internationally. Her research regularly features in national and international media.

She holds a BA in Philology from Tbilisi State University (Georgia), an Ed. M in International Education Policy from Harvard University (USA), and a PhD in Education from the University of Cambridge (UK).

Maia Chankseliani serves as the Editor-in-Chief of the International Journal of Educational Research.

Aliya teaches on the Comparative and International Education MSc programme at our Department. She is also a Junior Research Fellow at Lady Margaret Hall. Her research focuses on young people and families’ experiences of education in turbulent times.

For example, educational challenges and rehabilitation during COVID-19 and after the 2022 floods in Pakistan. Her current geographical focus includes ethnically diverse communities (Pakistani and Bangladeshi) in England as well as marginalised communities in Pakistan.

Aliya’s PhD explored the complexities of gender and international education, and her current work focuses on decolonising educational research practices and the experience of Southern-ness globally. Aliya’s specialist areas are parental, mothers’ and young people’s perspectives of and aspirations for education, and their own modalities of agency to fulfil their dreams.

Aliya publishes on the topics of Southern epistemologies and methodologies and teaches on related topics of decolonisation of knowledge production and the politics of representation. She is currently leading multiple projects in England and Pakistan focusing on girls’ education, gender experiences of education, mothers’ perspectives on educating their children, teacher educators, displaced peoples experiences in England and Pakistan.

Aliya is accepting DPhil students interested in these areas:

  • Southern epistemologies and methodologies
  • The capability approach and social justice
  • Negative capability
  • Deconstruction of the silence/violence binary
  • Marginalised peoples’ perspectives
  • Intersectional experiences of marginalisation including those related with gender, race, ethnicity, indigeneity, queerness, disability, class and caste (among others)
  • Decolonisation of knowledge production and representation of the South
  • Qualitative methodologies
  • Theorising from the margins
  • Area focus South Asia particularly Pakistan and Afghanistan
  • Internal displacement

Aliya is the acting Deputy Chair of the United Kingdom Forum for International Education and Training (UKFIET) conference 2023.

Gates Cambridge Biography

 

Research Group Membership

 

Research Projects

1. ‘Understanding the impact of COVID-19 on learning experiences of secondary school going age children among Bangladeshi and Pakistani ethnic minority families’
Funder: Cambridge Humanities Research Grants Scheme
Research team: Professor Nidhi Singal and Dr Aliya Khalid
Status: Complete

2. Gendered Inequalities in Education and Capability Spaces for Women/Girls (and others) in Pakistan: Education and reconstruction after 2022 floods in Pakistan
Funder: British Association for International and Comparative Education (BAICE) Seedcorn Fund
Research team: Aliya Khalid, Soufia Siddiqui, Aditi Chidambaram, Indrani Sigamany
Status: Ongoing

3. Bridging the Local and Global: Women’s Spaces and Collectives’: On becoming caregivers and teachers: Immigrant mothers’ identities and philosophies of education in England during COVID
Team members: Aliya Khalid, Jane Rooney and Ruth Houghton, Lavinia Kamphausen, Kate spencer-Bennet, Alana Farrel
Funder: The British Academy
Status: Complete

4. Collaborative development of faculty for Pakistan undergraduate Teacher Education Colleges: Durbeen and Oxford knowledge exchange project
Team members: Aliya Khalid, Ann Childs, Trevor Mutton, Ian Thompson, Jenni Ingram and Katharine Burn
Funder: Malala Fund
Status: Ongoing

Dr Karen Skilling is an Associate Professor at the Department of Education at the University of Oxford. Karen is currently the Deputy Director of Doctoral Research, Lead of the PGCE mathematics education at the Department of Education, and co-ordinates the Doctoral Teaching Fellows for teacher education. In 2020, Karen established the STEM Discussion Group and also convenes the Subject Pedagogy Group seminars.

Karen’s research interests include: student engagement and motivation in mathematics; integrated STEM learning and project-based STEM activities; and vignette methods. Karen currently sits on the Executive Committee of BSRLM, and is a journal Editor for the Teaching Education Journal (TEJ) and Research in Mathematics Education (RME). Karen has also been co-Editor for several special issues, and a topic study co-lead at the Congress of the European Society for Research in Mathematics Education (CERME). Karen is a Visiting Fellow at King’s College London and been an HEA Fellow since 2016.

Awards include: Australian Postgraduate Award (Industry) (APAI): funded PhD role attached to MYTEAM Project awarded by Australian Research Council (2008 –2012); Postdoctoral Research Fellowship: Department of Education, University of Oxford (2013-14); and nominations for Most Outstanding Contribution to Student Experience at King’s College London (2015, 2016, 2017).

David Mills is an Associate Professor and Director of the Centre for Global Higher Education (CGHE).

His current research focuses on the political economy of the global science system, and its impact on institutional research and publishing cultures in African universities. His most recent book is ‘Who Counts: Ghanaian Academic Publishing and Global Science’, co-written with colleagues from the University of Ghana and Oxford, and available open access from African Minds:  https://www.africanminds.co.za/who-counts/

Trained in Anthropology, and with inter-disciplinary research interests, David uses ethnographic methods to study the inequalities created by global higher education. He is particularly interested in African university research cultures and the role of diamond Open Access scholarly journals within knowledge ecosystems.

He welcomes enquiries from potential doctoral students interested in studying African Higher Education, as well as research and publishing cultures.

Liam Francis Gearon (BA, Hons, MA, MPhil, Cert He, PhD, FHEA, FRSA, Docent) is Associate Professor in Religious Education in the Department of Education, Senior Research Fellow at Harris Manchester College, University of Oxford; Docent, University of Helsinki, Finland; Honorary Senior Research Fellow at the School of Education, University of Birmingham, UK; Conjoint Professor at Newcastle University, Australia; Visiting Professor at the Irish Centre for Catholic Studies, MIC, Limerick, Ireland; Extraordinary Professor, North-West University, South Africa.

Liam Francis Gearon is Founder-Convenor of the Philosophy, Religion, Education Research Group, providing  a unique interdisciplinary contribution to the research culture of the Department of Education at the University of Oxford. The Philosophy, religion and education Research Group specifically forges theoretical and empirical interconnections between the arts, humanities, philosophy and the social sciences through the common focus of education. Contributions of this research group have been made to matters such as: theories of research policy and impact; the cultural value of research in the arts and humanities; research ethics; the intersection of epistemological and ethical domains in research in schools; religion, radicalisation and counter-terrorism in schools and universities; and the creation of distinctive sub-field of study at the interface of education, security and intelligence studies.

A specialist in the interdisciplinary study of religion in education, and particularly noted for the systematic philosophical and history of ideas analysis on the epistemological foundations of religious education, his framing of the paradigms of religion in education – scriptural-theological; phenomenological; psychological-experiential; philosophical-conceptual; social-cultural; political-historical – has contributed new insights to secularisation theory in numerous, some award-winning, monographs, such as MasterClass in Religious Education (Gearon, 2013); On Holy Ground (Gearon, 2015) [2016 Society of Education Studies Book Prize]; Religious Authority and the Arts: Conversations in Political Theology (Gearon, 2015); and State Religious Education and the State of the Religious Life (Gearon and Prud’homme, 2018).

His theorisations of the politicisation and securitisation of religion in education have been the subject of intense international debate for several years. Landmark publications on security in education – ‘The Counter-Terrorist Classroom’ (2013); ‘The Counter-Terrorist Classroom’ (2017); ‘Terrorism and Counter-Terrorism Policy and Research in UK Universities’ (2018): ‘Research Ethics in the Securitised University’ (Gearon and Parsons, 2019) and ‘The Kill Chain’ (Gearon, 2020) – have enabled empirical, methodological and theoretical advances on elites’ theory, the ethics of security and radicalisation research (Gearon and Kuusisto, 2018; Kuusisto and Gearon, 2017; Benjamin, Gearon, Kuusisto, Koirikivi, 2021).

With cognate research interests in security across all phases of education, Liam has over a decade collaboratively developed an interdisciplinary sub-field at the boundary of universities, security and intelligence studies, including research ethics in the securitised university (Gearon and Parsons, 2019). One of the defining outcomes here is Liam’s quarter of a million-word edited collection arising from the international Colloquium at Oriel College he convened in 2017, the Routledge International Handbook of Universities, Security and Intelligence Studies (Gearon, 2019). Interdisciplinary and inter-agency work in this area has included the Nuffield Foundation funded Universities and National Security: Research and Policy Collaborations 2019-2020, with a cross-disciplinary research team of 14 distinguished Co-Investigators.

With a significant Academy of Finland research grant (2018-2022) with Arniika Kuusisto (Stockholm/Helsinki/ Oxford), we oversee the research of two highly productive early career, post-doctoral researchers on radicalisation. This includes notable social and policy impacts such as the development of a national strategy around extremism through education for the Ministry of Justice in Finland (Activities | Growing up radical? | University of Helsinki). With substantial quantitative and qualitative data gathered, the project has already produced a substantial number of quality research outputs (Publications | Growing up radical? | University of Helsinki).

With a doctorate in English literature, Liam has also drawn on arts and humanities theoretical knowledge and methodological approaches to advance what are now intense cross-disciplinary debates around ‘decolonising the curriculum’ in religious education. From a series of foundational papers addressing the relationship between religious education and postcolonial theory – Gearon (2001a) ‘The Imagined Other: Postcolonial Theory and Religious Education’; Gearon (2001b) ‘A Spirituality of Dissent: Religion, Culture and Postcolonial Criticism’; Gearon (2002a) ‘Human Rights and Religious Education: Some Postcolonial Perspectives’ – he has recently led an international team (UK, Finland, Sweden, South Africa) as Guest Editor of the British Journal of Religious Education, for a high profile special issue on religion and education in postcolonial context (Gearon, Kuusisto, Matemba, Benjamin, Du Preez, Koirikivi, and Simmonds, 2020).

As Principal Investigator, Liam has led funded research projects with the Academy of Finland, the Arts and Humanities Research Council, the British Academy, the Leverhulme Trust, the Nuffield Foundation, the Philosophy of Education Society of Great Britain, and the Society for Educational Studies, a career total of funding exceeding £5,000,000, including a £4.5 million grant to establish a centre for citizenship and human rights at the University of Surrey Roehampton.

Doctoral supervision and Graduate teaching

 PGCE Religious Education (Subject lead)

  • Masters in Learning and Teaching (Subject lead)
  • Comparative and International Education

EXTERNAL POSTS

2020- Docent, Helsinki University, Finland

2020- Extraordinary Professor, Faculty of Education, North-West University, South Africa

2019-2021 Visiting Professor, Irish Institute of Catholic Studies, MIC, Limerick, Ireland

2012-2020 Conjoint Professor, Newcastle University, Australia

2019-2023 Honorary Senior Research Fellow, School of Education, University of Birmingham

 

PREVIOUS EXTERNAL POSTS

2011-2018, Adjunct Professor, Australian Catholic University, Australia

2010-2011, Visiting Professor, Faculty of Education, University of Plymouth

2008-2010, Research Professor, Faculty of Education, University of Plymouth

2006-2008, Professor of Education, University of Roehampton

2000-2006, Reader in Education, University of Surrey Roehampton

2006-2008, Senior Fellow, Centre of Excellence in Human Rights, University of Surrey Roehampton

2005-2008, Vice-President, International Human Rights Education Consortium, New York, USA

2001-2005, Director, Centre for Research in Human Rights, University of Surrey, Roehampton

1996-2000, Senior Lecturer, Faculty of Education, Roehampton, London

 

UK RESEARCH COUNCIL PEER REVIEW COLLEGES

AHRC Expert Group on Covid Research Group and Research Grant Panel ‘Introducer’

AHRC Peer Review College (2019 Gold Standard award, for ‘Recognition of significant contributions to the AHRC Peer Review College’)

ESRC Peer Review College

Universities UK Peer Review College Global Challenges Research Fund (GCRF)

 

INTERNATIONAL RESEARCH COUNCIL PEER REVIEWER

Academy of Finland

Austrian Science Fund (FWF)

EU 7th Framework Program for Research
Hong Kong Research Grants Council’s Public Policy Research Fund (PPR)

Irish Research Council

John Templeton Foundation

National Research Foundation, South Africa

 

PROFESSIONAL AND RESEARCH ASSOCIATIONS

Association of University Lecturers in Religion and Education (AULRE, co-founder and former Chair)

British Educational Research Association (BERA)

European Educational Research Association (EERA)

International Seminar on Religious Education and Values (ISREV)

Philosophy of Education Society of Great Britain (PESGB)

Society for Research in Higher Education (SRHE)
Society for Educational Studies (SES)

Also:

Executive (2019-2022) Oxford Intelligence Group, Nuffield College, University of Oxford

Fellow, Higher Education Academy (FHEA)

Fellow, Royal Society of Arts (FRSA)

Cambridge Intelligence Seminar

 

OTHER ADMINISTRATIVE ROLES AT OXFORD

Elected by Congregation to the University of Oxford Prevent Steering Group

Social Sciences Divisional representative of the Permanent Private Halls Supervisory Committee (PPHSC), a senior committee of the University of Oxford overseeing governance of Blackfriars; Campion Hall; Regent’s Park College; St Benet’s; St Stephen’s House; Wycliffe Hall.

Member, Central University Research Ethics Committee (CUREC)

Chair, Department of Education Research Ethics Committee (DREC)

Member, Inter-Divisional Social Sciences and Humanities Research Ethics Committee (IDREC)

Chair, Bodleian Library Education Committee

Member and occasional Chair Social Sciences Divisional Library Committee

Education Advisory Group, Christ Church College, Oxford

 

EDITORSHIP OF INTERNATIONAL JOURNALS

Gearon, L. (Guest editor) (2021) Literature and Security, Special Issue, Text Matters: A Journal of Literature, Theory and Culture, with a planned formal launch at Lodz, Poland.

Gearon, L., (Lead Guest Editor with editorial team) Kuusisto, A., Matemba, Y., Benjamin, S., Du Preez, P., Koirikivi, P., Simmonds, S. (2020) Decolonising the Religious Education Curriculum: International Perspectives in Theory, Research, and Practice, Special Issue, British Journal of Religious Education.

Gearon, L. (Guest Editor) (2019) Special Issue of Religions 10 (1) on Religion, Security, Education.

Gearon, L. and Williams, E. (Guest Editors) (2019) Special Issue of the British Journal of Educational Studies, Writers and their Education, 67 (3), 283–289.

Gearon, L. and Williams, E. (Guest Editors) (2018) Special Issue of Journal of Philosophy of Education on Philosophy, Literature and Education, 52 (4), 577-777.

Gearon, L. (Guest Editor) (2015) British Journal of Educational Studies, Special Issue, Education, Security and Intelligence Studies, 63 (3) 263-411.

Tirri, K., (Finland) Campbell, E. (Canada), Gearon, L. (UK), Lovat, T. (Australia) (Guest Editors) (2012) The Moral Core of Teaching, Education Research International.

Gearon, L. (Guest Editor) (2008) Citizenship, Human Rights and Religion, British Journal of Religious Education, 30 (2) 93-108.

Gearon, L. (Guest Editor) (2006) Children’s Spirituality and Children’s Rights, International Journal of Children’s Spirituality, 11 (2) 193-310.

Simon Marginson is  Emeritus Professor of Higher Education at the University of Oxford, Director of the ESRC/RE Centre for Global Higher Education (CGHE), and Editor-in-Chief of the journal Higher Education.

Simon led the ESRC Centre for Global Higher Education between November 2015 and April 2024. His research is focused primarily on global and international higher education, higher education in East Asia, the public and social contributions of higher education, and higher education and social equality. He is currently preparing an integrated theorisation of higher education. His scholarship is widely published and cited (Google h-index 67 in September 2019). Books include Higher Education and the Common Good (Melbourne University Publishing, 2016); High Participation Systems of Higher Education, edited with Brendan Cantwell and Anna Smolentseva (Oxford University Press, 2018); Changing Higher Education in East Asia, edited with Xin Xu (Bloomsbury, 2022) and Assessing the Contributions of Higher Education, edited with Brendan Cantwell, Daria Platonova and Anna Smolentseva (Edward Elgar, 2023).

Selected Publications
Books
  • Marginson, S. (2016).The Dream is Over: The crisis of Clark Kerr’s California Idea of higher education. Berkeley: University of California Press.
  • Marginson, S. (2016).Higher Education and the Common Good. Melbourne: Melbourne University Publishing.
  • Tran, L. & Marginson, S. (eds.). (2018).Internationalisation of Vietnamese Higher Education. Dordrecht: Springer Nature.
  • Carnoy, M., Froumin, I., Leshukov, O. & Marginson, S. (eds.). (2018) Higher Education in Federal Countries. New Delhi: Sage.
  • Cantwell, B., Marginson, S. & Smolentseva, A. (eds.). (2018) High Participation Systems of Higher Education. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
  • Callender, C., Locke, W. & Marginson, S. (eds.) (2020). Changing Higher Education for a Changing World. London: Bloomsbury.
  • Chattopadhyay, S., Marginson, S. & Varghese, N.V. (eds.) (2021). Changing Higher Education in India. London: Bloomsbury.
  • Marginson, S. & Xu, X. (eds.) (2022). Changing Higher Education in East Asia. (2022). London: Bloomsbury.
  • Marginson, S., Cantwell, B., Platonova, D. & Smolentseva, A. (eds.) (2023). Assessing the contributions of higher education. Cheltenham: Edward Elgar.
Recent Journal Papers
  • Marginson, S. (2016). The worldwide trend to high participation higher education: Dynamics of social stratification in inclusive systems. Higher Education, 72 (4), 413-435.
  • Marginson, S. (2018). Private/public in higher education: A synthesis of economic and political approaches. Studies in Higher Education, 43 (2), 322-337
  • Marginson, S. (2018) Global trends in higher education financing: The United Kingdom. International J. Educational Development, 58, 26-36
  • Marginson, S. (2018) National/global synergy in the development of higher education and science in China since 1978. Frontiers of Education in China, 13 (4), 486–512
  • Marginson, S. (2019) Limitations of human capital theory. Studies in Higher Education, 44 (2), 287-301
  • Marginson, S. and Yang, L. (2022). Individual and collective outcomes of higher education: A comparison of Anglo-American and Chinese approaches. Globalisation, Societies and Education, 20 (1), 1-32.
  • Marginson, S. (2022). ‘All things are in flux’: China in global science. Higher Education, 83 (4), 881-910.
  • Marginson, S. (2022). What drives global science? The four competing narratives. Studies in Higher Education, 47 (8), 1566-1584.
  • Marginson, S. (2022). Global science and national comparisons: Beyond bibliometrics and scientometrics. Comparative Education, 58 (2), 125-146.
  • Marginson, S. (2022). What is global higher education? Oxford Review of Education, 48 (4), 492-517.
  • Marginson S. (2022). Space and scale in higher education: The glonacal heuristic revisited. Higher Education, 84 (6),1365-1395.
  • Marginson, S. & Xu, X. (2023). Hegemony and inequality in global science: Problems of the center-periphery model. Comparative Education Review, 67 (1). https://doi.org/10.1086/722760
  • Marginson, S. (2023). Student self-formation: An emerging paradigm in higher education. Studies in Higher Education, https://doi.org/10.1080/03075079.2023.2252826 (2023).
  • Marginson, S. (2023). Limitations of the leading definition of ‘internationalisation’ of higher education: Is the idea wrong or is the fault in reality? Globalisation, Societies and Education, https://doi.org/10.1080/14767724.2023.2264223
  • Marginson, S. and Yang ,L. (2023). Has the public good been emptied out of higher education in England? Higher Education. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10734-023-01117-6

Maia Chankseliani is Associate Professor of Comparative and International Education at the University of Oxford where she leads a flagship master’s course in Comparative and International Education. She convenes the Comparative and International Education Research Group at the Department of Education.

Within comparative and international education, Maia Chankseliani works at the intersection of tertiary education and development. She researches societal, institutional, and policy forces that shape tertiary education and the potential of tertiary education and research for transforming societies.

Methodologically, she utilises both qualitative and quantitative methods. Her work often combines secondary data analysis with insights gathered through semi-structured interviews and contextualised case studies.

Maia Chankseliani has published four books in the field of comparative and international education: What Happened to the Soviet University? (2022), Building Research Capacity at Universities: Insights from Post-Soviet Countries (2022), Comparing Post-Socialist Transformations: Purposes, Policies, and Practices in Education (2018), and Fairness in Access to Higher Education in a Global Perspective: Reconciling Excellence, Efficiency, and Justice (2013).

She currently leads a major research project examining the impact of international mobility on world development (funded by the U.S. Department of State). Maia Chankseliani has worked on a number of externally funded research projects and consultancies involving the UK Government agencies responsible for education and skills, UKRI/ESRC, British Council, World Bank, Qatar Foundation, the European Commission.

With a background in education research, teaching, policy-making, leadership, and consultancy, Maia Chankseliani brings to her role extensive experience in diverse international settings. This breadth of experience informs her research and enables her to bridge theory and practice.

Maia Chankseliani engages with governments and gives academic and policy-relevant talks nationally and internationally. Her research regularly features in national and international media.

She holds a BA in Philology from Tbilisi State University (Georgia), an Ed. M in International Education Policy from Harvard University (USA), and a PhD in Education from the University of Cambridge (UK).

Maia Chankseliani serves as the Editor-in-Chief of the International Journal of Educational Research.

Aliya teaches on the Comparative and International Education MSc programme at our Department. She is also a Junior Research Fellow at Lady Margaret Hall. Her research focuses on young people and families’ experiences of education in turbulent times.

For example, educational challenges and rehabilitation during COVID-19 and after the 2022 floods in Pakistan. Her current geographical focus includes ethnically diverse communities (Pakistani and Bangladeshi) in England as well as marginalised communities in Pakistan.

Aliya’s PhD explored the complexities of gender and international education, and her current work focuses on decolonising educational research practices and the experience of Southern-ness globally. Aliya’s specialist areas are parental, mothers’ and young people’s perspectives of and aspirations for education, and their own modalities of agency to fulfil their dreams.

Aliya publishes on the topics of Southern epistemologies and methodologies and teaches on related topics of decolonisation of knowledge production and the politics of representation. She is currently leading multiple projects in England and Pakistan focusing on girls’ education, gender experiences of education, mothers’ perspectives on educating their children, teacher educators, displaced peoples experiences in England and Pakistan.

Aliya is accepting DPhil students interested in these areas:

  • Southern epistemologies and methodologies
  • The capability approach and social justice
  • Negative capability
  • Deconstruction of the silence/violence binary
  • Marginalised peoples’ perspectives
  • Intersectional experiences of marginalisation including those related with gender, race, ethnicity, indigeneity, queerness, disability, class and caste (among others)
  • Decolonisation of knowledge production and representation of the South
  • Qualitative methodologies
  • Theorising from the margins
  • Area focus South Asia particularly Pakistan and Afghanistan
  • Internal displacement

Aliya is the acting Deputy Chair of the United Kingdom Forum for International Education and Training (UKFIET) conference 2023.

Gates Cambridge Biography

 

Research Group Membership

 

Research Projects

1. ‘Understanding the impact of COVID-19 on learning experiences of secondary school going age children among Bangladeshi and Pakistani ethnic minority families’
Funder: Cambridge Humanities Research Grants Scheme
Research team: Professor Nidhi Singal and Dr Aliya Khalid
Status: Complete

2. Gendered Inequalities in Education and Capability Spaces for Women/Girls (and others) in Pakistan: Education and reconstruction after 2022 floods in Pakistan
Funder: British Association for International and Comparative Education (BAICE) Seedcorn Fund
Research team: Aliya Khalid, Soufia Siddiqui, Aditi Chidambaram, Indrani Sigamany
Status: Ongoing

3. Bridging the Local and Global: Women’s Spaces and Collectives’: On becoming caregivers and teachers: Immigrant mothers’ identities and philosophies of education in England during COVID
Team members: Aliya Khalid, Jane Rooney and Ruth Houghton, Lavinia Kamphausen, Kate spencer-Bennet, Alana Farrel
Funder: The British Academy
Status: Complete

4. Collaborative development of faculty for Pakistan undergraduate Teacher Education Colleges: Durbeen and Oxford knowledge exchange project
Team members: Aliya Khalid, Ann Childs, Trevor Mutton, Ian Thompson, Jenni Ingram and Katharine Burn
Funder: Malala Fund
Status: Ongoing

Dr Karen Skilling is an Associate Professor at the Department of Education at the University of Oxford. Karen is currently the Deputy Director of Doctoral Research, Lead of the PGCE mathematics education at the Department of Education, and co-ordinates the Doctoral Teaching Fellows for teacher education. In 2020, Karen established the STEM Discussion Group and also convenes the Subject Pedagogy Group seminars.

Karen’s research interests include: student engagement and motivation in mathematics; integrated STEM learning and project-based STEM activities; and vignette methods. Karen currently sits on the Executive Committee of BSRLM, and is a journal Editor for the Teaching Education Journal (TEJ) and Research in Mathematics Education (RME). Karen has also been co-Editor for several special issues, and a topic study co-lead at the Congress of the European Society for Research in Mathematics Education (CERME). Karen is a Visiting Fellow at King’s College London and been an HEA Fellow since 2016.

Awards include: Australian Postgraduate Award (Industry) (APAI): funded PhD role attached to MYTEAM Project awarded by Australian Research Council (2008 –2012); Postdoctoral Research Fellowship: Department of Education, University of Oxford (2013-14); and nominations for Most Outstanding Contribution to Student Experience at King’s College London (2015, 2016, 2017).

David Mills is an Associate Professor and Director of the Centre for Global Higher Education (CGHE).

His current research focuses on the political economy of the global science system, and its impact on institutional research and publishing cultures in African universities. His most recent book is ‘Who Counts: Ghanaian Academic Publishing and Global Science’, co-written with colleagues from the University of Ghana and Oxford, and available open access from African Minds:  https://www.africanminds.co.za/who-counts/

Trained in Anthropology, and with inter-disciplinary research interests, David uses ethnographic methods to study the inequalities created by global higher education. He is particularly interested in African university research cultures and the role of diamond Open Access scholarly journals within knowledge ecosystems.

He welcomes enquiries from potential doctoral students interested in studying African Higher Education, as well as research and publishing cultures.

Liam Francis Gearon (BA, Hons, MA, MPhil, Cert He, PhD, FHEA, FRSA, Docent) is Associate Professor in Religious Education in the Department of Education, Senior Research Fellow at Harris Manchester College, University of Oxford; Docent, University of Helsinki, Finland; Honorary Senior Research Fellow at the School of Education, University of Birmingham, UK; Conjoint Professor at Newcastle University, Australia; Visiting Professor at the Irish Centre for Catholic Studies, MIC, Limerick, Ireland; Extraordinary Professor, North-West University, South Africa.

Liam Francis Gearon is Founder-Convenor of the Philosophy, Religion, Education Research Group, providing  a unique interdisciplinary contribution to the research culture of the Department of Education at the University of Oxford. The Philosophy, religion and education Research Group specifically forges theoretical and empirical interconnections between the arts, humanities, philosophy and the social sciences through the common focus of education. Contributions of this research group have been made to matters such as: theories of research policy and impact; the cultural value of research in the arts and humanities; research ethics; the intersection of epistemological and ethical domains in research in schools; religion, radicalisation and counter-terrorism in schools and universities; and the creation of distinctive sub-field of study at the interface of education, security and intelligence studies.

A specialist in the interdisciplinary study of religion in education, and particularly noted for the systematic philosophical and history of ideas analysis on the epistemological foundations of religious education, his framing of the paradigms of religion in education – scriptural-theological; phenomenological; psychological-experiential; philosophical-conceptual; social-cultural; political-historical – has contributed new insights to secularisation theory in numerous, some award-winning, monographs, such as MasterClass in Religious Education (Gearon, 2013); On Holy Ground (Gearon, 2015) [2016 Society of Education Studies Book Prize]; Religious Authority and the Arts: Conversations in Political Theology (Gearon, 2015); and State Religious Education and the State of the Religious Life (Gearon and Prud’homme, 2018).

His theorisations of the politicisation and securitisation of religion in education have been the subject of intense international debate for several years. Landmark publications on security in education – ‘The Counter-Terrorist Classroom’ (2013); ‘The Counter-Terrorist Classroom’ (2017); ‘Terrorism and Counter-Terrorism Policy and Research in UK Universities’ (2018): ‘Research Ethics in the Securitised University’ (Gearon and Parsons, 2019) and ‘The Kill Chain’ (Gearon, 2020) – have enabled empirical, methodological and theoretical advances on elites’ theory, the ethics of security and radicalisation research (Gearon and Kuusisto, 2018; Kuusisto and Gearon, 2017; Benjamin, Gearon, Kuusisto, Koirikivi, 2021).

With cognate research interests in security across all phases of education, Liam has over a decade collaboratively developed an interdisciplinary sub-field at the boundary of universities, security and intelligence studies, including research ethics in the securitised university (Gearon and Parsons, 2019). One of the defining outcomes here is Liam’s quarter of a million-word edited collection arising from the international Colloquium at Oriel College he convened in 2017, the Routledge International Handbook of Universities, Security and Intelligence Studies (Gearon, 2019). Interdisciplinary and inter-agency work in this area has included the Nuffield Foundation funded Universities and National Security: Research and Policy Collaborations 2019-2020, with a cross-disciplinary research team of 14 distinguished Co-Investigators.

With a significant Academy of Finland research grant (2018-2022) with Arniika Kuusisto (Stockholm/Helsinki/ Oxford), we oversee the research of two highly productive early career, post-doctoral researchers on radicalisation. This includes notable social and policy impacts such as the development of a national strategy around extremism through education for the Ministry of Justice in Finland (Activities | Growing up radical? | University of Helsinki). With substantial quantitative and qualitative data gathered, the project has already produced a substantial number of quality research outputs (Publications | Growing up radical? | University of Helsinki).

With a doctorate in English literature, Liam has also drawn on arts and humanities theoretical knowledge and methodological approaches to advance what are now intense cross-disciplinary debates around ‘decolonising the curriculum’ in religious education. From a series of foundational papers addressing the relationship between religious education and postcolonial theory – Gearon (2001a) ‘The Imagined Other: Postcolonial Theory and Religious Education’; Gearon (2001b) ‘A Spirituality of Dissent: Religion, Culture and Postcolonial Criticism’; Gearon (2002a) ‘Human Rights and Religious Education: Some Postcolonial Perspectives’ – he has recently led an international team (UK, Finland, Sweden, South Africa) as Guest Editor of the British Journal of Religious Education, for a high profile special issue on religion and education in postcolonial context (Gearon, Kuusisto, Matemba, Benjamin, Du Preez, Koirikivi, and Simmonds, 2020).

As Principal Investigator, Liam has led funded research projects with the Academy of Finland, the Arts and Humanities Research Council, the British Academy, the Leverhulme Trust, the Nuffield Foundation, the Philosophy of Education Society of Great Britain, and the Society for Educational Studies, a career total of funding exceeding £5,000,000, including a £4.5 million grant to establish a centre for citizenship and human rights at the University of Surrey Roehampton.

Doctoral supervision and Graduate teaching

 PGCE Religious Education (Subject lead)

  • Masters in Learning and Teaching (Subject lead)
  • Comparative and International Education

EXTERNAL POSTS

2020- Docent, Helsinki University, Finland

2020- Extraordinary Professor, Faculty of Education, North-West University, South Africa

2019-2021 Visiting Professor, Irish Institute of Catholic Studies, MIC, Limerick, Ireland

2012-2020 Conjoint Professor, Newcastle University, Australia

2019-2023 Honorary Senior Research Fellow, School of Education, University of Birmingham

 

PREVIOUS EXTERNAL POSTS

2011-2018, Adjunct Professor, Australian Catholic University, Australia

2010-2011, Visiting Professor, Faculty of Education, University of Plymouth

2008-2010, Research Professor, Faculty of Education, University of Plymouth

2006-2008, Professor of Education, University of Roehampton

2000-2006, Reader in Education, University of Surrey Roehampton

2006-2008, Senior Fellow, Centre of Excellence in Human Rights, University of Surrey Roehampton

2005-2008, Vice-President, International Human Rights Education Consortium, New York, USA

2001-2005, Director, Centre for Research in Human Rights, University of Surrey, Roehampton

1996-2000, Senior Lecturer, Faculty of Education, Roehampton, London

 

UK RESEARCH COUNCIL PEER REVIEW COLLEGES

AHRC Expert Group on Covid Research Group and Research Grant Panel ‘Introducer’

AHRC Peer Review College (2019 Gold Standard award, for ‘Recognition of significant contributions to the AHRC Peer Review College’)

ESRC Peer Review College

Universities UK Peer Review College Global Challenges Research Fund (GCRF)

 

INTERNATIONAL RESEARCH COUNCIL PEER REVIEWER

Academy of Finland

Austrian Science Fund (FWF)

EU 7th Framework Program for Research
Hong Kong Research Grants Council’s Public Policy Research Fund (PPR)

Irish Research Council

John Templeton Foundation

National Research Foundation, South Africa

 

PROFESSIONAL AND RESEARCH ASSOCIATIONS

Association of University Lecturers in Religion and Education (AULRE, co-founder and former Chair)

British Educational Research Association (BERA)

European Educational Research Association (EERA)

International Seminar on Religious Education and Values (ISREV)

Philosophy of Education Society of Great Britain (PESGB)

Society for Research in Higher Education (SRHE)
Society for Educational Studies (SES)

Also:

Executive (2019-2022) Oxford Intelligence Group, Nuffield College, University of Oxford

Fellow, Higher Education Academy (FHEA)

Fellow, Royal Society of Arts (FRSA)

Cambridge Intelligence Seminar

 

OTHER ADMINISTRATIVE ROLES AT OXFORD

Elected by Congregation to the University of Oxford Prevent Steering Group

Social Sciences Divisional representative of the Permanent Private Halls Supervisory Committee (PPHSC), a senior committee of the University of Oxford overseeing governance of Blackfriars; Campion Hall; Regent’s Park College; St Benet’s; St Stephen’s House; Wycliffe Hall.

Member, Central University Research Ethics Committee (CUREC)

Chair, Department of Education Research Ethics Committee (DREC)

Member, Inter-Divisional Social Sciences and Humanities Research Ethics Committee (IDREC)

Chair, Bodleian Library Education Committee

Member and occasional Chair Social Sciences Divisional Library Committee

Education Advisory Group, Christ Church College, Oxford

 

EDITORSHIP OF INTERNATIONAL JOURNALS

Gearon, L. (Guest editor) (2021) Literature and Security, Special Issue, Text Matters: A Journal of Literature, Theory and Culture, with a planned formal launch at Lodz, Poland.

Gearon, L., (Lead Guest Editor with editorial team) Kuusisto, A., Matemba, Y., Benjamin, S., Du Preez, P., Koirikivi, P., Simmonds, S. (2020) Decolonising the Religious Education Curriculum: International Perspectives in Theory, Research, and Practice, Special Issue, British Journal of Religious Education.

Gearon, L. (Guest Editor) (2019) Special Issue of Religions 10 (1) on Religion, Security, Education.

Gearon, L. and Williams, E. (Guest Editors) (2019) Special Issue of the British Journal of Educational Studies, Writers and their Education, 67 (3), 283–289.

Gearon, L. and Williams, E. (Guest Editors) (2018) Special Issue of Journal of Philosophy of Education on Philosophy, Literature and Education, 52 (4), 577-777.

Gearon, L. (Guest Editor) (2015) British Journal of Educational Studies, Special Issue, Education, Security and Intelligence Studies, 63 (3) 263-411.

Tirri, K., (Finland) Campbell, E. (Canada), Gearon, L. (UK), Lovat, T. (Australia) (Guest Editors) (2012) The Moral Core of Teaching, Education Research International.

Gearon, L. (Guest Editor) (2008) Citizenship, Human Rights and Religion, British Journal of Religious Education, 30 (2) 93-108.

Gearon, L. (Guest Editor) (2006) Children’s Spirituality and Children’s Rights, International Journal of Children’s Spirituality, 11 (2) 193-310.

Simon Marginson is  Emeritus Professor of Higher Education at the University of Oxford, Director of the ESRC/RE Centre for Global Higher Education (CGHE), and Editor-in-Chief of the journal Higher Education.

Simon led the ESRC Centre for Global Higher Education between November 2015 and April 2024. His research is focused primarily on global and international higher education, higher education in East Asia, the public and social contributions of higher education, and higher education and social equality. He is currently preparing an integrated theorisation of higher education. His scholarship is widely published and cited (Google h-index 67 in September 2019). Books include Higher Education and the Common Good (Melbourne University Publishing, 2016); High Participation Systems of Higher Education, edited with Brendan Cantwell and Anna Smolentseva (Oxford University Press, 2018); Changing Higher Education in East Asia, edited with Xin Xu (Bloomsbury, 2022) and Assessing the Contributions of Higher Education, edited with Brendan Cantwell, Daria Platonova and Anna Smolentseva (Edward Elgar, 2023).

Selected Publications
Books
  • Marginson, S. (2016).The Dream is Over: The crisis of Clark Kerr’s California Idea of higher education. Berkeley: University of California Press.
  • Marginson, S. (2016).Higher Education and the Common Good. Melbourne: Melbourne University Publishing.
  • Tran, L. & Marginson, S. (eds.). (2018).Internationalisation of Vietnamese Higher Education. Dordrecht: Springer Nature.
  • Carnoy, M., Froumin, I., Leshukov, O. & Marginson, S. (eds.). (2018) Higher Education in Federal Countries. New Delhi: Sage.
  • Cantwell, B., Marginson, S. & Smolentseva, A. (eds.). (2018) High Participation Systems of Higher Education. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
  • Callender, C., Locke, W. & Marginson, S. (eds.) (2020). Changing Higher Education for a Changing World. London: Bloomsbury.
  • Chattopadhyay, S., Marginson, S. & Varghese, N.V. (eds.) (2021). Changing Higher Education in India. London: Bloomsbury.
  • Marginson, S. & Xu, X. (eds.) (2022). Changing Higher Education in East Asia. (2022). London: Bloomsbury.
  • Marginson, S., Cantwell, B., Platonova, D. & Smolentseva, A. (eds.) (2023). Assessing the contributions of higher education. Cheltenham: Edward Elgar.
Recent Journal Papers
  • Marginson, S. (2016). The worldwide trend to high participation higher education: Dynamics of social stratification in inclusive systems. Higher Education, 72 (4), 413-435.
  • Marginson, S. (2018). Private/public in higher education: A synthesis of economic and political approaches. Studies in Higher Education, 43 (2), 322-337
  • Marginson, S. (2018) Global trends in higher education financing: The United Kingdom. International J. Educational Development, 58, 26-36
  • Marginson, S. (2018) National/global synergy in the development of higher education and science in China since 1978. Frontiers of Education in China, 13 (4), 486–512
  • Marginson, S. (2019) Limitations of human capital theory. Studies in Higher Education, 44 (2), 287-301
  • Marginson, S. and Yang, L. (2022). Individual and collective outcomes of higher education: A comparison of Anglo-American and Chinese approaches. Globalisation, Societies and Education, 20 (1), 1-32.
  • Marginson, S. (2022). ‘All things are in flux’: China in global science. Higher Education, 83 (4), 881-910.
  • Marginson, S. (2022). What drives global science? The four competing narratives. Studies in Higher Education, 47 (8), 1566-1584.
  • Marginson, S. (2022). Global science and national comparisons: Beyond bibliometrics and scientometrics. Comparative Education, 58 (2), 125-146.
  • Marginson, S. (2022). What is global higher education? Oxford Review of Education, 48 (4), 492-517.
  • Marginson S. (2022). Space and scale in higher education: The glonacal heuristic revisited. Higher Education, 84 (6),1365-1395.
  • Marginson, S. & Xu, X. (2023). Hegemony and inequality in global science: Problems of the center-periphery model. Comparative Education Review, 67 (1). https://doi.org/10.1086/722760
  • Marginson, S. (2023). Student self-formation: An emerging paradigm in higher education. Studies in Higher Education, https://doi.org/10.1080/03075079.2023.2252826 (2023).
  • Marginson, S. (2023). Limitations of the leading definition of ‘internationalisation’ of higher education: Is the idea wrong or is the fault in reality? Globalisation, Societies and Education, https://doi.org/10.1080/14767724.2023.2264223
  • Marginson, S. and Yang ,L. (2023). Has the public good been emptied out of higher education in England? Higher Education. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10734-023-01117-6

Maia Chankseliani is Associate Professor of Comparative and International Education at the University of Oxford where she leads a flagship master’s course in Comparative and International Education. She convenes the Comparative and International Education Research Group at the Department of Education.

Within comparative and international education, Maia Chankseliani works at the intersection of tertiary education and development. She researches societal, institutional, and policy forces that shape tertiary education and the potential of tertiary education and research for transforming societies.

Methodologically, she utilises both qualitative and quantitative methods. Her work often combines secondary data analysis with insights gathered through semi-structured interviews and contextualised case studies.

Maia Chankseliani has published four books in the field of comparative and international education: What Happened to the Soviet University? (2022), Building Research Capacity at Universities: Insights from Post-Soviet Countries (2022), Comparing Post-Socialist Transformations: Purposes, Policies, and Practices in Education (2018), and Fairness in Access to Higher Education in a Global Perspective: Reconciling Excellence, Efficiency, and Justice (2013).

She currently leads a major research project examining the impact of international mobility on world development (funded by the U.S. Department of State). Maia Chankseliani has worked on a number of externally funded research projects and consultancies involving the UK Government agencies responsible for education and skills, UKRI/ESRC, British Council, World Bank, Qatar Foundation, the European Commission.

With a background in education research, teaching, policy-making, leadership, and consultancy, Maia Chankseliani brings to her role extensive experience in diverse international settings. This breadth of experience informs her research and enables her to bridge theory and practice.

Maia Chankseliani engages with governments and gives academic and policy-relevant talks nationally and internationally. Her research regularly features in national and international media.

She holds a BA in Philology from Tbilisi State University (Georgia), an Ed. M in International Education Policy from Harvard University (USA), and a PhD in Education from the University of Cambridge (UK).

Maia Chankseliani serves as the Editor-in-Chief of the International Journal of Educational Research.

Aliya teaches on the Comparative and International Education MSc programme at our Department. She is also a Junior Research Fellow at Lady Margaret Hall. Her research focuses on young people and families’ experiences of education in turbulent times.

For example, educational challenges and rehabilitation during COVID-19 and after the 2022 floods in Pakistan. Her current geographical focus includes ethnically diverse communities (Pakistani and Bangladeshi) in England as well as marginalised communities in Pakistan.

Aliya’s PhD explored the complexities of gender and international education, and her current work focuses on decolonising educational research practices and the experience of Southern-ness globally. Aliya’s specialist areas are parental, mothers’ and young people’s perspectives of and aspirations for education, and their own modalities of agency to fulfil their dreams.

Aliya publishes on the topics of Southern epistemologies and methodologies and teaches on related topics of decolonisation of knowledge production and the politics of representation. She is currently leading multiple projects in England and Pakistan focusing on girls’ education, gender experiences of education, mothers’ perspectives on educating their children, teacher educators, displaced peoples experiences in England and Pakistan.

Aliya is accepting DPhil students interested in these areas:

  • Southern epistemologies and methodologies
  • The capability approach and social justice
  • Negative capability
  • Deconstruction of the silence/violence binary
  • Marginalised peoples’ perspectives
  • Intersectional experiences of marginalisation including those related with gender, race, ethnicity, indigeneity, queerness, disability, class and caste (among others)
  • Decolonisation of knowledge production and representation of the South
  • Qualitative methodologies
  • Theorising from the margins
  • Area focus South Asia particularly Pakistan and Afghanistan
  • Internal displacement

Aliya is the acting Deputy Chair of the United Kingdom Forum for International Education and Training (UKFIET) conference 2023.

Gates Cambridge Biography

 

Research Group Membership

 

Research Projects

1. ‘Understanding the impact of COVID-19 on learning experiences of secondary school going age children among Bangladeshi and Pakistani ethnic minority families’
Funder: Cambridge Humanities Research Grants Scheme
Research team: Professor Nidhi Singal and Dr Aliya Khalid
Status: Complete

2. Gendered Inequalities in Education and Capability Spaces for Women/Girls (and others) in Pakistan: Education and reconstruction after 2022 floods in Pakistan
Funder: British Association for International and Comparative Education (BAICE) Seedcorn Fund
Research team: Aliya Khalid, Soufia Siddiqui, Aditi Chidambaram, Indrani Sigamany
Status: Ongoing

3. Bridging the Local and Global: Women’s Spaces and Collectives’: On becoming caregivers and teachers: Immigrant mothers’ identities and philosophies of education in England during COVID
Team members: Aliya Khalid, Jane Rooney and Ruth Houghton, Lavinia Kamphausen, Kate spencer-Bennet, Alana Farrel
Funder: The British Academy
Status: Complete

4. Collaborative development of faculty for Pakistan undergraduate Teacher Education Colleges: Durbeen and Oxford knowledge exchange project
Team members: Aliya Khalid, Ann Childs, Trevor Mutton, Ian Thompson, Jenni Ingram and Katharine Burn
Funder: Malala Fund
Status: Ongoing

Dr Karen Skilling is an Associate Professor at the Department of Education at the University of Oxford. Karen is currently the Deputy Director of Doctoral Research, Lead of the PGCE mathematics education at the Department of Education, and co-ordinates the Doctoral Teaching Fellows for teacher education. In 2020, Karen established the STEM Discussion Group and also convenes the Subject Pedagogy Group seminars.

Karen’s research interests include: student engagement and motivation in mathematics; integrated STEM learning and project-based STEM activities; and vignette methods. Karen currently sits on the Executive Committee of BSRLM, and is a journal Editor for the Teaching Education Journal (TEJ) and Research in Mathematics Education (RME). Karen has also been co-Editor for several special issues, and a topic study co-lead at the Congress of the European Society for Research in Mathematics Education (CERME). Karen is a Visiting Fellow at King’s College London and been an HEA Fellow since 2016.

Awards include: Australian Postgraduate Award (Industry) (APAI): funded PhD role attached to MYTEAM Project awarded by Australian Research Council (2008 –2012); Postdoctoral Research Fellowship: Department of Education, University of Oxford (2013-14); and nominations for Most Outstanding Contribution to Student Experience at King’s College London (2015, 2016, 2017).

David Mills is an Associate Professor and Director of the Centre for Global Higher Education (CGHE).

His current research focuses on the political economy of the global science system, and its impact on institutional research and publishing cultures in African universities. His most recent book is ‘Who Counts: Ghanaian Academic Publishing and Global Science’, co-written with colleagues from the University of Ghana and Oxford, and available open access from African Minds:  https://www.africanminds.co.za/who-counts/

Trained in Anthropology, and with inter-disciplinary research interests, David uses ethnographic methods to study the inequalities created by global higher education. He is particularly interested in African university research cultures and the role of diamond Open Access scholarly journals within knowledge ecosystems.

He welcomes enquiries from potential doctoral students interested in studying African Higher Education, as well as research and publishing cultures.

Liam Francis Gearon (BA, Hons, MA, MPhil, Cert He, PhD, FHEA, FRSA, Docent) is Associate Professor in Religious Education in the Department of Education, Senior Research Fellow at Harris Manchester College, University of Oxford; Docent, University of Helsinki, Finland; Honorary Senior Research Fellow at the School of Education, University of Birmingham, UK; Conjoint Professor at Newcastle University, Australia; Visiting Professor at the Irish Centre for Catholic Studies, MIC, Limerick, Ireland; Extraordinary Professor, North-West University, South Africa.

Liam Francis Gearon is Founder-Convenor of the Philosophy, Religion, Education Research Group, providing  a unique interdisciplinary contribution to the research culture of the Department of Education at the University of Oxford. The Philosophy, religion and education Research Group specifically forges theoretical and empirical interconnections between the arts, humanities, philosophy and the social sciences through the common focus of education. Contributions of this research group have been made to matters such as: theories of research policy and impact; the cultural value of research in the arts and humanities; research ethics; the intersection of epistemological and ethical domains in research in schools; religion, radicalisation and counter-terrorism in schools and universities; and the creation of distinctive sub-field of study at the interface of education, security and intelligence studies.

A specialist in the interdisciplinary study of religion in education, and particularly noted for the systematic philosophical and history of ideas analysis on the epistemological foundations of religious education, his framing of the paradigms of religion in education – scriptural-theological; phenomenological; psychological-experiential; philosophical-conceptual; social-cultural; political-historical – has contributed new insights to secularisation theory in numerous, some award-winning, monographs, such as MasterClass in Religious Education (Gearon, 2013); On Holy Ground (Gearon, 2015) [2016 Society of Education Studies Book Prize]; Religious Authority and the Arts: Conversations in Political Theology (Gearon, 2015); and State Religious Education and the State of the Religious Life (Gearon and Prud’homme, 2018).

His theorisations of the politicisation and securitisation of religion in education have been the subject of intense international debate for several years. Landmark publications on security in education – ‘The Counter-Terrorist Classroom’ (2013); ‘The Counter-Terrorist Classroom’ (2017); ‘Terrorism and Counter-Terrorism Policy and Research in UK Universities’ (2018): ‘Research Ethics in the Securitised University’ (Gearon and Parsons, 2019) and ‘The Kill Chain’ (Gearon, 2020) – have enabled empirical, methodological and theoretical advances on elites’ theory, the ethics of security and radicalisation research (Gearon and Kuusisto, 2018; Kuusisto and Gearon, 2017; Benjamin, Gearon, Kuusisto, Koirikivi, 2021).

With cognate research interests in security across all phases of education, Liam has over a decade collaboratively developed an interdisciplinary sub-field at the boundary of universities, security and intelligence studies, including research ethics in the securitised university (Gearon and Parsons, 2019). One of the defining outcomes here is Liam’s quarter of a million-word edited collection arising from the international Colloquium at Oriel College he convened in 2017, the Routledge International Handbook of Universities, Security and Intelligence Studies (Gearon, 2019). Interdisciplinary and inter-agency work in this area has included the Nuffield Foundation funded Universities and National Security: Research and Policy Collaborations 2019-2020, with a cross-disciplinary research team of 14 distinguished Co-Investigators.

With a significant Academy of Finland research grant (2018-2022) with Arniika Kuusisto (Stockholm/Helsinki/ Oxford), we oversee the research of two highly productive early career, post-doctoral researchers on radicalisation. This includes notable social and policy impacts such as the development of a national strategy around extremism through education for the Ministry of Justice in Finland (Activities | Growing up radical? | University of Helsinki). With substantial quantitative and qualitative data gathered, the project has already produced a substantial number of quality research outputs (Publications | Growing up radical? | University of Helsinki).

With a doctorate in English literature, Liam has also drawn on arts and humanities theoretical knowledge and methodological approaches to advance what are now intense cross-disciplinary debates around ‘decolonising the curriculum’ in religious education. From a series of foundational papers addressing the relationship between religious education and postcolonial theory – Gearon (2001a) ‘The Imagined Other: Postcolonial Theory and Religious Education’; Gearon (2001b) ‘A Spirituality of Dissent: Religion, Culture and Postcolonial Criticism’; Gearon (2002a) ‘Human Rights and Religious Education: Some Postcolonial Perspectives’ – he has recently led an international team (UK, Finland, Sweden, South Africa) as Guest Editor of the British Journal of Religious Education, for a high profile special issue on religion and education in postcolonial context (Gearon, Kuusisto, Matemba, Benjamin, Du Preez, Koirikivi, and Simmonds, 2020).

As Principal Investigator, Liam has led funded research projects with the Academy of Finland, the Arts and Humanities Research Council, the British Academy, the Leverhulme Trust, the Nuffield Foundation, the Philosophy of Education Society of Great Britain, and the Society for Educational Studies, a career total of funding exceeding £5,000,000, including a £4.5 million grant to establish a centre for citizenship and human rights at the University of Surrey Roehampton.

Doctoral supervision and Graduate teaching

 PGCE Religious Education (Subject lead)

  • Masters in Learning and Teaching (Subject lead)
  • Comparative and International Education

EXTERNAL POSTS

2020- Docent, Helsinki University, Finland

2020- Extraordinary Professor, Faculty of Education, North-West University, South Africa

2019-2021 Visiting Professor, Irish Institute of Catholic Studies, MIC, Limerick, Ireland

2012-2020 Conjoint Professor, Newcastle University, Australia

2019-2023 Honorary Senior Research Fellow, School of Education, University of Birmingham

 

PREVIOUS EXTERNAL POSTS

2011-2018, Adjunct Professor, Australian Catholic University, Australia

2010-2011, Visiting Professor, Faculty of Education, University of Plymouth

2008-2010, Research Professor, Faculty of Education, University of Plymouth

2006-2008, Professor of Education, University of Roehampton

2000-2006, Reader in Education, University of Surrey Roehampton

2006-2008, Senior Fellow, Centre of Excellence in Human Rights, University of Surrey Roehampton

2005-2008, Vice-President, International Human Rights Education Consortium, New York, USA

2001-2005, Director, Centre for Research in Human Rights, University of Surrey, Roehampton

1996-2000, Senior Lecturer, Faculty of Education, Roehampton, London

 

UK RESEARCH COUNCIL PEER REVIEW COLLEGES

AHRC Expert Group on Covid Research Group and Research Grant Panel ‘Introducer’

AHRC Peer Review College (2019 Gold Standard award, for ‘Recognition of significant contributions to the AHRC Peer Review College’)

ESRC Peer Review College

Universities UK Peer Review College Global Challenges Research Fund (GCRF)

 

INTERNATIONAL RESEARCH COUNCIL PEER REVIEWER

Academy of Finland

Austrian Science Fund (FWF)

EU 7th Framework Program for Research
Hong Kong Research Grants Council’s Public Policy Research Fund (PPR)

Irish Research Council

John Templeton Foundation

National Research Foundation, South Africa

 

PROFESSIONAL AND RESEARCH ASSOCIATIONS

Association of University Lecturers in Religion and Education (AULRE, co-founder and former Chair)

British Educational Research Association (BERA)

European Educational Research Association (EERA)

International Seminar on Religious Education and Values (ISREV)

Philosophy of Education Society of Great Britain (PESGB)

Society for Research in Higher Education (SRHE)
Society for Educational Studies (SES)

Also:

Executive (2019-2022) Oxford Intelligence Group, Nuffield College, University of Oxford

Fellow, Higher Education Academy (FHEA)

Fellow, Royal Society of Arts (FRSA)

Cambridge Intelligence Seminar

 

OTHER ADMINISTRATIVE ROLES AT OXFORD

Elected by Congregation to the University of Oxford Prevent Steering Group

Social Sciences Divisional representative of the Permanent Private Halls Supervisory Committee (PPHSC), a senior committee of the University of Oxford overseeing governance of Blackfriars; Campion Hall; Regent’s Park College; St Benet’s; St Stephen’s House; Wycliffe Hall.

Member, Central University Research Ethics Committee (CUREC)

Chair, Department of Education Research Ethics Committee (DREC)

Member, Inter-Divisional Social Sciences and Humanities Research Ethics Committee (IDREC)

Chair, Bodleian Library Education Committee

Member and occasional Chair Social Sciences Divisional Library Committee

Education Advisory Group, Christ Church College, Oxford

 

EDITORSHIP OF INTERNATIONAL JOURNALS

Gearon, L. (Guest editor) (2021) Literature and Security, Special Issue, Text Matters: A Journal of Literature, Theory and Culture, with a planned formal launch at Lodz, Poland.

Gearon, L., (Lead Guest Editor with editorial team) Kuusisto, A., Matemba, Y., Benjamin, S., Du Preez, P., Koirikivi, P., Simmonds, S. (2020) Decolonising the Religious Education Curriculum: International Perspectives in Theory, Research, and Practice, Special Issue, British Journal of Religious Education.

Gearon, L. (Guest Editor) (2019) Special Issue of Religions 10 (1) on Religion, Security, Education.

Gearon, L. and Williams, E. (Guest Editors) (2019) Special Issue of the British Journal of Educational Studies, Writers and their Education, 67 (3), 283–289.

Gearon, L. and Williams, E. (Guest Editors) (2018) Special Issue of Journal of Philosophy of Education on Philosophy, Literature and Education, 52 (4), 577-777.

Gearon, L. (Guest Editor) (2015) British Journal of Educational Studies, Special Issue, Education, Security and Intelligence Studies, 63 (3) 263-411.

Tirri, K., (Finland) Campbell, E. (Canada), Gearon, L. (UK), Lovat, T. (Australia) (Guest Editors) (2012) The Moral Core of Teaching, Education Research International.

Gearon, L. (Guest Editor) (2008) Citizenship, Human Rights and Religion, British Journal of Religious Education, 30 (2) 93-108.

Gearon, L. (Guest Editor) (2006) Children’s Spirituality and Children’s Rights, International Journal of Children’s Spirituality, 11 (2) 193-310.

Simon Marginson is  Emeritus Professor of Higher Education at the University of Oxford, Director of the ESRC/RE Centre for Global Higher Education (CGHE), and Editor-in-Chief of the journal Higher Education.

Simon led the ESRC Centre for Global Higher Education between November 2015 and April 2024. His research is focused primarily on global and international higher education, higher education in East Asia, the public and social contributions of higher education, and higher education and social equality. He is currently preparing an integrated theorisation of higher education. His scholarship is widely published and cited (Google h-index 67 in September 2019). Books include Higher Education and the Common Good (Melbourne University Publishing, 2016); High Participation Systems of Higher Education, edited with Brendan Cantwell and Anna Smolentseva (Oxford University Press, 2018); Changing Higher Education in East Asia, edited with Xin Xu (Bloomsbury, 2022) and Assessing the Contributions of Higher Education, edited with Brendan Cantwell, Daria Platonova and Anna Smolentseva (Edward Elgar, 2023).

Selected Publications
Books
  • Marginson, S. (2016).The Dream is Over: The crisis of Clark Kerr’s California Idea of higher education. Berkeley: University of California Press.
  • Marginson, S. (2016).Higher Education and the Common Good. Melbourne: Melbourne University Publishing.
  • Tran, L. & Marginson, S. (eds.). (2018).Internationalisation of Vietnamese Higher Education. Dordrecht: Springer Nature.
  • Carnoy, M., Froumin, I., Leshukov, O. & Marginson, S. (eds.). (2018) Higher Education in Federal Countries. New Delhi: Sage.
  • Cantwell, B., Marginson, S. & Smolentseva, A. (eds.). (2018) High Participation Systems of Higher Education. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
  • Callender, C., Locke, W. & Marginson, S. (eds.) (2020). Changing Higher Education for a Changing World. London: Bloomsbury.
  • Chattopadhyay, S., Marginson, S. & Varghese, N.V. (eds.) (2021). Changing Higher Education in India. London: Bloomsbury.
  • Marginson, S. & Xu, X. (eds.) (2022). Changing Higher Education in East Asia. (2022). London: Bloomsbury.
  • Marginson, S., Cantwell, B., Platonova, D. & Smolentseva, A. (eds.) (2023). Assessing the contributions of higher education. Cheltenham: Edward Elgar.
Recent Journal Papers
  • Marginson, S. (2016). The worldwide trend to high participation higher education: Dynamics of social stratification in inclusive systems. Higher Education, 72 (4), 413-435.
  • Marginson, S. (2018). Private/public in higher education: A synthesis of economic and political approaches. Studies in Higher Education, 43 (2), 322-337
  • Marginson, S. (2018) Global trends in higher education financing: The United Kingdom. International J. Educational Development, 58, 26-36
  • Marginson, S. (2018) National/global synergy in the development of higher education and science in China since 1978. Frontiers of Education in China, 13 (4), 486–512
  • Marginson, S. (2019) Limitations of human capital theory. Studies in Higher Education, 44 (2), 287-301
  • Marginson, S. and Yang, L. (2022). Individual and collective outcomes of higher education: A comparison of Anglo-American and Chinese approaches. Globalisation, Societies and Education, 20 (1), 1-32.
  • Marginson, S. (2022). ‘All things are in flux’: China in global science. Higher Education, 83 (4), 881-910.
  • Marginson, S. (2022). What drives global science? The four competing narratives. Studies in Higher Education, 47 (8), 1566-1584.
  • Marginson, S. (2022). Global science and national comparisons: Beyond bibliometrics and scientometrics. Comparative Education, 58 (2), 125-146.
  • Marginson, S. (2022). What is global higher education? Oxford Review of Education, 48 (4), 492-517.
  • Marginson S. (2022). Space and scale in higher education: The glonacal heuristic revisited. Higher Education, 84 (6),1365-1395.
  • Marginson, S. & Xu, X. (2023). Hegemony and inequality in global science: Problems of the center-periphery model. Comparative Education Review, 67 (1). https://doi.org/10.1086/722760
  • Marginson, S. (2023). Student self-formation: An emerging paradigm in higher education. Studies in Higher Education, https://doi.org/10.1080/03075079.2023.2252826 (2023).
  • Marginson, S. (2023). Limitations of the leading definition of ‘internationalisation’ of higher education: Is the idea wrong or is the fault in reality? Globalisation, Societies and Education, https://doi.org/10.1080/14767724.2023.2264223
  • Marginson, S. and Yang ,L. (2023). Has the public good been emptied out of higher education in England? Higher Education. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10734-023-01117-6

Maia Chankseliani is Associate Professor of Comparative and International Education at the University of Oxford where she leads a flagship master’s course in Comparative and International Education. She convenes the Comparative and International Education Research Group at the Department of Education.

Within comparative and international education, Maia Chankseliani works at the intersection of tertiary education and development. She researches societal, institutional, and policy forces that shape tertiary education and the potential of tertiary education and research for transforming societies.

Methodologically, she utilises both qualitative and quantitative methods. Her work often combines secondary data analysis with insights gathered through semi-structured interviews and contextualised case studies.

Maia Chankseliani has published four books in the field of comparative and international education: What Happened to the Soviet University? (2022), Building Research Capacity at Universities: Insights from Post-Soviet Countries (2022), Comparing Post-Socialist Transformations: Purposes, Policies, and Practices in Education (2018), and Fairness in Access to Higher Education in a Global Perspective: Reconciling Excellence, Efficiency, and Justice (2013).

She currently leads a major research project examining the impact of international mobility on world development (funded by the U.S. Department of State). Maia Chankseliani has worked on a number of externally funded research projects and consultancies involving the UK Government agencies responsible for education and skills, UKRI/ESRC, British Council, World Bank, Qatar Foundation, the European Commission.

With a background in education research, teaching, policy-making, leadership, and consultancy, Maia Chankseliani brings to her role extensive experience in diverse international settings. This breadth of experience informs her research and enables her to bridge theory and practice.

Maia Chankseliani engages with governments and gives academic and policy-relevant talks nationally and internationally. Her research regularly features in national and international media.

She holds a BA in Philology from Tbilisi State University (Georgia), an Ed. M in International Education Policy from Harvard University (USA), and a PhD in Education from the University of Cambridge (UK).

Maia Chankseliani serves as the Editor-in-Chief of the International Journal of Educational Research.

Aliya teaches on the Comparative and International Education MSc programme at our Department. She is also a Junior Research Fellow at Lady Margaret Hall. Her research focuses on young people and families’ experiences of education in turbulent times.

For example, educational challenges and rehabilitation during COVID-19 and after the 2022 floods in Pakistan. Her current geographical focus includes ethnically diverse communities (Pakistani and Bangladeshi) in England as well as marginalised communities in Pakistan.

Aliya’s PhD explored the complexities of gender and international education, and her current work focuses on decolonising educational research practices and the experience of Southern-ness globally. Aliya’s specialist areas are parental, mothers’ and young people’s perspectives of and aspirations for education, and their own modalities of agency to fulfil their dreams.

Aliya publishes on the topics of Southern epistemologies and methodologies and teaches on related topics of decolonisation of knowledge production and the politics of representation. She is currently leading multiple projects in England and Pakistan focusing on girls’ education, gender experiences of education, mothers’ perspectives on educating their children, teacher educators, displaced peoples experiences in England and Pakistan.

Aliya is accepting DPhil students interested in these areas:

  • Southern epistemologies and methodologies
  • The capability approach and social justice
  • Negative capability
  • Deconstruction of the silence/violence binary
  • Marginalised peoples’ perspectives
  • Intersectional experiences of marginalisation including those related with gender, race, ethnicity, indigeneity, queerness, disability, class and caste (among others)
  • Decolonisation of knowledge production and representation of the South
  • Qualitative methodologies
  • Theorising from the margins
  • Area focus South Asia particularly Pakistan and Afghanistan
  • Internal displacement

Aliya is the acting Deputy Chair of the United Kingdom Forum for International Education and Training (UKFIET) conference 2023.

Gates Cambridge Biography

 

Research Group Membership

 

Research Projects

1. ‘Understanding the impact of COVID-19 on learning experiences of secondary school going age children among Bangladeshi and Pakistani ethnic minority families’
Funder: Cambridge Humanities Research Grants Scheme
Research team: Professor Nidhi Singal and Dr Aliya Khalid
Status: Complete

2. Gendered Inequalities in Education and Capability Spaces for Women/Girls (and others) in Pakistan: Education and reconstruction after 2022 floods in Pakistan
Funder: British Association for International and Comparative Education (BAICE) Seedcorn Fund
Research team: Aliya Khalid, Soufia Siddiqui, Aditi Chidambaram, Indrani Sigamany
Status: Ongoing

3. Bridging the Local and Global: Women’s Spaces and Collectives’: On becoming caregivers and teachers: Immigrant mothers’ identities and philosophies of education in England during COVID
Team members: Aliya Khalid, Jane Rooney and Ruth Houghton, Lavinia Kamphausen, Kate spencer-Bennet, Alana Farrel
Funder: The British Academy
Status: Complete

4. Collaborative development of faculty for Pakistan undergraduate Teacher Education Colleges: Durbeen and Oxford knowledge exchange project
Team members: Aliya Khalid, Ann Childs, Trevor Mutton, Ian Thompson, Jenni Ingram and Katharine Burn
Funder: Malala Fund
Status: Ongoing

Dr Karen Skilling is an Associate Professor at the Department of Education at the University of Oxford. Karen is currently the Deputy Director of Doctoral Research, Lead of the PGCE mathematics education at the Department of Education, and co-ordinates the Doctoral Teaching Fellows for teacher education. In 2020, Karen established the STEM Discussion Group and also convenes the Subject Pedagogy Group seminars.

Karen’s research interests include: student engagement and motivation in mathematics; integrated STEM learning and project-based STEM activities; and vignette methods. Karen currently sits on the Executive Committee of BSRLM, and is a journal Editor for the Teaching Education Journal (TEJ) and Research in Mathematics Education (RME). Karen has also been co-Editor for several special issues, and a topic study co-lead at the Congress of the European Society for Research in Mathematics Education (CERME). Karen is a Visiting Fellow at King’s College London and been an HEA Fellow since 2016.

Awards include: Australian Postgraduate Award (Industry) (APAI): funded PhD role attached to MYTEAM Project awarded by Australian Research Council (2008 –2012); Postdoctoral Research Fellowship: Department of Education, University of Oxford (2013-14); and nominations for Most Outstanding Contribution to Student Experience at King’s College London (2015, 2016, 2017).

David Mills is an Associate Professor and Director of the Centre for Global Higher Education (CGHE).

His current research focuses on the political economy of the global science system, and its impact on institutional research and publishing cultures in African universities. His most recent book is ‘Who Counts: Ghanaian Academic Publishing and Global Science’, co-written with colleagues from the University of Ghana and Oxford, and available open access from African Minds:  https://www.africanminds.co.za/who-counts/

Trained in Anthropology, and with inter-disciplinary research interests, David uses ethnographic methods to study the inequalities created by global higher education. He is particularly interested in African university research cultures and the role of diamond Open Access scholarly journals within knowledge ecosystems.

He welcomes enquiries from potential doctoral students interested in studying African Higher Education, as well as research and publishing cultures.

Liam Francis Gearon (BA, Hons, MA, MPhil, Cert He, PhD, FHEA, FRSA, Docent) is Associate Professor in Religious Education in the Department of Education, Senior Research Fellow at Harris Manchester College, University of Oxford; Docent, University of Helsinki, Finland; Honorary Senior Research Fellow at the School of Education, University of Birmingham, UK; Conjoint Professor at Newcastle University, Australia; Visiting Professor at the Irish Centre for Catholic Studies, MIC, Limerick, Ireland; Extraordinary Professor, North-West University, South Africa.

Liam Francis Gearon is Founder-Convenor of the Philosophy, Religion, Education Research Group, providing  a unique interdisciplinary contribution to the research culture of the Department of Education at the University of Oxford. The Philosophy, religion and education Research Group specifically forges theoretical and empirical interconnections between the arts, humanities, philosophy and the social sciences through the common focus of education. Contributions of this research group have been made to matters such as: theories of research policy and impact; the cultural value of research in the arts and humanities; research ethics; the intersection of epistemological and ethical domains in research in schools; religion, radicalisation and counter-terrorism in schools and universities; and the creation of distinctive sub-field of study at the interface of education, security and intelligence studies.

A specialist in the interdisciplinary study of religion in education, and particularly noted for the systematic philosophical and history of ideas analysis on the epistemological foundations of religious education, his framing of the paradigms of religion in education – scriptural-theological; phenomenological; psychological-experiential; philosophical-conceptual; social-cultural; political-historical – has contributed new insights to secularisation theory in numerous, some award-winning, monographs, such as MasterClass in Religious Education (Gearon, 2013); On Holy Ground (Gearon, 2015) [2016 Society of Education Studies Book Prize]; Religious Authority and the Arts: Conversations in Political Theology (Gearon, 2015); and State Religious Education and the State of the Religious Life (Gearon and Prud’homme, 2018).

His theorisations of the politicisation and securitisation of religion in education have been the subject of intense international debate for several years. Landmark publications on security in education – ‘The Counter-Terrorist Classroom’ (2013); ‘The Counter-Terrorist Classroom’ (2017); ‘Terrorism and Counter-Terrorism Policy and Research in UK Universities’ (2018): ‘Research Ethics in the Securitised University’ (Gearon and Parsons, 2019) and ‘The Kill Chain’ (Gearon, 2020) – have enabled empirical, methodological and theoretical advances on elites’ theory, the ethics of security and radicalisation research (Gearon and Kuusisto, 2018; Kuusisto and Gearon, 2017; Benjamin, Gearon, Kuusisto, Koirikivi, 2021).

With cognate research interests in security across all phases of education, Liam has over a decade collaboratively developed an interdisciplinary sub-field at the boundary of universities, security and intelligence studies, including research ethics in the securitised university (Gearon and Parsons, 2019). One of the defining outcomes here is Liam’s quarter of a million-word edited collection arising from the international Colloquium at Oriel College he convened in 2017, the Routledge International Handbook of Universities, Security and Intelligence Studies (Gearon, 2019). Interdisciplinary and inter-agency work in this area has included the Nuffield Foundation funded Universities and National Security: Research and Policy Collaborations 2019-2020, with a cross-disciplinary research team of 14 distinguished Co-Investigators.

With a significant Academy of Finland research grant (2018-2022) with Arniika Kuusisto (Stockholm/Helsinki/ Oxford), we oversee the research of two highly productive early career, post-doctoral researchers on radicalisation. This includes notable social and policy impacts such as the development of a national strategy around extremism through education for the Ministry of Justice in Finland (Activities | Growing up radical? | University of Helsinki). With substantial quantitative and qualitative data gathered, the project has already produced a substantial number of quality research outputs (Publications | Growing up radical? | University of Helsinki).

With a doctorate in English literature, Liam has also drawn on arts and humanities theoretical knowledge and methodological approaches to advance what are now intense cross-disciplinary debates around ‘decolonising the curriculum’ in religious education. From a series of foundational papers addressing the relationship between religious education and postcolonial theory – Gearon (2001a) ‘The Imagined Other: Postcolonial Theory and Religious Education’; Gearon (2001b) ‘A Spirituality of Dissent: Religion, Culture and Postcolonial Criticism’; Gearon (2002a) ‘Human Rights and Religious Education: Some Postcolonial Perspectives’ – he has recently led an international team (UK, Finland, Sweden, South Africa) as Guest Editor of the British Journal of Religious Education, for a high profile special issue on religion and education in postcolonial context (Gearon, Kuusisto, Matemba, Benjamin, Du Preez, Koirikivi, and Simmonds, 2020).

As Principal Investigator, Liam has led funded research projects with the Academy of Finland, the Arts and Humanities Research Council, the British Academy, the Leverhulme Trust, the Nuffield Foundation, the Philosophy of Education Society of Great Britain, and the Society for Educational Studies, a career total of funding exceeding £5,000,000, including a £4.5 million grant to establish a centre for citizenship and human rights at the University of Surrey Roehampton.

Doctoral supervision and Graduate teaching

 PGCE Religious Education (Subject lead)

  • Masters in Learning and Teaching (Subject lead)
  • Comparative and International Education

EXTERNAL POSTS

2020- Docent, Helsinki University, Finland

2020- Extraordinary Professor, Faculty of Education, North-West University, South Africa

2019-2021 Visiting Professor, Irish Institute of Catholic Studies, MIC, Limerick, Ireland

2012-2020 Conjoint Professor, Newcastle University, Australia

2019-2023 Honorary Senior Research Fellow, School of Education, University of Birmingham

 

PREVIOUS EXTERNAL POSTS

2011-2018, Adjunct Professor, Australian Catholic University, Australia

2010-2011, Visiting Professor, Faculty of Education, University of Plymouth

2008-2010, Research Professor, Faculty of Education, University of Plymouth

2006-2008, Professor of Education, University of Roehampton

2000-2006, Reader in Education, University of Surrey Roehampton

2006-2008, Senior Fellow, Centre of Excellence in Human Rights, University of Surrey Roehampton

2005-2008, Vice-President, International Human Rights Education Consortium, New York, USA

2001-2005, Director, Centre for Research in Human Rights, University of Surrey, Roehampton

1996-2000, Senior Lecturer, Faculty of Education, Roehampton, London

 

UK RESEARCH COUNCIL PEER REVIEW COLLEGES

AHRC Expert Group on Covid Research Group and Research Grant Panel ‘Introducer’

AHRC Peer Review College (2019 Gold Standard award, for ‘Recognition of significant contributions to the AHRC Peer Review College’)

ESRC Peer Review College

Universities UK Peer Review College Global Challenges Research Fund (GCRF)

 

INTERNATIONAL RESEARCH COUNCIL PEER REVIEWER

Academy of Finland

Austrian Science Fund (FWF)

EU 7th Framework Program for Research
Hong Kong Research Grants Council’s Public Policy Research Fund (PPR)

Irish Research Council

John Templeton Foundation

National Research Foundation, South Africa

 

PROFESSIONAL AND RESEARCH ASSOCIATIONS

Association of University Lecturers in Religion and Education (AULRE, co-founder and former Chair)

British Educational Research Association (BERA)

European Educational Research Association (EERA)

International Seminar on Religious Education and Values (ISREV)

Philosophy of Education Society of Great Britain (PESGB)

Society for Research in Higher Education (SRHE)
Society for Educational Studies (SES)

Also:

Executive (2019-2022) Oxford Intelligence Group, Nuffield College, University of Oxford

Fellow, Higher Education Academy (FHEA)

Fellow, Royal Society of Arts (FRSA)

Cambridge Intelligence Seminar

 

OTHER ADMINISTRATIVE ROLES AT OXFORD

Elected by Congregation to the University of Oxford Prevent Steering Group

Social Sciences Divisional representative of the Permanent Private Halls Supervisory Committee (PPHSC), a senior committee of the University of Oxford overseeing governance of Blackfriars; Campion Hall; Regent’s Park College; St Benet’s; St Stephen’s House; Wycliffe Hall.

Member, Central University Research Ethics Committee (CUREC)

Chair, Department of Education Research Ethics Committee (DREC)

Member, Inter-Divisional Social Sciences and Humanities Research Ethics Committee (IDREC)

Chair, Bodleian Library Education Committee

Member and occasional Chair Social Sciences Divisional Library Committee

Education Advisory Group, Christ Church College, Oxford

 

EDITORSHIP OF INTERNATIONAL JOURNALS

Gearon, L. (Guest editor) (2021) Literature and Security, Special Issue, Text Matters: A Journal of Literature, Theory and Culture, with a planned formal launch at Lodz, Poland.

Gearon, L., (Lead Guest Editor with editorial team) Kuusisto, A., Matemba, Y., Benjamin, S., Du Preez, P., Koirikivi, P., Simmonds, S. (2020) Decolonising the Religious Education Curriculum: International Perspectives in Theory, Research, and Practice, Special Issue, British Journal of Religious Education.

Gearon, L. (Guest Editor) (2019) Special Issue of Religions 10 (1) on Religion, Security, Education.

Gearon, L. and Williams, E. (Guest Editors) (2019) Special Issue of the British Journal of Educational Studies, Writers and their Education, 67 (3), 283–289.

Gearon, L. and Williams, E. (Guest Editors) (2018) Special Issue of Journal of Philosophy of Education on Philosophy, Literature and Education, 52 (4), 577-777.

Gearon, L. (Guest Editor) (2015) British Journal of Educational Studies, Special Issue, Education, Security and Intelligence Studies, 63 (3) 263-411.

Tirri, K., (Finland) Campbell, E. (Canada), Gearon, L. (UK), Lovat, T. (Australia) (Guest Editors) (2012) The Moral Core of Teaching, Education Research International.

Gearon, L. (Guest Editor) (2008) Citizenship, Human Rights and Religion, British Journal of Religious Education, 30 (2) 93-108.

Gearon, L. (Guest Editor) (2006) Children’s Spirituality and Children’s Rights, International Journal of Children’s Spirituality, 11 (2) 193-310.

Simon Marginson is  Emeritus Professor of Higher Education at the University of Oxford, Director of the ESRC/RE Centre for Global Higher Education (CGHE), and Editor-in-Chief of the journal Higher Education.

Simon led the ESRC Centre for Global Higher Education between November 2015 and April 2024. His research is focused primarily on global and international higher education, higher education in East Asia, the public and social contributions of higher education, and higher education and social equality. He is currently preparing an integrated theorisation of higher education. His scholarship is widely published and cited (Google h-index 67 in September 2019). Books include Higher Education and the Common Good (Melbourne University Publishing, 2016); High Participation Systems of Higher Education, edited with Brendan Cantwell and Anna Smolentseva (Oxford University Press, 2018); Changing Higher Education in East Asia, edited with Xin Xu (Bloomsbury, 2022) and Assessing the Contributions of Higher Education, edited with Brendan Cantwell, Daria Platonova and Anna Smolentseva (Edward Elgar, 2023).

Selected Publications
Books
  • Marginson, S. (2016).The Dream is Over: The crisis of Clark Kerr’s California Idea of higher education. Berkeley: University of California Press.
  • Marginson, S. (2016).Higher Education and the Common Good. Melbourne: Melbourne University Publishing.
  • Tran, L. & Marginson, S. (eds.). (2018).Internationalisation of Vietnamese Higher Education. Dordrecht: Springer Nature.
  • Carnoy, M., Froumin, I., Leshukov, O. & Marginson, S. (eds.). (2018) Higher Education in Federal Countries. New Delhi: Sage.
  • Cantwell, B., Marginson, S. & Smolentseva, A. (eds.). (2018) High Participation Systems of Higher Education. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
  • Callender, C., Locke, W. & Marginson, S. (eds.) (2020). Changing Higher Education for a Changing World. London: Bloomsbury.
  • Chattopadhyay, S., Marginson, S. & Varghese, N.V. (eds.) (2021). Changing Higher Education in India. London: Bloomsbury.
  • Marginson, S. & Xu, X. (eds.) (2022). Changing Higher Education in East Asia. (2022). London: Bloomsbury.
  • Marginson, S., Cantwell, B., Platonova, D. & Smolentseva, A. (eds.) (2023). Assessing the contributions of higher education. Cheltenham: Edward Elgar.
Recent Journal Papers
  • Marginson, S. (2016). The worldwide trend to high participation higher education: Dynamics of social stratification in inclusive systems. Higher Education, 72 (4), 413-435.
  • Marginson, S. (2018). Private/public in higher education: A synthesis of economic and political approaches. Studies in Higher Education, 43 (2), 322-337
  • Marginson, S. (2018) Global trends in higher education financing: The United Kingdom. International J. Educational Development, 58, 26-36
  • Marginson, S. (2018) National/global synergy in the development of higher education and science in China since 1978. Frontiers of Education in China, 13 (4), 486–512
  • Marginson, S. (2019) Limitations of human capital theory. Studies in Higher Education, 44 (2), 287-301
  • Marginson, S. and Yang, L. (2022). Individual and collective outcomes of higher education: A comparison of Anglo-American and Chinese approaches. Globalisation, Societies and Education, 20 (1), 1-32.
  • Marginson, S. (2022). ‘All things are in flux’: China in global science. Higher Education, 83 (4), 881-910.
  • Marginson, S. (2022). What drives global science? The four competing narratives. Studies in Higher Education, 47 (8), 1566-1584.
  • Marginson, S. (2022). Global science and national comparisons: Beyond bibliometrics and scientometrics. Comparative Education, 58 (2), 125-146.
  • Marginson, S. (2022). What is global higher education? Oxford Review of Education, 48 (4), 492-517.
  • Marginson S. (2022). Space and scale in higher education: The glonacal heuristic revisited. Higher Education, 84 (6),1365-1395.
  • Marginson, S. & Xu, X. (2023). Hegemony and inequality in global science: Problems of the center-periphery model. Comparative Education Review, 67 (1). https://doi.org/10.1086/722760
  • Marginson, S. (2023). Student self-formation: An emerging paradigm in higher education. Studies in Higher Education, https://doi.org/10.1080/03075079.2023.2252826 (2023).
  • Marginson, S. (2023). Limitations of the leading definition of ‘internationalisation’ of higher education: Is the idea wrong or is the fault in reality? Globalisation, Societies and Education, https://doi.org/10.1080/14767724.2023.2264223
  • Marginson, S. and Yang ,L. (2023). Has the public good been emptied out of higher education in England? Higher Education. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10734-023-01117-6

Maia Chankseliani is Associate Professor of Comparative and International Education at the University of Oxford where she leads a flagship master’s course in Comparative and International Education. She convenes the Comparative and International Education Research Group at the Department of Education.

Within comparative and international education, Maia Chankseliani works at the intersection of tertiary education and development. She researches societal, institutional, and policy forces that shape tertiary education and the potential of tertiary education and research for transforming societies.

Methodologically, she utilises both qualitative and quantitative methods. Her work often combines secondary data analysis with insights gathered through semi-structured interviews and contextualised case studies.

Maia Chankseliani has published four books in the field of comparative and international education: What Happened to the Soviet University? (2022), Building Research Capacity at Universities: Insights from Post-Soviet Countries (2022), Comparing Post-Socialist Transformations: Purposes, Policies, and Practices in Education (2018), and Fairness in Access to Higher Education in a Global Perspective: Reconciling Excellence, Efficiency, and Justice (2013).

She currently leads a major research project examining the impact of international mobility on world development (funded by the U.S. Department of State). Maia Chankseliani has worked on a number of externally funded research projects and consultancies involving the UK Government agencies responsible for education and skills, UKRI/ESRC, British Council, World Bank, Qatar Foundation, the European Commission.

With a background in education research, teaching, policy-making, leadership, and consultancy, Maia Chankseliani brings to her role extensive experience in diverse international settings. This breadth of experience informs her research and enables her to bridge theory and practice.

Maia Chankseliani engages with governments and gives academic and policy-relevant talks nationally and internationally. Her research regularly features in national and international media.

She holds a BA in Philology from Tbilisi State University (Georgia), an Ed. M in International Education Policy from Harvard University (USA), and a PhD in Education from the University of Cambridge (UK).

Maia Chankseliani serves as the Editor-in-Chief of the International Journal of Educational Research.

Aliya teaches on the Comparative and International Education MSc programme at our Department. She is also a Junior Research Fellow at Lady Margaret Hall. Her research focuses on young people and families’ experiences of education in turbulent times.

For example, educational challenges and rehabilitation during COVID-19 and after the 2022 floods in Pakistan. Her current geographical focus includes ethnically diverse communities (Pakistani and Bangladeshi) in England as well as marginalised communities in Pakistan.

Aliya’s PhD explored the complexities of gender and international education, and her current work focuses on decolonising educational research practices and the experience of Southern-ness globally. Aliya’s specialist areas are parental, mothers’ and young people’s perspectives of and aspirations for education, and their own modalities of agency to fulfil their dreams.

Aliya publishes on the topics of Southern epistemologies and methodologies and teaches on related topics of decolonisation of knowledge production and the politics of representation. She is currently leading multiple projects in England and Pakistan focusing on girls’ education, gender experiences of education, mothers’ perspectives on educating their children, teacher educators, displaced peoples experiences in England and Pakistan.

Aliya is accepting DPhil students interested in these areas:

  • Southern epistemologies and methodologies
  • The capability approach and social justice
  • Negative capability
  • Deconstruction of the silence/violence binary
  • Marginalised peoples’ perspectives
  • Intersectional experiences of marginalisation including those related with gender, race, ethnicity, indigeneity, queerness, disability, class and caste (among others)
  • Decolonisation of knowledge production and representation of the South
  • Qualitative methodologies
  • Theorising from the margins
  • Area focus South Asia particularly Pakistan and Afghanistan
  • Internal displacement

Aliya is the acting Deputy Chair of the United Kingdom Forum for International Education and Training (UKFIET) conference 2023.

Gates Cambridge Biography

 

Research Group Membership

 

Research Projects

1. ‘Understanding the impact of COVID-19 on learning experiences of secondary school going age children among Bangladeshi and Pakistani ethnic minority families’
Funder: Cambridge Humanities Research Grants Scheme
Research team: Professor Nidhi Singal and Dr Aliya Khalid
Status: Complete

2. Gendered Inequalities in Education and Capability Spaces for Women/Girls (and others) in Pakistan: Education and reconstruction after 2022 floods in Pakistan
Funder: British Association for International and Comparative Education (BAICE) Seedcorn Fund
Research team: Aliya Khalid, Soufia Siddiqui, Aditi Chidambaram, Indrani Sigamany
Status: Ongoing

3. Bridging the Local and Global: Women’s Spaces and Collectives’: On becoming caregivers and teachers: Immigrant mothers’ identities and philosophies of education in England during COVID
Team members: Aliya Khalid, Jane Rooney and Ruth Houghton, Lavinia Kamphausen, Kate spencer-Bennet, Alana Farrel
Funder: The British Academy
Status: Complete

4. Collaborative development of faculty for Pakistan undergraduate Teacher Education Colleges: Durbeen and Oxford knowledge exchange project
Team members: Aliya Khalid, Ann Childs, Trevor Mutton, Ian Thompson, Jenni Ingram and Katharine Burn
Funder: Malala Fund
Status: Ongoing

Dr Karen Skilling is an Associate Professor at the Department of Education at the University of Oxford. Karen is currently the Deputy Director of Doctoral Research, Lead of the PGCE mathematics education at the Department of Education, and co-ordinates the Doctoral Teaching Fellows for teacher education. In 2020, Karen established the STEM Discussion Group and also convenes the Subject Pedagogy Group seminars.

Karen’s research interests include: student engagement and motivation in mathematics; integrated STEM learning and project-based STEM activities; and vignette methods. Karen currently sits on the Executive Committee of BSRLM, and is a journal Editor for the Teaching Education Journal (TEJ) and Research in Mathematics Education (RME). Karen has also been co-Editor for several special issues, and a topic study co-lead at the Congress of the European Society for Research in Mathematics Education (CERME). Karen is a Visiting Fellow at King’s College London and been an HEA Fellow since 2016.

Awards include: Australian Postgraduate Award (Industry) (APAI): funded PhD role attached to MYTEAM Project awarded by Australian Research Council (2008 –2012); Postdoctoral Research Fellowship: Department of Education, University of Oxford (2013-14); and nominations for Most Outstanding Contribution to Student Experience at King’s College London (2015, 2016, 2017).

David Mills is an Associate Professor and Director of the Centre for Global Higher Education (CGHE).

His current research focuses on the political economy of the global science system, and its impact on institutional research and publishing cultures in African universities. His most recent book is ‘Who Counts: Ghanaian Academic Publishing and Global Science’, co-written with colleagues from the University of Ghana and Oxford, and available open access from African Minds:  https://www.africanminds.co.za/who-counts/

Trained in Anthropology, and with inter-disciplinary research interests, David uses ethnographic methods to study the inequalities created by global higher education. He is particularly interested in African university research cultures and the role of diamond Open Access scholarly journals within knowledge ecosystems.

He welcomes enquiries from potential doctoral students interested in studying African Higher Education, as well as research and publishing cultures.

Liam Francis Gearon (BA, Hons, MA, MPhil, Cert He, PhD, FHEA, FRSA, Docent) is Associate Professor in Religious Education in the Department of Education, Senior Research Fellow at Harris Manchester College, University of Oxford; Docent, University of Helsinki, Finland; Honorary Senior Research Fellow at the School of Education, University of Birmingham, UK; Conjoint Professor at Newcastle University, Australia; Visiting Professor at the Irish Centre for Catholic Studies, MIC, Limerick, Ireland; Extraordinary Professor, North-West University, South Africa.

Liam Francis Gearon is Founder-Convenor of the Philosophy, Religion, Education Research Group, providing  a unique interdisciplinary contribution to the research culture of the Department of Education at the University of Oxford. The Philosophy, religion and education Research Group specifically forges theoretical and empirical interconnections between the arts, humanities, philosophy and the social sciences through the common focus of education. Contributions of this research group have been made to matters such as: theories of research policy and impact; the cultural value of research in the arts and humanities; research ethics; the intersection of epistemological and ethical domains in research in schools; religion, radicalisation and counter-terrorism in schools and universities; and the creation of distinctive sub-field of study at the interface of education, security and intelligence studies.

A specialist in the interdisciplinary study of religion in education, and particularly noted for the systematic philosophical and history of ideas analysis on the epistemological foundations of religious education, his framing of the paradigms of religion in education – scriptural-theological; phenomenological; psychological-experiential; philosophical-conceptual; social-cultural; political-historical – has contributed new insights to secularisation theory in numerous, some award-winning, monographs, such as MasterClass in Religious Education (Gearon, 2013); On Holy Ground (Gearon, 2015) [2016 Society of Education Studies Book Prize]; Religious Authority and the Arts: Conversations in Political Theology (Gearon, 2015); and State Religious Education and the State of the Religious Life (Gearon and Prud’homme, 2018).

His theorisations of the politicisation and securitisation of religion in education have been the subject of intense international debate for several years. Landmark publications on security in education – ‘The Counter-Terrorist Classroom’ (2013); ‘The Counter-Terrorist Classroom’ (2017); ‘Terrorism and Counter-Terrorism Policy and Research in UK Universities’ (2018): ‘Research Ethics in the Securitised University’ (Gearon and Parsons, 2019) and ‘The Kill Chain’ (Gearon, 2020) – have enabled empirical, methodological and theoretical advances on elites’ theory, the ethics of security and radicalisation research (Gearon and Kuusisto, 2018; Kuusisto and Gearon, 2017; Benjamin, Gearon, Kuusisto, Koirikivi, 2021).

With cognate research interests in security across all phases of education, Liam has over a decade collaboratively developed an interdisciplinary sub-field at the boundary of universities, security and intelligence studies, including research ethics in the securitised university (Gearon and Parsons, 2019). One of the defining outcomes here is Liam’s quarter of a million-word edited collection arising from the international Colloquium at Oriel College he convened in 2017, the Routledge International Handbook of Universities, Security and Intelligence Studies (Gearon, 2019). Interdisciplinary and inter-agency work in this area has included the Nuffield Foundation funded Universities and National Security: Research and Policy Collaborations 2019-2020, with a cross-disciplinary research team of 14 distinguished Co-Investigators.

With a significant Academy of Finland research grant (2018-2022) with Arniika Kuusisto (Stockholm/Helsinki/ Oxford), we oversee the research of two highly productive early career, post-doctoral researchers on radicalisation. This includes notable social and policy impacts such as the development of a national strategy around extremism through education for the Ministry of Justice in Finland (Activities | Growing up radical? | University of Helsinki). With substantial quantitative and qualitative data gathered, the project has already produced a substantial number of quality research outputs (Publications | Growing up radical? | University of Helsinki).

With a doctorate in English literature, Liam has also drawn on arts and humanities theoretical knowledge and methodological approaches to advance what are now intense cross-disciplinary debates around ‘decolonising the curriculum’ in religious education. From a series of foundational papers addressing the relationship between religious education and postcolonial theory – Gearon (2001a) ‘The Imagined Other: Postcolonial Theory and Religious Education’; Gearon (2001b) ‘A Spirituality of Dissent: Religion, Culture and Postcolonial Criticism’; Gearon (2002a) ‘Human Rights and Religious Education: Some Postcolonial Perspectives’ – he has recently led an international team (UK, Finland, Sweden, South Africa) as Guest Editor of the British Journal of Religious Education, for a high profile special issue on religion and education in postcolonial context (Gearon, Kuusisto, Matemba, Benjamin, Du Preez, Koirikivi, and Simmonds, 2020).

As Principal Investigator, Liam has led funded research projects with the Academy of Finland, the Arts and Humanities Research Council, the British Academy, the Leverhulme Trust, the Nuffield Foundation, the Philosophy of Education Society of Great Britain, and the Society for Educational Studies, a career total of funding exceeding £5,000,000, including a £4.5 million grant to establish a centre for citizenship and human rights at the University of Surrey Roehampton.

Doctoral supervision and Graduate teaching

 PGCE Religious Education (Subject lead)

  • Masters in Learning and Teaching (Subject lead)
  • Comparative and International Education

EXTERNAL POSTS

2020- Docent, Helsinki University, Finland

2020- Extraordinary Professor, Faculty of Education, North-West University, South Africa

2019-2021 Visiting Professor, Irish Institute of Catholic Studies, MIC, Limerick, Ireland

2012-2020 Conjoint Professor, Newcastle University, Australia

2019-2023 Honorary Senior Research Fellow, School of Education, University of Birmingham

 

PREVIOUS EXTERNAL POSTS

2011-2018, Adjunct Professor, Australian Catholic University, Australia

2010-2011, Visiting Professor, Faculty of Education, University of Plymouth

2008-2010, Research Professor, Faculty of Education, University of Plymouth

2006-2008, Professor of Education, University of Roehampton

2000-2006, Reader in Education, University of Surrey Roehampton

2006-2008, Senior Fellow, Centre of Excellence in Human Rights, University of Surrey Roehampton

2005-2008, Vice-President, International Human Rights Education Consortium, New York, USA

2001-2005, Director, Centre for Research in Human Rights, University of Surrey, Roehampton

1996-2000, Senior Lecturer, Faculty of Education, Roehampton, London

 

UK RESEARCH COUNCIL PEER REVIEW COLLEGES

AHRC Expert Group on Covid Research Group and Research Grant Panel ‘Introducer’

AHRC Peer Review College (2019 Gold Standard award, for ‘Recognition of significant contributions to the AHRC Peer Review College’)

ESRC Peer Review College

Universities UK Peer Review College Global Challenges Research Fund (GCRF)

 

INTERNATIONAL RESEARCH COUNCIL PEER REVIEWER

Academy of Finland

Austrian Science Fund (FWF)

EU 7th Framework Program for Research
Hong Kong Research Grants Council’s Public Policy Research Fund (PPR)

Irish Research Council

John Templeton Foundation

National Research Foundation, South Africa

 

PROFESSIONAL AND RESEARCH ASSOCIATIONS

Association of University Lecturers in Religion and Education (AULRE, co-founder and former Chair)

British Educational Research Association (BERA)

European Educational Research Association (EERA)

International Seminar on Religious Education and Values (ISREV)

Philosophy of Education Society of Great Britain (PESGB)

Society for Research in Higher Education (SRHE)
Society for Educational Studies (SES)

Also:

Executive (2019-2022) Oxford Intelligence Group, Nuffield College, University of Oxford

Fellow, Higher Education Academy (FHEA)

Fellow, Royal Society of Arts (FRSA)

Cambridge Intelligence Seminar

 

OTHER ADMINISTRATIVE ROLES AT OXFORD

Elected by Congregation to the University of Oxford Prevent Steering Group

Social Sciences Divisional representative of the Permanent Private Halls Supervisory Committee (PPHSC), a senior committee of the University of Oxford overseeing governance of Blackfriars; Campion Hall; Regent’s Park College; St Benet’s; St Stephen’s House; Wycliffe Hall.

Member, Central University Research Ethics Committee (CUREC)

Chair, Department of Education Research Ethics Committee (DREC)

Member, Inter-Divisional Social Sciences and Humanities Research Ethics Committee (IDREC)

Chair, Bodleian Library Education Committee

Member and occasional Chair Social Sciences Divisional Library Committee

Education Advisory Group, Christ Church College, Oxford

 

EDITORSHIP OF INTERNATIONAL JOURNALS

Gearon, L. (Guest editor) (2021) Literature and Security, Special Issue, Text Matters: A Journal of Literature, Theory and Culture, with a planned formal launch at Lodz, Poland.

Gearon, L., (Lead Guest Editor with editorial team) Kuusisto, A., Matemba, Y., Benjamin, S., Du Preez, P., Koirikivi, P., Simmonds, S. (2020) Decolonising the Religious Education Curriculum: International Perspectives in Theory, Research, and Practice, Special Issue, British Journal of Religious Education.

Gearon, L. (Guest Editor) (2019) Special Issue of Religions 10 (1) on Religion, Security, Education.

Gearon, L. and Williams, E. (Guest Editors) (2019) Special Issue of the British Journal of Educational Studies, Writers and their Education, 67 (3), 283–289.

Gearon, L. and Williams, E. (Guest Editors) (2018) Special Issue of Journal of Philosophy of Education on Philosophy, Literature and Education, 52 (4), 577-777.

Gearon, L. (Guest Editor) (2015) British Journal of Educational Studies, Special Issue, Education, Security and Intelligence Studies, 63 (3) 263-411.

Tirri, K., (Finland) Campbell, E. (Canada), Gearon, L. (UK), Lovat, T. (Australia) (Guest Editors) (2012) The Moral Core of Teaching, Education Research International.

Gearon, L. (Guest Editor) (2008) Citizenship, Human Rights and Religion, British Journal of Religious Education, 30 (2) 93-108.

Gearon, L. (Guest Editor) (2006) Children’s Spirituality and Children’s Rights, International Journal of Children’s Spirituality, 11 (2) 193-310.

Simon Marginson is  Emeritus Professor of Higher Education at the University of Oxford, Director of the ESRC/RE Centre for Global Higher Education (CGHE), and Editor-in-Chief of the journal Higher Education.

Simon led the ESRC Centre for Global Higher Education between November 2015 and April 2024. His research is focused primarily on global and international higher education, higher education in East Asia, the public and social contributions of higher education, and higher education and social equality. He is currently preparing an integrated theorisation of higher education. His scholarship is widely published and cited (Google h-index 67 in September 2019). Books include Higher Education and the Common Good (Melbourne University Publishing, 2016); High Participation Systems of Higher Education, edited with Brendan Cantwell and Anna Smolentseva (Oxford University Press, 2018); Changing Higher Education in East Asia, edited with Xin Xu (Bloomsbury, 2022) and Assessing the Contributions of Higher Education, edited with Brendan Cantwell, Daria Platonova and Anna Smolentseva (Edward Elgar, 2023).

Selected Publications
Books
  • Marginson, S. (2016).The Dream is Over: The crisis of Clark Kerr’s California Idea of higher education. Berkeley: University of California Press.
  • Marginson, S. (2016).Higher Education and the Common Good. Melbourne: Melbourne University Publishing.
  • Tran, L. & Marginson, S. (eds.). (2018).Internationalisation of Vietnamese Higher Education. Dordrecht: Springer Nature.
  • Carnoy, M., Froumin, I., Leshukov, O. & Marginson, S. (eds.). (2018) Higher Education in Federal Countries. New Delhi: Sage.
  • Cantwell, B., Marginson, S. & Smolentseva, A. (eds.). (2018) High Participation Systems of Higher Education. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
  • Callender, C., Locke, W. & Marginson, S. (eds.) (2020). Changing Higher Education for a Changing World. London: Bloomsbury.
  • Chattopadhyay, S., Marginson, S. & Varghese, N.V. (eds.) (2021). Changing Higher Education in India. London: Bloomsbury.
  • Marginson, S. & Xu, X. (eds.) (2022). Changing Higher Education in East Asia. (2022). London: Bloomsbury.
  • Marginson, S., Cantwell, B., Platonova, D. & Smolentseva, A. (eds.) (2023). Assessing the contributions of higher education. Cheltenham: Edward Elgar.
Recent Journal Papers
  • Marginson, S. (2016). The worldwide trend to high participation higher education: Dynamics of social stratification in inclusive systems. Higher Education, 72 (4), 413-435.
  • Marginson, S. (2018). Private/public in higher education: A synthesis of economic and political approaches. Studies in Higher Education, 43 (2), 322-337
  • Marginson, S. (2018) Global trends in higher education financing: The United Kingdom. International J. Educational Development, 58, 26-36
  • Marginson, S. (2018) National/global synergy in the development of higher education and science in China since 1978. Frontiers of Education in China, 13 (4), 486–512
  • Marginson, S. (2019) Limitations of human capital theory. Studies in Higher Education, 44 (2), 287-301
  • Marginson, S. and Yang, L. (2022). Individual and collective outcomes of higher education: A comparison of Anglo-American and Chinese approaches. Globalisation, Societies and Education, 20 (1), 1-32.
  • Marginson, S. (2022). ‘All things are in flux’: China in global science. Higher Education, 83 (4), 881-910.
  • Marginson, S. (2022). What drives global science? The four competing narratives. Studies in Higher Education, 47 (8), 1566-1584.
  • Marginson, S. (2022). Global science and national comparisons: Beyond bibliometrics and scientometrics. Comparative Education, 58 (2), 125-146.
  • Marginson, S. (2022). What is global higher education? Oxford Review of Education, 48 (4), 492-517.
  • Marginson S. (2022). Space and scale in higher education: The glonacal heuristic revisited. Higher Education, 84 (6),1365-1395.
  • Marginson, S. & Xu, X. (2023). Hegemony and inequality in global science: Problems of the center-periphery model. Comparative Education Review, 67 (1). https://doi.org/10.1086/722760
  • Marginson, S. (2023). Student self-formation: An emerging paradigm in higher education. Studies in Higher Education, https://doi.org/10.1080/03075079.2023.2252826 (2023).
  • Marginson, S. (2023). Limitations of the leading definition of ‘internationalisation’ of higher education: Is the idea wrong or is the fault in reality? Globalisation, Societies and Education, https://doi.org/10.1080/14767724.2023.2264223
  • Marginson, S. and Yang ,L. (2023). Has the public good been emptied out of higher education in England? Higher Education. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10734-023-01117-6

Maia Chankseliani is Associate Professor of Comparative and International Education at the University of Oxford where she leads a flagship master’s course in Comparative and International Education. She convenes the Comparative and International Education Research Group at the Department of Education.

Within comparative and international education, Maia Chankseliani works at the intersection of tertiary education and development. She researches societal, institutional, and policy forces that shape tertiary education and the potential of tertiary education and research for transforming societies.

Methodologically, she utilises both qualitative and quantitative methods. Her work often combines secondary data analysis with insights gathered through semi-structured interviews and contextualised case studies.

Maia Chankseliani has published four books in the field of comparative and international education: What Happened to the Soviet University? (2022), Building Research Capacity at Universities: Insights from Post-Soviet Countries (2022), Comparing Post-Socialist Transformations: Purposes, Policies, and Practices in Education (2018), and Fairness in Access to Higher Education in a Global Perspective: Reconciling Excellence, Efficiency, and Justice (2013).

She currently leads a major research project examining the impact of international mobility on world development (funded by the U.S. Department of State). Maia Chankseliani has worked on a number of externally funded research projects and consultancies involving the UK Government agencies responsible for education and skills, UKRI/ESRC, British Council, World Bank, Qatar Foundation, the European Commission.

With a background in education research, teaching, policy-making, leadership, and consultancy, Maia Chankseliani brings to her role extensive experience in diverse international settings. This breadth of experience informs her research and enables her to bridge theory and practice.

Maia Chankseliani engages with governments and gives academic and policy-relevant talks nationally and internationally. Her research regularly features in national and international media.

She holds a BA in Philology from Tbilisi State University (Georgia), an Ed. M in International Education Policy from Harvard University (USA), and a PhD in Education from the University of Cambridge (UK).

Maia Chankseliani serves as the Editor-in-Chief of the International Journal of Educational Research.

Aliya teaches on the Comparative and International Education MSc programme at our Department. She is also a Junior Research Fellow at Lady Margaret Hall. Her research focuses on young people and families’ experiences of education in turbulent times.

For example, educational challenges and rehabilitation during COVID-19 and after the 2022 floods in Pakistan. Her current geographical focus includes ethnically diverse communities (Pakistani and Bangladeshi) in England as well as marginalised communities in Pakistan.

Aliya’s PhD explored the complexities of gender and international education, and her current work focuses on decolonising educational research practices and the experience of Southern-ness globally. Aliya’s specialist areas are parental, mothers’ and young people’s perspectives of and aspirations for education, and their own modalities of agency to fulfil their dreams.

Aliya publishes on the topics of Southern epistemologies and methodologies and teaches on related topics of decolonisation of knowledge production and the politics of representation. She is currently leading multiple projects in England and Pakistan focusing on girls’ education, gender experiences of education, mothers’ perspectives on educating their children, teacher educators, displaced peoples experiences in England and Pakistan.

Aliya is accepting DPhil students interested in these areas:

  • Southern epistemologies and methodologies
  • The capability approach and social justice
  • Negative capability
  • Deconstruction of the silence/violence binary
  • Marginalised peoples’ perspectives
  • Intersectional experiences of marginalisation including those related with gender, race, ethnicity, indigeneity, queerness, disability, class and caste (among others)
  • Decolonisation of knowledge production and representation of the South
  • Qualitative methodologies
  • Theorising from the margins
  • Area focus South Asia particularly Pakistan and Afghanistan
  • Internal displacement

Aliya is the acting Deputy Chair of the United Kingdom Forum for International Education and Training (UKFIET) conference 2023.

Gates Cambridge Biography

 

Research Group Membership

 

Research Projects

1. ‘Understanding the impact of COVID-19 on learning experiences of secondary school going age children among Bangladeshi and Pakistani ethnic minority families’
Funder: Cambridge Humanities Research Grants Scheme
Research team: Professor Nidhi Singal and Dr Aliya Khalid
Status: Complete

2. Gendered Inequalities in Education and Capability Spaces for Women/Girls (and others) in Pakistan: Education and reconstruction after 2022 floods in Pakistan
Funder: British Association for International and Comparative Education (BAICE) Seedcorn Fund
Research team: Aliya Khalid, Soufia Siddiqui, Aditi Chidambaram, Indrani Sigamany
Status: Ongoing

3. Bridging the Local and Global: Women’s Spaces and Collectives’: On becoming caregivers and teachers: Immigrant mothers’ identities and philosophies of education in England during COVID
Team members: Aliya Khalid, Jane Rooney and Ruth Houghton, Lavinia Kamphausen, Kate spencer-Bennet, Alana Farrel
Funder: The British Academy
Status: Complete

4. Collaborative development of faculty for Pakistan undergraduate Teacher Education Colleges: Durbeen and Oxford knowledge exchange project
Team members: Aliya Khalid, Ann Childs, Trevor Mutton, Ian Thompson, Jenni Ingram and Katharine Burn
Funder: Malala Fund
Status: Ongoing

Dr Karen Skilling is an Associate Professor at the Department of Education at the University of Oxford. Karen is currently the Deputy Director of Doctoral Research, Lead of the PGCE mathematics education at the Department of Education, and co-ordinates the Doctoral Teaching Fellows for teacher education. In 2020, Karen established the STEM Discussion Group and also convenes the Subject Pedagogy Group seminars.

Karen’s research interests include: student engagement and motivation in mathematics; integrated STEM learning and project-based STEM activities; and vignette methods. Karen currently sits on the Executive Committee of BSRLM, and is a journal Editor for the Teaching Education Journal (TEJ) and Research in Mathematics Education (RME). Karen has also been co-Editor for several special issues, and a topic study co-lead at the Congress of the European Society for Research in Mathematics Education (CERME). Karen is a Visiting Fellow at King’s College London and been an HEA Fellow since 2016.

Awards include: Australian Postgraduate Award (Industry) (APAI): funded PhD role attached to MYTEAM Project awarded by Australian Research Council (2008 –2012); Postdoctoral Research Fellowship: Department of Education, University of Oxford (2013-14); and nominations for Most Outstanding Contribution to Student Experience at King’s College London (2015, 2016, 2017).

David Mills is an Associate Professor and Director of the Centre for Global Higher Education (CGHE).

His current research focuses on the political economy of the global science system, and its impact on institutional research and publishing cultures in African universities. His most recent book is ‘Who Counts: Ghanaian Academic Publishing and Global Science’, co-written with colleagues from the University of Ghana and Oxford, and available open access from African Minds:  https://www.africanminds.co.za/who-counts/

Trained in Anthropology, and with inter-disciplinary research interests, David uses ethnographic methods to study the inequalities created by global higher education. He is particularly interested in African university research cultures and the role of diamond Open Access scholarly journals within knowledge ecosystems.

He welcomes enquiries from potential doctoral students interested in studying African Higher Education, as well as research and publishing cultures.

Liam Francis Gearon (BA, Hons, MA, MPhil, Cert He, PhD, FHEA, FRSA, Docent) is Associate Professor in Religious Education in the Department of Education, Senior Research Fellow at Harris Manchester College, University of Oxford; Docent, University of Helsinki, Finland; Honorary Senior Research Fellow at the School of Education, University of Birmingham, UK; Conjoint Professor at Newcastle University, Australia; Visiting Professor at the Irish Centre for Catholic Studies, MIC, Limerick, Ireland; Extraordinary Professor, North-West University, South Africa.

Liam Francis Gearon is Founder-Convenor of the Philosophy, Religion, Education Research Group, providing  a unique interdisciplinary contribution to the research culture of the Department of Education at the University of Oxford. The Philosophy, religion and education Research Group specifically forges theoretical and empirical interconnections between the arts, humanities, philosophy and the social sciences through the common focus of education. Contributions of this research group have been made to matters such as: theories of research policy and impact; the cultural value of research in the arts and humanities; research ethics; the intersection of epistemological and ethical domains in research in schools; religion, radicalisation and counter-terrorism in schools and universities; and the creation of distinctive sub-field of study at the interface of education, security and intelligence studies.

A specialist in the interdisciplinary study of religion in education, and particularly noted for the systematic philosophical and history of ideas analysis on the epistemological foundations of religious education, his framing of the paradigms of religion in education – scriptural-theological; phenomenological; psychological-experiential; philosophical-conceptual; social-cultural; political-historical – has contributed new insights to secularisation theory in numerous, some award-winning, monographs, such as MasterClass in Religious Education (Gearon, 2013); On Holy Ground (Gearon, 2015) [2016 Society of Education Studies Book Prize]; Religious Authority and the Arts: Conversations in Political Theology (Gearon, 2015); and State Religious Education and the State of the Religious Life (Gearon and Prud’homme, 2018).

His theorisations of the politicisation and securitisation of religion in education have been the subject of intense international debate for several years. Landmark publications on security in education – ‘The Counter-Terrorist Classroom’ (2013); ‘The Counter-Terrorist Classroom’ (2017); ‘Terrorism and Counter-Terrorism Policy and Research in UK Universities’ (2018): ‘Research Ethics in the Securitised University’ (Gearon and Parsons, 2019) and ‘The Kill Chain’ (Gearon, 2020) – have enabled empirical, methodological and theoretical advances on elites’ theory, the ethics of security and radicalisation research (Gearon and Kuusisto, 2018; Kuusisto and Gearon, 2017; Benjamin, Gearon, Kuusisto, Koirikivi, 2021).

With cognate research interests in security across all phases of education, Liam has over a decade collaboratively developed an interdisciplinary sub-field at the boundary of universities, security and intelligence studies, including research ethics in the securitised university (Gearon and Parsons, 2019). One of the defining outcomes here is Liam’s quarter of a million-word edited collection arising from the international Colloquium at Oriel College he convened in 2017, the Routledge International Handbook of Universities, Security and Intelligence Studies (Gearon, 2019). Interdisciplinary and inter-agency work in this area has included the Nuffield Foundation funded Universities and National Security: Research and Policy Collaborations 2019-2020, with a cross-disciplinary research team of 14 distinguished Co-Investigators.

With a significant Academy of Finland research grant (2018-2022) with Arniika Kuusisto (Stockholm/Helsinki/ Oxford), we oversee the research of two highly productive early career, post-doctoral researchers on radicalisation. This includes notable social and policy impacts such as the development of a national strategy around extremism through education for the Ministry of Justice in Finland (Activities | Growing up radical? | University of Helsinki). With substantial quantitative and qualitative data gathered, the project has already produced a substantial number of quality research outputs (Publications | Growing up radical? | University of Helsinki).

With a doctorate in English literature, Liam has also drawn on arts and humanities theoretical knowledge and methodological approaches to advance what are now intense cross-disciplinary debates around ‘decolonising the curriculum’ in religious education. From a series of foundational papers addressing the relationship between religious education and postcolonial theory – Gearon (2001a) ‘The Imagined Other: Postcolonial Theory and Religious Education’; Gearon (2001b) ‘A Spirituality of Dissent: Religion, Culture and Postcolonial Criticism’; Gearon (2002a) ‘Human Rights and Religious Education: Some Postcolonial Perspectives’ – he has recently led an international team (UK, Finland, Sweden, South Africa) as Guest Editor of the British Journal of Religious Education, for a high profile special issue on religion and education in postcolonial context (Gearon, Kuusisto, Matemba, Benjamin, Du Preez, Koirikivi, and Simmonds, 2020).

As Principal Investigator, Liam has led funded research projects with the Academy of Finland, the Arts and Humanities Research Council, the British Academy, the Leverhulme Trust, the Nuffield Foundation, the Philosophy of Education Society of Great Britain, and the Society for Educational Studies, a career total of funding exceeding £5,000,000, including a £4.5 million grant to establish a centre for citizenship and human rights at the University of Surrey Roehampton.

Doctoral supervision and Graduate teaching

 PGCE Religious Education (Subject lead)

  • Masters in Learning and Teaching (Subject lead)
  • Comparative and International Education

EXTERNAL POSTS

2020- Docent, Helsinki University, Finland

2020- Extraordinary Professor, Faculty of Education, North-West University, South Africa

2019-2021 Visiting Professor, Irish Institute of Catholic Studies, MIC, Limerick, Ireland

2012-2020 Conjoint Professor, Newcastle University, Australia

2019-2023 Honorary Senior Research Fellow, School of Education, University of Birmingham

 

PREVIOUS EXTERNAL POSTS

2011-2018, Adjunct Professor, Australian Catholic University, Australia

2010-2011, Visiting Professor, Faculty of Education, University of Plymouth

2008-2010, Research Professor, Faculty of Education, University of Plymouth

2006-2008, Professor of Education, University of Roehampton

2000-2006, Reader in Education, University of Surrey Roehampton

2006-2008, Senior Fellow, Centre of Excellence in Human Rights, University of Surrey Roehampton

2005-2008, Vice-President, International Human Rights Education Consortium, New York, USA

2001-2005, Director, Centre for Research in Human Rights, University of Surrey, Roehampton

1996-2000, Senior Lecturer, Faculty of Education, Roehampton, London

 

UK RESEARCH COUNCIL PEER REVIEW COLLEGES

AHRC Expert Group on Covid Research Group and Research Grant Panel ‘Introducer’

AHRC Peer Review College (2019 Gold Standard award, for ‘Recognition of significant contributions to the AHRC Peer Review College’)

ESRC Peer Review College

Universities UK Peer Review College Global Challenges Research Fund (GCRF)

 

INTERNATIONAL RESEARCH COUNCIL PEER REVIEWER

Academy of Finland

Austrian Science Fund (FWF)

EU 7th Framework Program for Research
Hong Kong Research Grants Council’s Public Policy Research Fund (PPR)

Irish Research Council

John Templeton Foundation

National Research Foundation, South Africa

 

PROFESSIONAL AND RESEARCH ASSOCIATIONS

Association of University Lecturers in Religion and Education (AULRE, co-founder and former Chair)

British Educational Research Association (BERA)

European Educational Research Association (EERA)

International Seminar on Religious Education and Values (ISREV)

Philosophy of Education Society of Great Britain (PESGB)

Society for Research in Higher Education (SRHE)
Society for Educational Studies (SES)

Also:

Executive (2019-2022) Oxford Intelligence Group, Nuffield College, University of Oxford

Fellow, Higher Education Academy (FHEA)

Fellow, Royal Society of Arts (FRSA)

Cambridge Intelligence Seminar

 

OTHER ADMINISTRATIVE ROLES AT OXFORD

Elected by Congregation to the University of Oxford Prevent Steering Group

Social Sciences Divisional representative of the Permanent Private Halls Supervisory Committee (PPHSC), a senior committee of the University of Oxford overseeing governance of Blackfriars; Campion Hall; Regent’s Park College; St Benet’s; St Stephen’s House; Wycliffe Hall.

Member, Central University Research Ethics Committee (CUREC)

Chair, Department of Education Research Ethics Committee (DREC)

Member, Inter-Divisional Social Sciences and Humanities Research Ethics Committee (IDREC)

Chair, Bodleian Library Education Committee

Member and occasional Chair Social Sciences Divisional Library Committee

Education Advisory Group, Christ Church College, Oxford

 

EDITORSHIP OF INTERNATIONAL JOURNALS

Gearon, L. (Guest editor) (2021) Literature and Security, Special Issue, Text Matters: A Journal of Literature, Theory and Culture, with a planned formal launch at Lodz, Poland.

Gearon, L., (Lead Guest Editor with editorial team) Kuusisto, A., Matemba, Y., Benjamin, S., Du Preez, P., Koirikivi, P., Simmonds, S. (2020) Decolonising the Religious Education Curriculum: International Perspectives in Theory, Research, and Practice, Special Issue, British Journal of Religious Education.

Gearon, L. (Guest Editor) (2019) Special Issue of Religions 10 (1) on Religion, Security, Education.

Gearon, L. and Williams, E. (Guest Editors) (2019) Special Issue of the British Journal of Educational Studies, Writers and their Education, 67 (3), 283–289.

Gearon, L. and Williams, E. (Guest Editors) (2018) Special Issue of Journal of Philosophy of Education on Philosophy, Literature and Education, 52 (4), 577-777.

Gearon, L. (Guest Editor) (2015) British Journal of Educational Studies, Special Issue, Education, Security and Intelligence Studies, 63 (3) 263-411.

Tirri, K., (Finland) Campbell, E. (Canada), Gearon, L. (UK), Lovat, T. (Australia) (Guest Editors) (2012) The Moral Core of Teaching, Education Research International.

Gearon, L. (Guest Editor) (2008) Citizenship, Human Rights and Religion, British Journal of Religious Education, 30 (2) 93-108.

Gearon, L. (Guest Editor) (2006) Children’s Spirituality and Children’s Rights, International Journal of Children’s Spirituality, 11 (2) 193-310.

Simon Marginson is  Emeritus Professor of Higher Education at the University of Oxford, Director of the ESRC/RE Centre for Global Higher Education (CGHE), and Editor-in-Chief of the journal Higher Education.

Simon led the ESRC Centre for Global Higher Education between November 2015 and April 2024. His research is focused primarily on global and international higher education, higher education in East Asia, the public and social contributions of higher education, and higher education and social equality. He is currently preparing an integrated theorisation of higher education. His scholarship is widely published and cited (Google h-index 67 in September 2019). Books include Higher Education and the Common Good (Melbourne University Publishing, 2016); High Participation Systems of Higher Education, edited with Brendan Cantwell and Anna Smolentseva (Oxford University Press, 2018); Changing Higher Education in East Asia, edited with Xin Xu (Bloomsbury, 2022) and Assessing the Contributions of Higher Education, edited with Brendan Cantwell, Daria Platonova and Anna Smolentseva (Edward Elgar, 2023).

Selected Publications
Books
  • Marginson, S. (2016).The Dream is Over: The crisis of Clark Kerr’s California Idea of higher education. Berkeley: University of California Press.
  • Marginson, S. (2016).Higher Education and the Common Good. Melbourne: Melbourne University Publishing.
  • Tran, L. & Marginson, S. (eds.). (2018).Internationalisation of Vietnamese Higher Education. Dordrecht: Springer Nature.
  • Carnoy, M., Froumin, I., Leshukov, O. & Marginson, S. (eds.). (2018) Higher Education in Federal Countries. New Delhi: Sage.
  • Cantwell, B., Marginson, S. & Smolentseva, A. (eds.). (2018) High Participation Systems of Higher Education. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
  • Callender, C., Locke, W. & Marginson, S. (eds.) (2020). Changing Higher Education for a Changing World. London: Bloomsbury.
  • Chattopadhyay, S., Marginson, S. & Varghese, N.V. (eds.) (2021). Changing Higher Education in India. London: Bloomsbury.
  • Marginson, S. & Xu, X. (eds.) (2022). Changing Higher Education in East Asia. (2022). London: Bloomsbury.
  • Marginson, S., Cantwell, B., Platonova, D. & Smolentseva, A. (eds.) (2023). Assessing the contributions of higher education. Cheltenham: Edward Elgar.
Recent Journal Papers
  • Marginson, S. (2016). The worldwide trend to high participation higher education: Dynamics of social stratification in inclusive systems. Higher Education, 72 (4), 413-435.
  • Marginson, S. (2018). Private/public in higher education: A synthesis of economic and political approaches. Studies in Higher Education, 43 (2), 322-337
  • Marginson, S. (2018) Global trends in higher education financing: The United Kingdom. International J. Educational Development, 58, 26-36
  • Marginson, S. (2018) National/global synergy in the development of higher education and science in China since 1978. Frontiers of Education in China, 13 (4), 486–512
  • Marginson, S. (2019) Limitations of human capital theory. Studies in Higher Education, 44 (2), 287-301
  • Marginson, S. and Yang, L. (2022). Individual and collective outcomes of higher education: A comparison of Anglo-American and Chinese approaches. Globalisation, Societies and Education, 20 (1), 1-32.
  • Marginson, S. (2022). ‘All things are in flux’: China in global science. Higher Education, 83 (4), 881-910.
  • Marginson, S. (2022). What drives global science? The four competing narratives. Studies in Higher Education, 47 (8), 1566-1584.
  • Marginson, S. (2022). Global science and national comparisons: Beyond bibliometrics and scientometrics. Comparative Education, 58 (2), 125-146.
  • Marginson, S. (2022). What is global higher education? Oxford Review of Education, 48 (4), 492-517.
  • Marginson S. (2022). Space and scale in higher education: The glonacal heuristic revisited. Higher Education, 84 (6),1365-1395.
  • Marginson, S. & Xu, X. (2023). Hegemony and inequality in global science: Problems of the center-periphery model. Comparative Education Review, 67 (1). https://doi.org/10.1086/722760
  • Marginson, S. (2023). Student self-formation: An emerging paradigm in higher education. Studies in Higher Education, https://doi.org/10.1080/03075079.2023.2252826 (2023).
  • Marginson, S. (2023). Limitations of the leading definition of ‘internationalisation’ of higher education: Is the idea wrong or is the fault in reality? Globalisation, Societies and Education, https://doi.org/10.1080/14767724.2023.2264223
  • Marginson, S. and Yang ,L. (2023). Has the public good been emptied out of higher education in England? Higher Education. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10734-023-01117-6

Maia Chankseliani is Associate Professor of Comparative and International Education at the University of Oxford where she leads a flagship master’s course in Comparative and International Education. She convenes the Comparative and International Education Research Group at the Department of Education.

Within comparative and international education, Maia Chankseliani works at the intersection of tertiary education and development. She researches societal, institutional, and policy forces that shape tertiary education and the potential of tertiary education and research for transforming societies.

Methodologically, she utilises both qualitative and quantitative methods. Her work often combines secondary data analysis with insights gathered through semi-structured interviews and contextualised case studies.

Maia Chankseliani has published four books in the field of comparative and international education: What Happened to the Soviet University? (2022), Building Research Capacity at Universities: Insights from Post-Soviet Countries (2022), Comparing Post-Socialist Transformations: Purposes, Policies, and Practices in Education (2018), and Fairness in Access to Higher Education in a Global Perspective: Reconciling Excellence, Efficiency, and Justice (2013).

She currently leads a major research project examining the impact of international mobility on world development (funded by the U.S. Department of State). Maia Chankseliani has worked on a number of externally funded research projects and consultancies involving the UK Government agencies responsible for education and skills, UKRI/ESRC, British Council, World Bank, Qatar Foundation, the European Commission.

With a background in education research, teaching, policy-making, leadership, and consultancy, Maia Chankseliani brings to her role extensive experience in diverse international settings. This breadth of experience informs her research and enables her to bridge theory and practice.

Maia Chankseliani engages with governments and gives academic and policy-relevant talks nationally and internationally. Her research regularly features in national and international media.

She holds a BA in Philology from Tbilisi State University (Georgia), an Ed. M in International Education Policy from Harvard University (USA), and a PhD in Education from the University of Cambridge (UK).

Maia Chankseliani serves as the Editor-in-Chief of the International Journal of Educational Research.

Aliya teaches on the Comparative and International Education MSc programme at our Department. She is also a Junior Research Fellow at Lady Margaret Hall. Her research focuses on young people and families’ experiences of education in turbulent times.

For example, educational challenges and rehabilitation during COVID-19 and after the 2022 floods in Pakistan. Her current geographical focus includes ethnically diverse communities (Pakistani and Bangladeshi) in England as well as marginalised communities in Pakistan.

Aliya’s PhD explored the complexities of gender and international education, and her current work focuses on decolonising educational research practices and the experience of Southern-ness globally. Aliya’s specialist areas are parental, mothers’ and young people’s perspectives of and aspirations for education, and their own modalities of agency to fulfil their dreams.

Aliya publishes on the topics of Southern epistemologies and methodologies and teaches on related topics of decolonisation of knowledge production and the politics of representation. She is currently leading multiple projects in England and Pakistan focusing on girls’ education, gender experiences of education, mothers’ perspectives on educating their children, teacher educators, displaced peoples experiences in England and Pakistan.

Aliya is accepting DPhil students interested in these areas:

  • Southern epistemologies and methodologies
  • The capability approach and social justice
  • Negative capability
  • Deconstruction of the silence/violence binary
  • Marginalised peoples’ perspectives
  • Intersectional experiences of marginalisation including those related with gender, race, ethnicity, indigeneity, queerness, disability, class and caste (among others)
  • Decolonisation of knowledge production and representation of the South
  • Qualitative methodologies
  • Theorising from the margins
  • Area focus South Asia particularly Pakistan and Afghanistan
  • Internal displacement

Aliya is the acting Deputy Chair of the United Kingdom Forum for International Education and Training (UKFIET) conference 2023.

Gates Cambridge Biography

 

Research Group Membership

 

Research Projects

1. ‘Understanding the impact of COVID-19 on learning experiences of secondary school going age children among Bangladeshi and Pakistani ethnic minority families’
Funder: Cambridge Humanities Research Grants Scheme
Research team: Professor Nidhi Singal and Dr Aliya Khalid
Status: Complete

2. Gendered Inequalities in Education and Capability Spaces for Women/Girls (and others) in Pakistan: Education and reconstruction after 2022 floods in Pakistan
Funder: British Association for International and Comparative Education (BAICE) Seedcorn Fund
Research team: Aliya Khalid, Soufia Siddiqui, Aditi Chidambaram, Indrani Sigamany
Status: Ongoing

3. Bridging the Local and Global: Women’s Spaces and Collectives’: On becoming caregivers and teachers: Immigrant mothers’ identities and philosophies of education in England during COVID
Team members: Aliya Khalid, Jane Rooney and Ruth Houghton, Lavinia Kamphausen, Kate spencer-Bennet, Alana Farrel
Funder: The British Academy
Status: Complete

4. Collaborative development of faculty for Pakistan undergraduate Teacher Education Colleges: Durbeen and Oxford knowledge exchange project
Team members: Aliya Khalid, Ann Childs, Trevor Mutton, Ian Thompson, Jenni Ingram and Katharine Burn
Funder: Malala Fund
Status: Ongoing

Dr Karen Skilling is an Associate Professor at the Department of Education at the University of Oxford. Karen is currently the Deputy Director of Doctoral Research, Lead of the PGCE mathematics education at the Department of Education, and co-ordinates the Doctoral Teaching Fellows for teacher education. In 2020, Karen established the STEM Discussion Group and also convenes the Subject Pedagogy Group seminars.

Karen’s research interests include: student engagement and motivation in mathematics; integrated STEM learning and project-based STEM activities; and vignette methods. Karen currently sits on the Executive Committee of BSRLM, and is a journal Editor for the Teaching Education Journal (TEJ) and Research in Mathematics Education (RME). Karen has also been co-Editor for several special issues, and a topic study co-lead at the Congress of the European Society for Research in Mathematics Education (CERME). Karen is a Visiting Fellow at King’s College London and been an HEA Fellow since 2016.

Awards include: Australian Postgraduate Award (Industry) (APAI): funded PhD role attached to MYTEAM Project awarded by Australian Research Council (2008 –2012); Postdoctoral Research Fellowship: Department of Education, University of Oxford (2013-14); and nominations for Most Outstanding Contribution to Student Experience at King’s College London (2015, 2016, 2017).

David Mills is an Associate Professor and Director of the Centre for Global Higher Education (CGHE).

His current research focuses on the political economy of the global science system, and its impact on institutional research and publishing cultures in African universities. His most recent book is ‘Who Counts: Ghanaian Academic Publishing and Global Science’, co-written with colleagues from the University of Ghana and Oxford, and available open access from African Minds:  https://www.africanminds.co.za/who-counts/

Trained in Anthropology, and with inter-disciplinary research interests, David uses ethnographic methods to study the inequalities created by global higher education. He is particularly interested in African university research cultures and the role of diamond Open Access scholarly journals within knowledge ecosystems.

He welcomes enquiries from potential doctoral students interested in studying African Higher Education, as well as research and publishing cultures.

Liam Francis Gearon (BA, Hons, MA, MPhil, Cert He, PhD, FHEA, FRSA, Docent) is Associate Professor in Religious Education in the Department of Education, Senior Research Fellow at Harris Manchester College, University of Oxford; Docent, University of Helsinki, Finland; Honorary Senior Research Fellow at the School of Education, University of Birmingham, UK; Conjoint Professor at Newcastle University, Australia; Visiting Professor at the Irish Centre for Catholic Studies, MIC, Limerick, Ireland; Extraordinary Professor, North-West University, South Africa.

Liam Francis Gearon is Founder-Convenor of the Philosophy, Religion, Education Research Group, providing  a unique interdisciplinary contribution to the research culture of the Department of Education at the University of Oxford. The Philosophy, religion and education Research Group specifically forges theoretical and empirical interconnections between the arts, humanities, philosophy and the social sciences through the common focus of education. Contributions of this research group have been made to matters such as: theories of research policy and impact; the cultural value of research in the arts and humanities; research ethics; the intersection of epistemological and ethical domains in research in schools; religion, radicalisation and counter-terrorism in schools and universities; and the creation of distinctive sub-field of study at the interface of education, security and intelligence studies.

A specialist in the interdisciplinary study of religion in education, and particularly noted for the systematic philosophical and history of ideas analysis on the epistemological foundations of religious education, his framing of the paradigms of religion in education – scriptural-theological; phenomenological; psychological-experiential; philosophical-conceptual; social-cultural; political-historical – has contributed new insights to secularisation theory in numerous, some award-winning, monographs, such as MasterClass in Religious Education (Gearon, 2013); On Holy Ground (Gearon, 2015) [2016 Society of Education Studies Book Prize]; Religious Authority and the Arts: Conversations in Political Theology (Gearon, 2015); and State Religious Education and the State of the Religious Life (Gearon and Prud’homme, 2018).

His theorisations of the politicisation and securitisation of religion in education have been the subject of intense international debate for several years. Landmark publications on security in education – ‘The Counter-Terrorist Classroom’ (2013); ‘The Counter-Terrorist Classroom’ (2017); ‘Terrorism and Counter-Terrorism Policy and Research in UK Universities’ (2018): ‘Research Ethics in the Securitised University’ (Gearon and Parsons, 2019) and ‘The Kill Chain’ (Gearon, 2020) – have enabled empirical, methodological and theoretical advances on elites’ theory, the ethics of security and radicalisation research (Gearon and Kuusisto, 2018; Kuusisto and Gearon, 2017; Benjamin, Gearon, Kuusisto, Koirikivi, 2021).

With cognate research interests in security across all phases of education, Liam has over a decade collaboratively developed an interdisciplinary sub-field at the boundary of universities, security and intelligence studies, including research ethics in the securitised university (Gearon and Parsons, 2019). One of the defining outcomes here is Liam’s quarter of a million-word edited collection arising from the international Colloquium at Oriel College he convened in 2017, the Routledge International Handbook of Universities, Security and Intelligence Studies (Gearon, 2019). Interdisciplinary and inter-agency work in this area has included the Nuffield Foundation funded Universities and National Security: Research and Policy Collaborations 2019-2020, with a cross-disciplinary research team of 14 distinguished Co-Investigators.

With a significant Academy of Finland research grant (2018-2022) with Arniika Kuusisto (Stockholm/Helsinki/ Oxford), we oversee the research of two highly productive early career, post-doctoral researchers on radicalisation. This includes notable social and policy impacts such as the development of a national strategy around extremism through education for the Ministry of Justice in Finland (Activities | Growing up radical? | University of Helsinki). With substantial quantitative and qualitative data gathered, the project has already produced a substantial number of quality research outputs (Publications | Growing up radical? | University of Helsinki).

With a doctorate in English literature, Liam has also drawn on arts and humanities theoretical knowledge and methodological approaches to advance what are now intense cross-disciplinary debates around ‘decolonising the curriculum’ in religious education. From a series of foundational papers addressing the relationship between religious education and postcolonial theory – Gearon (2001a) ‘The Imagined Other: Postcolonial Theory and Religious Education’; Gearon (2001b) ‘A Spirituality of Dissent: Religion, Culture and Postcolonial Criticism’; Gearon (2002a) ‘Human Rights and Religious Education: Some Postcolonial Perspectives’ – he has recently led an international team (UK, Finland, Sweden, South Africa) as Guest Editor of the British Journal of Religious Education, for a high profile special issue on religion and education in postcolonial context (Gearon, Kuusisto, Matemba, Benjamin, Du Preez, Koirikivi, and Simmonds, 2020).

As Principal Investigator, Liam has led funded research projects with the Academy of Finland, the Arts and Humanities Research Council, the British Academy, the Leverhulme Trust, the Nuffield Foundation, the Philosophy of Education Society of Great Britain, and the Society for Educational Studies, a career total of funding exceeding £5,000,000, including a £4.5 million grant to establish a centre for citizenship and human rights at the University of Surrey Roehampton.

Doctoral supervision and Graduate teaching

 PGCE Religious Education (Subject lead)

  • Masters in Learning and Teaching (Subject lead)
  • Comparative and International Education

EXTERNAL POSTS

2020- Docent, Helsinki University, Finland

2020- Extraordinary Professor, Faculty of Education, North-West University, South Africa

2019-2021 Visiting Professor, Irish Institute of Catholic Studies, MIC, Limerick, Ireland

2012-2020 Conjoint Professor, Newcastle University, Australia

2019-2023 Honorary Senior Research Fellow, School of Education, University of Birmingham

 

PREVIOUS EXTERNAL POSTS

2011-2018, Adjunct Professor, Australian Catholic University, Australia

2010-2011, Visiting Professor, Faculty of Education, University of Plymouth

2008-2010, Research Professor, Faculty of Education, University of Plymouth

2006-2008, Professor of Education, University of Roehampton

2000-2006, Reader in Education, University of Surrey Roehampton

2006-2008, Senior Fellow, Centre of Excellence in Human Rights, University of Surrey Roehampton

2005-2008, Vice-President, International Human Rights Education Consortium, New York, USA

2001-2005, Director, Centre for Research in Human Rights, University of Surrey, Roehampton

1996-2000, Senior Lecturer, Faculty of Education, Roehampton, London

 

UK RESEARCH COUNCIL PEER REVIEW COLLEGES

AHRC Expert Group on Covid Research Group and Research Grant Panel ‘Introducer’

AHRC Peer Review College (2019 Gold Standard award, for ‘Recognition of significant contributions to the AHRC Peer Review College’)

ESRC Peer Review College

Universities UK Peer Review College Global Challenges Research Fund (GCRF)

 

INTERNATIONAL RESEARCH COUNCIL PEER REVIEWER

Academy of Finland

Austrian Science Fund (FWF)

EU 7th Framework Program for Research
Hong Kong Research Grants Council’s Public Policy Research Fund (PPR)

Irish Research Council

John Templeton Foundation

National Research Foundation, South Africa

 

PROFESSIONAL AND RESEARCH ASSOCIATIONS

Association of University Lecturers in Religion and Education (AULRE, co-founder and former Chair)

British Educational Research Association (BERA)

European Educational Research Association (EERA)

International Seminar on Religious Education and Values (ISREV)

Philosophy of Education Society of Great Britain (PESGB)

Society for Research in Higher Education (SRHE)
Society for Educational Studies (SES)

Also:

Executive (2019-2022) Oxford Intelligence Group, Nuffield College, University of Oxford

Fellow, Higher Education Academy (FHEA)

Fellow, Royal Society of Arts (FRSA)

Cambridge Intelligence Seminar

 

OTHER ADMINISTRATIVE ROLES AT OXFORD

Elected by Congregation to the University of Oxford Prevent Steering Group

Social Sciences Divisional representative of the Permanent Private Halls Supervisory Committee (PPHSC), a senior committee of the University of Oxford overseeing governance of Blackfriars; Campion Hall; Regent’s Park College; St Benet’s; St Stephen’s House; Wycliffe Hall.

Member, Central University Research Ethics Committee (CUREC)

Chair, Department of Education Research Ethics Committee (DREC)

Member, Inter-Divisional Social Sciences and Humanities Research Ethics Committee (IDREC)

Chair, Bodleian Library Education Committee

Member and occasional Chair Social Sciences Divisional Library Committee

Education Advisory Group, Christ Church College, Oxford

 

EDITORSHIP OF INTERNATIONAL JOURNALS

Gearon, L. (Guest editor) (2021) Literature and Security, Special Issue, Text Matters: A Journal of Literature, Theory and Culture, with a planned formal launch at Lodz, Poland.

Gearon, L., (Lead Guest Editor with editorial team) Kuusisto, A., Matemba, Y., Benjamin, S., Du Preez, P., Koirikivi, P., Simmonds, S. (2020) Decolonising the Religious Education Curriculum: International Perspectives in Theory, Research, and Practice, Special Issue, British Journal of Religious Education.

Gearon, L. (Guest Editor) (2019) Special Issue of Religions 10 (1) on Religion, Security, Education.

Gearon, L. and Williams, E. (Guest Editors) (2019) Special Issue of the British Journal of Educational Studies, Writers and their Education, 67 (3), 283–289.

Gearon, L. and Williams, E. (Guest Editors) (2018) Special Issue of Journal of Philosophy of Education on Philosophy, Literature and Education, 52 (4), 577-777.

Gearon, L. (Guest Editor) (2015) British Journal of Educational Studies, Special Issue, Education, Security and Intelligence Studies, 63 (3) 263-411.

Tirri, K., (Finland) Campbell, E. (Canada), Gearon, L. (UK), Lovat, T. (Australia) (Guest Editors) (2012) The Moral Core of Teaching, Education Research International.

Gearon, L. (Guest Editor) (2008) Citizenship, Human Rights and Religion, British Journal of Religious Education, 30 (2) 93-108.

Gearon, L. (Guest Editor) (2006) Children’s Spirituality and Children’s Rights, International Journal of Children’s Spirituality, 11 (2) 193-310.

Simon Marginson is  Emeritus Professor of Higher Education at the University of Oxford, Director of the ESRC/RE Centre for Global Higher Education (CGHE), and Editor-in-Chief of the journal Higher Education.

Simon led the ESRC Centre for Global Higher Education between November 2015 and April 2024. His research is focused primarily on global and international higher education, higher education in East Asia, the public and social contributions of higher education, and higher education and social equality. He is currently preparing an integrated theorisation of higher education. His scholarship is widely published and cited (Google h-index 67 in September 2019). Books include Higher Education and the Common Good (Melbourne University Publishing, 2016); High Participation Systems of Higher Education, edited with Brendan Cantwell and Anna Smolentseva (Oxford University Press, 2018); Changing Higher Education in East Asia, edited with Xin Xu (Bloomsbury, 2022) and Assessing the Contributions of Higher Education, edited with Brendan Cantwell, Daria Platonova and Anna Smolentseva (Edward Elgar, 2023).

Selected Publications
Books
  • Marginson, S. (2016).The Dream is Over: The crisis of Clark Kerr’s California Idea of higher education. Berkeley: University of California Press.
  • Marginson, S. (2016).Higher Education and the Common Good. Melbourne: Melbourne University Publishing.
  • Tran, L. & Marginson, S. (eds.). (2018).Internationalisation of Vietnamese Higher Education. Dordrecht: Springer Nature.
  • Carnoy, M., Froumin, I., Leshukov, O. & Marginson, S. (eds.). (2018) Higher Education in Federal Countries. New Delhi: Sage.
  • Cantwell, B., Marginson, S. & Smolentseva, A. (eds.). (2018) High Participation Systems of Higher Education. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
  • Callender, C., Locke, W. & Marginson, S. (eds.) (2020). Changing Higher Education for a Changing World. London: Bloomsbury.
  • Chattopadhyay, S., Marginson, S. & Varghese, N.V. (eds.) (2021). Changing Higher Education in India. London: Bloomsbury.
  • Marginson, S. & Xu, X. (eds.) (2022). Changing Higher Education in East Asia. (2022). London: Bloomsbury.
  • Marginson, S., Cantwell, B., Platonova, D. & Smolentseva, A. (eds.) (2023). Assessing the contributions of higher education. Cheltenham: Edward Elgar.
Recent Journal Papers
  • Marginson, S. (2016). The worldwide trend to high participation higher education: Dynamics of social stratification in inclusive systems. Higher Education, 72 (4), 413-435.
  • Marginson, S. (2018). Private/public in higher education: A synthesis of economic and political approaches. Studies in Higher Education, 43 (2), 322-337
  • Marginson, S. (2018) Global trends in higher education financing: The United Kingdom. International J. Educational Development, 58, 26-36
  • Marginson, S. (2018) National/global synergy in the development of higher education and science in China since 1978. Frontiers of Education in China, 13 (4), 486–512
  • Marginson, S. (2019) Limitations of human capital theory. Studies in Higher Education, 44 (2), 287-301
  • Marginson, S. and Yang, L. (2022). Individual and collective outcomes of higher education: A comparison of Anglo-American and Chinese approaches. Globalisation, Societies and Education, 20 (1), 1-32.
  • Marginson, S. (2022). ‘All things are in flux’: China in global science. Higher Education, 83 (4), 881-910.
  • Marginson, S. (2022). What drives global science? The four competing narratives. Studies in Higher Education, 47 (8), 1566-1584.
  • Marginson, S. (2022). Global science and national comparisons: Beyond bibliometrics and scientometrics. Comparative Education, 58 (2), 125-146.
  • Marginson, S. (2022). What is global higher education? Oxford Review of Education, 48 (4), 492-517.
  • Marginson S. (2022). Space and scale in higher education: The glonacal heuristic revisited. Higher Education, 84 (6),1365-1395.
  • Marginson, S. & Xu, X. (2023). Hegemony and inequality in global science: Problems of the center-periphery model. Comparative Education Review, 67 (1). https://doi.org/10.1086/722760
  • Marginson, S. (2023). Student self-formation: An emerging paradigm in higher education. Studies in Higher Education, https://doi.org/10.1080/03075079.2023.2252826 (2023).
  • Marginson, S. (2023). Limitations of the leading definition of ‘internationalisation’ of higher education: Is the idea wrong or is the fault in reality? Globalisation, Societies and Education, https://doi.org/10.1080/14767724.2023.2264223
  • Marginson, S. and Yang ,L. (2023). Has the public good been emptied out of higher education in England? Higher Education. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10734-023-01117-6

Maia Chankseliani is Associate Professor of Comparative and International Education at the University of Oxford where she leads a flagship master’s course in Comparative and International Education. She convenes the Comparative and International Education Research Group at the Department of Education.

Within comparative and international education, Maia Chankseliani works at the intersection of tertiary education and development. She researches societal, institutional, and policy forces that shape tertiary education and the potential of tertiary education and research for transforming societies.

Methodologically, she utilises both qualitative and quantitative methods. Her work often combines secondary data analysis with insights gathered through semi-structured interviews and contextualised case studies.

Maia Chankseliani has published four books in the field of comparative and international education: What Happened to the Soviet University? (2022), Building Research Capacity at Universities: Insights from Post-Soviet Countries (2022), Comparing Post-Socialist Transformations: Purposes, Policies, and Practices in Education (2018), and Fairness in Access to Higher Education in a Global Perspective: Reconciling Excellence, Efficiency, and Justice (2013).

She currently leads a major research project examining the impact of international mobility on world development (funded by the U.S. Department of State). Maia Chankseliani has worked on a number of externally funded research projects and consultancies involving the UK Government agencies responsible for education and skills, UKRI/ESRC, British Council, World Bank, Qatar Foundation, the European Commission.

With a background in education research, teaching, policy-making, leadership, and consultancy, Maia Chankseliani brings to her role extensive experience in diverse international settings. This breadth of experience informs her research and enables her to bridge theory and practice.

Maia Chankseliani engages with governments and gives academic and policy-relevant talks nationally and internationally. Her research regularly features in national and international media.

She holds a BA in Philology from Tbilisi State University (Georgia), an Ed. M in International Education Policy from Harvard University (USA), and a PhD in Education from the University of Cambridge (UK).

Maia Chankseliani serves as the Editor-in-Chief of the International Journal of Educational Research.

Aliya teaches on the Comparative and International Education MSc programme at our Department. She is also a Junior Research Fellow at Lady Margaret Hall. Her research focuses on young people and families’ experiences of education in turbulent times.

For example, educational challenges and rehabilitation during COVID-19 and after the 2022 floods in Pakistan. Her current geographical focus includes ethnically diverse communities (Pakistani and Bangladeshi) in England as well as marginalised communities in Pakistan.

Aliya’s PhD explored the complexities of gender and international education, and her current work focuses on decolonising educational research practices and the experience of Southern-ness globally. Aliya’s specialist areas are parental, mothers’ and young people’s perspectives of and aspirations for education, and their own modalities of agency to fulfil their dreams.

Aliya publishes on the topics of Southern epistemologies and methodologies and teaches on related topics of decolonisation of knowledge production and the politics of representation. She is currently leading multiple projects in England and Pakistan focusing on girls’ education, gender experiences of education, mothers’ perspectives on educating their children, teacher educators, displaced peoples experiences in England and Pakistan.

Aliya is accepting DPhil students interested in these areas:

  • Southern epistemologies and methodologies
  • The capability approach and social justice
  • Negative capability
  • Deconstruction of the silence/violence binary
  • Marginalised peoples’ perspectives
  • Intersectional experiences of marginalisation including those related with gender, race, ethnicity, indigeneity, queerness, disability, class and caste (among others)
  • Decolonisation of knowledge production and representation of the South
  • Qualitative methodologies
  • Theorising from the margins
  • Area focus South Asia particularly Pakistan and Afghanistan
  • Internal displacement

Aliya is the acting Deputy Chair of the United Kingdom Forum for International Education and Training (UKFIET) conference 2023.

Gates Cambridge Biography

 

Research Group Membership

 

Research Projects

1. ‘Understanding the impact of COVID-19 on learning experiences of secondary school going age children among Bangladeshi and Pakistani ethnic minority families’
Funder: Cambridge Humanities Research Grants Scheme
Research team: Professor Nidhi Singal and Dr Aliya Khalid
Status: Complete

2. Gendered Inequalities in Education and Capability Spaces for Women/Girls (and others) in Pakistan: Education and reconstruction after 2022 floods in Pakistan
Funder: British Association for International and Comparative Education (BAICE) Seedcorn Fund
Research team: Aliya Khalid, Soufia Siddiqui, Aditi Chidambaram, Indrani Sigamany
Status: Ongoing

3. Bridging the Local and Global: Women’s Spaces and Collectives’: On becoming caregivers and teachers: Immigrant mothers’ identities and philosophies of education in England during COVID
Team members: Aliya Khalid, Jane Rooney and Ruth Houghton, Lavinia Kamphausen, Kate spencer-Bennet, Alana Farrel
Funder: The British Academy
Status: Complete

4. Collaborative development of faculty for Pakistan undergraduate Teacher Education Colleges: Durbeen and Oxford knowledge exchange project
Team members: Aliya Khalid, Ann Childs, Trevor Mutton, Ian Thompson, Jenni Ingram and Katharine Burn
Funder: Malala Fund
Status: Ongoing

Dr Karen Skilling is an Associate Professor at the Department of Education at the University of Oxford. Karen is currently the Deputy Director of Doctoral Research, Lead of the PGCE mathematics education at the Department of Education, and co-ordinates the Doctoral Teaching Fellows for teacher education. In 2020, Karen established the STEM Discussion Group and also convenes the Subject Pedagogy Group seminars.

Karen’s research interests include: student engagement and motivation in mathematics; integrated STEM learning and project-based STEM activities; and vignette methods. Karen currently sits on the Executive Committee of BSRLM, and is a journal Editor for the Teaching Education Journal (TEJ) and Research in Mathematics Education (RME). Karen has also been co-Editor for several special issues, and a topic study co-lead at the Congress of the European Society for Research in Mathematics Education (CERME). Karen is a Visiting Fellow at King’s College London and been an HEA Fellow since 2016.

Awards include: Australian Postgraduate Award (Industry) (APAI): funded PhD role attached to MYTEAM Project awarded by Australian Research Council (2008 –2012); Postdoctoral Research Fellowship: Department of Education, University of Oxford (2013-14); and nominations for Most Outstanding Contribution to Student Experience at King’s College London (2015, 2016, 2017).

David Mills is an Associate Professor and Director of the Centre for Global Higher Education (CGHE).

His current research focuses on the political economy of the global science system, and its impact on institutional research and publishing cultures in African universities. His most recent book is ‘Who Counts: Ghanaian Academic Publishing and Global Science’, co-written with colleagues from the University of Ghana and Oxford, and available open access from African Minds:  https://www.africanminds.co.za/who-counts/

Trained in Anthropology, and with inter-disciplinary research interests, David uses ethnographic methods to study the inequalities created by global higher education. He is particularly interested in African university research cultures and the role of diamond Open Access scholarly journals within knowledge ecosystems.

He welcomes enquiries from potential doctoral students interested in studying African Higher Education, as well as research and publishing cultures.

Liam Francis Gearon (BA, Hons, MA, MPhil, Cert He, PhD, FHEA, FRSA, Docent) is Associate Professor in Religious Education in the Department of Education, Senior Research Fellow at Harris Manchester College, University of Oxford; Docent, University of Helsinki, Finland; Honorary Senior Research Fellow at the School of Education, University of Birmingham, UK; Conjoint Professor at Newcastle University, Australia; Visiting Professor at the Irish Centre for Catholic Studies, MIC, Limerick, Ireland; Extraordinary Professor, North-West University, South Africa.

Liam Francis Gearon is Founder-Convenor of the Philosophy, Religion, Education Research Group, providing  a unique interdisciplinary contribution to the research culture of the Department of Education at the University of Oxford. The Philosophy, religion and education Research Group specifically forges theoretical and empirical interconnections between the arts, humanities, philosophy and the social sciences through the common focus of education. Contributions of this research group have been made to matters such as: theories of research policy and impact; the cultural value of research in the arts and humanities; research ethics; the intersection of epistemological and ethical domains in research in schools; religion, radicalisation and counter-terrorism in schools and universities; and the creation of distinctive sub-field of study at the interface of education, security and intelligence studies.

A specialist in the interdisciplinary study of religion in education, and particularly noted for the systematic philosophical and history of ideas analysis on the epistemological foundations of religious education, his framing of the paradigms of religion in education – scriptural-theological; phenomenological; psychological-experiential; philosophical-conceptual; social-cultural; political-historical – has contributed new insights to secularisation theory in numerous, some award-winning, monographs, such as MasterClass in Religious Education (Gearon, 2013); On Holy Ground (Gearon, 2015) [2016 Society of Education Studies Book Prize]; Religious Authority and the Arts: Conversations in Political Theology (Gearon, 2015); and State Religious Education and the State of the Religious Life (Gearon and Prud’homme, 2018).

His theorisations of the politicisation and securitisation of religion in education have been the subject of intense international debate for several years. Landmark publications on security in education – ‘The Counter-Terrorist Classroom’ (2013); ‘The Counter-Terrorist Classroom’ (2017); ‘Terrorism and Counter-Terrorism Policy and Research in UK Universities’ (2018): ‘Research Ethics in the Securitised University’ (Gearon and Parsons, 2019) and ‘The Kill Chain’ (Gearon, 2020) – have enabled empirical, methodological and theoretical advances on elites’ theory, the ethics of security and radicalisation research (Gearon and Kuusisto, 2018; Kuusisto and Gearon, 2017; Benjamin, Gearon, Kuusisto, Koirikivi, 2021).

With cognate research interests in security across all phases of education, Liam has over a decade collaboratively developed an interdisciplinary sub-field at the boundary of universities, security and intelligence studies, including research ethics in the securitised university (Gearon and Parsons, 2019). One of the defining outcomes here is Liam’s quarter of a million-word edited collection arising from the international Colloquium at Oriel College he convened in 2017, the Routledge International Handbook of Universities, Security and Intelligence Studies (Gearon, 2019). Interdisciplinary and inter-agency work in this area has included the Nuffield Foundation funded Universities and National Security: Research and Policy Collaborations 2019-2020, with a cross-disciplinary research team of 14 distinguished Co-Investigators.

With a significant Academy of Finland research grant (2018-2022) with Arniika Kuusisto (Stockholm/Helsinki/ Oxford), we oversee the research of two highly productive early career, post-doctoral researchers on radicalisation. This includes notable social and policy impacts such as the development of a national strategy around extremism through education for the Ministry of Justice in Finland (Activities | Growing up radical? | University of Helsinki). With substantial quantitative and qualitative data gathered, the project has already produced a substantial number of quality research outputs (Publications | Growing up radical? | University of Helsinki).

With a doctorate in English literature, Liam has also drawn on arts and humanities theoretical knowledge and methodological approaches to advance what are now intense cross-disciplinary debates around ‘decolonising the curriculum’ in religious education. From a series of foundational papers addressing the relationship between religious education and postcolonial theory – Gearon (2001a) ‘The Imagined Other: Postcolonial Theory and Religious Education’; Gearon (2001b) ‘A Spirituality of Dissent: Religion, Culture and Postcolonial Criticism’; Gearon (2002a) ‘Human Rights and Religious Education: Some Postcolonial Perspectives’ – he has recently led an international team (UK, Finland, Sweden, South Africa) as Guest Editor of the British Journal of Religious Education, for a high profile special issue on religion and education in postcolonial context (Gearon, Kuusisto, Matemba, Benjamin, Du Preez, Koirikivi, and Simmonds, 2020).

As Principal Investigator, Liam has led funded research projects with the Academy of Finland, the Arts and Humanities Research Council, the British Academy, the Leverhulme Trust, the Nuffield Foundation, the Philosophy of Education Society of Great Britain, and the Society for Educational Studies, a career total of funding exceeding £5,000,000, including a £4.5 million grant to establish a centre for citizenship and human rights at the University of Surrey Roehampton.

Doctoral supervision and Graduate teaching

 PGCE Religious Education (Subject lead)

  • Masters in Learning and Teaching (Subject lead)
  • Comparative and International Education

EXTERNAL POSTS

2020- Docent, Helsinki University, Finland

2020- Extraordinary Professor, Faculty of Education, North-West University, South Africa

2019-2021 Visiting Professor, Irish Institute of Catholic Studies, MIC, Limerick, Ireland

2012-2020 Conjoint Professor, Newcastle University, Australia

2019-2023 Honorary Senior Research Fellow, School of Education, University of Birmingham

 

PREVIOUS EXTERNAL POSTS

2011-2018, Adjunct Professor, Australian Catholic University, Australia

2010-2011, Visiting Professor, Faculty of Education, University of Plymouth

2008-2010, Research Professor, Faculty of Education, University of Plymouth

2006-2008, Professor of Education, University of Roehampton

2000-2006, Reader in Education, University of Surrey Roehampton

2006-2008, Senior Fellow, Centre of Excellence in Human Rights, University of Surrey Roehampton

2005-2008, Vice-President, International Human Rights Education Consortium, New York, USA

2001-2005, Director, Centre for Research in Human Rights, University of Surrey, Roehampton

1996-2000, Senior Lecturer, Faculty of Education, Roehampton, London

 

UK RESEARCH COUNCIL PEER REVIEW COLLEGES

AHRC Expert Group on Covid Research Group and Research Grant Panel ‘Introducer’

AHRC Peer Review College (2019 Gold Standard award, for ‘Recognition of significant contributions to the AHRC Peer Review College’)

ESRC Peer Review College

Universities UK Peer Review College Global Challenges Research Fund (GCRF)

 

INTERNATIONAL RESEARCH COUNCIL PEER REVIEWER

Academy of Finland

Austrian Science Fund (FWF)

EU 7th Framework Program for Research
Hong Kong Research Grants Council’s Public Policy Research Fund (PPR)

Irish Research Council

John Templeton Foundation

National Research Foundation, South Africa

 

PROFESSIONAL AND RESEARCH ASSOCIATIONS

Association of University Lecturers in Religion and Education (AULRE, co-founder and former Chair)

British Educational Research Association (BERA)

European Educational Research Association (EERA)

International Seminar on Religious Education and Values (ISREV)

Philosophy of Education Society of Great Britain (PESGB)

Society for Research in Higher Education (SRHE)
Society for Educational Studies (SES)

Also:

Executive (2019-2022) Oxford Intelligence Group, Nuffield College, University of Oxford

Fellow, Higher Education Academy (FHEA)

Fellow, Royal Society of Arts (FRSA)

Cambridge Intelligence Seminar

 

OTHER ADMINISTRATIVE ROLES AT OXFORD

Elected by Congregation to the University of Oxford Prevent Steering Group

Social Sciences Divisional representative of the Permanent Private Halls Supervisory Committee (PPHSC), a senior committee of the University of Oxford overseeing governance of Blackfriars; Campion Hall; Regent’s Park College; St Benet’s; St Stephen’s House; Wycliffe Hall.

Member, Central University Research Ethics Committee (CUREC)

Chair, Department of Education Research Ethics Committee (DREC)

Member, Inter-Divisional Social Sciences and Humanities Research Ethics Committee (IDREC)

Chair, Bodleian Library Education Committee

Member and occasional Chair Social Sciences Divisional Library Committee

Education Advisory Group, Christ Church College, Oxford

 

EDITORSHIP OF INTERNATIONAL JOURNALS

Gearon, L. (Guest editor) (2021) Literature and Security, Special Issue, Text Matters: A Journal of Literature, Theory and Culture, with a planned formal launch at Lodz, Poland.

Gearon, L., (Lead Guest Editor with editorial team) Kuusisto, A., Matemba, Y., Benjamin, S., Du Preez, P., Koirikivi, P., Simmonds, S. (2020) Decolonising the Religious Education Curriculum: International Perspectives in Theory, Research, and Practice, Special Issue, British Journal of Religious Education.

Gearon, L. (Guest Editor) (2019) Special Issue of Religions 10 (1) on Religion, Security, Education.

Gearon, L. and Williams, E. (Guest Editors) (2019) Special Issue of the British Journal of Educational Studies, Writers and their Education, 67 (3), 283–289.

Gearon, L. and Williams, E. (Guest Editors) (2018) Special Issue of Journal of Philosophy of Education on Philosophy, Literature and Education, 52 (4), 577-777.

Gearon, L. (Guest Editor) (2015) British Journal of Educational Studies, Special Issue, Education, Security and Intelligence Studies, 63 (3) 263-411.

Tirri, K., (Finland) Campbell, E. (Canada), Gearon, L. (UK), Lovat, T. (Australia) (Guest Editors) (2012) The Moral Core of Teaching, Education Research International.

Gearon, L. (Guest Editor) (2008) Citizenship, Human Rights and Religion, British Journal of Religious Education, 30 (2) 93-108.

Gearon, L. (Guest Editor) (2006) Children’s Spirituality and Children’s Rights, International Journal of Children’s Spirituality, 11 (2) 193-310.

Simon Marginson is  Emeritus Professor of Higher Education at the University of Oxford, Director of the ESRC/RE Centre for Global Higher Education (CGHE), and Editor-in-Chief of the journal Higher Education.

Simon led the ESRC Centre for Global Higher Education between November 2015 and April 2024. His research is focused primarily on global and international higher education, higher education in East Asia, the public and social contributions of higher education, and higher education and social equality. He is currently preparing an integrated theorisation of higher education. His scholarship is widely published and cited (Google h-index 67 in September 2019). Books include Higher Education and the Common Good (Melbourne University Publishing, 2016); High Participation Systems of Higher Education, edited with Brendan Cantwell and Anna Smolentseva (Oxford University Press, 2018); Changing Higher Education in East Asia, edited with Xin Xu (Bloomsbury, 2022) and Assessing the Contributions of Higher Education, edited with Brendan Cantwell, Daria Platonova and Anna Smolentseva (Edward Elgar, 2023).

Selected Publications
Books
  • Marginson, S. (2016).The Dream is Over: The crisis of Clark Kerr’s California Idea of higher education. Berkeley: University of California Press.
  • Marginson, S. (2016).Higher Education and the Common Good. Melbourne: Melbourne University Publishing.
  • Tran, L. & Marginson, S. (eds.). (2018).Internationalisation of Vietnamese Higher Education. Dordrecht: Springer Nature.
  • Carnoy, M., Froumin, I., Leshukov, O. & Marginson, S. (eds.). (2018) Higher Education in Federal Countries. New Delhi: Sage.
  • Cantwell, B., Marginson, S. & Smolentseva, A. (eds.). (2018) High Participation Systems of Higher Education. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
  • Callender, C., Locke, W. & Marginson, S. (eds.) (2020). Changing Higher Education for a Changing World. London: Bloomsbury.
  • Chattopadhyay, S., Marginson, S. & Varghese, N.V. (eds.) (2021). Changing Higher Education in India. London: Bloomsbury.
  • Marginson, S. & Xu, X. (eds.) (2022). Changing Higher Education in East Asia. (2022). London: Bloomsbury.
  • Marginson, S., Cantwell, B., Platonova, D. & Smolentseva, A. (eds.) (2023). Assessing the contributions of higher education. Cheltenham: Edward Elgar.
Recent Journal Papers
  • Marginson, S. (2016). The worldwide trend to high participation higher education: Dynamics of social stratification in inclusive systems. Higher Education, 72 (4), 413-435.
  • Marginson, S. (2018). Private/public in higher education: A synthesis of economic and political approaches. Studies in Higher Education, 43 (2), 322-337
  • Marginson, S. (2018) Global trends in higher education financing: The United Kingdom. International J. Educational Development, 58, 26-36
  • Marginson, S. (2018) National/global synergy in the development of higher education and science in China since 1978. Frontiers of Education in China, 13 (4), 486–512
  • Marginson, S. (2019) Limitations of human capital theory. Studies in Higher Education, 44 (2), 287-301
  • Marginson, S. and Yang, L. (2022). Individual and collective outcomes of higher education: A comparison of Anglo-American and Chinese approaches. Globalisation, Societies and Education, 20 (1), 1-32.
  • Marginson, S. (2022). ‘All things are in flux’: China in global science. Higher Education, 83 (4), 881-910.
  • Marginson, S. (2022). What drives global science? The four competing narratives. Studies in Higher Education, 47 (8), 1566-1584.
  • Marginson, S. (2022). Global science and national comparisons: Beyond bibliometrics and scientometrics. Comparative Education, 58 (2), 125-146.
  • Marginson, S. (2022). What is global higher education? Oxford Review of Education, 48 (4), 492-517.
  • Marginson S. (2022). Space and scale in higher education: The glonacal heuristic revisited. Higher Education, 84 (6),1365-1395.
  • Marginson, S. & Xu, X. (2023). Hegemony and inequality in global science: Problems of the center-periphery model. Comparative Education Review, 67 (1). https://doi.org/10.1086/722760
  • Marginson, S. (2023). Student self-formation: An emerging paradigm in higher education. Studies in Higher Education, https://doi.org/10.1080/03075079.2023.2252826 (2023).
  • Marginson, S. (2023). Limitations of the leading definition of ‘internationalisation’ of higher education: Is the idea wrong or is the fault in reality? Globalisation, Societies and Education, https://doi.org/10.1080/14767724.2023.2264223
  • Marginson, S. and Yang ,L. (2023). Has the public good been emptied out of higher education in England? Higher Education. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10734-023-01117-6

Maia Chankseliani is Associate Professor of Comparative and International Education at the University of Oxford where she leads a flagship master’s course in Comparative and International Education. She convenes the Comparative and International Education Research Group at the Department of Education.

Within comparative and international education, Maia Chankseliani works at the intersection of tertiary education and development. She researches societal, institutional, and policy forces that shape tertiary education and the potential of tertiary education and research for transforming societies.

Methodologically, she utilises both qualitative and quantitative methods. Her work often combines secondary data analysis with insights gathered through semi-structured interviews and contextualised case studies.

Maia Chankseliani has published four books in the field of comparative and international education: What Happened to the Soviet University? (2022), Building Research Capacity at Universities: Insights from Post-Soviet Countries (2022), Comparing Post-Socialist Transformations: Purposes, Policies, and Practices in Education (2018), and Fairness in Access to Higher Education in a Global Perspective: Reconciling Excellence, Efficiency, and Justice (2013).

She currently leads a major research project examining the impact of international mobility on world development (funded by the U.S. Department of State). Maia Chankseliani has worked on a number of externally funded research projects and consultancies involving the UK Government agencies responsible for education and skills, UKRI/ESRC, British Council, World Bank, Qatar Foundation, the European Commission.

With a background in education research, teaching, policy-making, leadership, and consultancy, Maia Chankseliani brings to her role extensive experience in diverse international settings. This breadth of experience informs her research and enables her to bridge theory and practice.

Maia Chankseliani engages with governments and gives academic and policy-relevant talks nationally and internationally. Her research regularly features in national and international media.

She holds a BA in Philology from Tbilisi State University (Georgia), an Ed. M in International Education Policy from Harvard University (USA), and a PhD in Education from the University of Cambridge (UK).

Maia Chankseliani serves as the Editor-in-Chief of the International Journal of Educational Research.

Aliya teaches on the Comparative and International Education MSc programme at our Department. She is also a Junior Research Fellow at Lady Margaret Hall. Her research focuses on young people and families’ experiences of education in turbulent times.

For example, educational challenges and rehabilitation during COVID-19 and after the 2022 floods in Pakistan. Her current geographical focus includes ethnically diverse communities (Pakistani and Bangladeshi) in England as well as marginalised communities in Pakistan.

Aliya’s PhD explored the complexities of gender and international education, and her current work focuses on decolonising educational research practices and the experience of Southern-ness globally. Aliya’s specialist areas are parental, mothers’ and young people’s perspectives of and aspirations for education, and their own modalities of agency to fulfil their dreams.

Aliya publishes on the topics of Southern epistemologies and methodologies and teaches on related topics of decolonisation of knowledge production and the politics of representation. She is currently leading multiple projects in England and Pakistan focusing on girls’ education, gender experiences of education, mothers’ perspectives on educating their children, teacher educators, displaced peoples experiences in England and Pakistan.

Aliya is accepting DPhil students interested in these areas:

  • Southern epistemologies and methodologies
  • The capability approach and social justice
  • Negative capability
  • Deconstruction of the silence/violence binary
  • Marginalised peoples’ perspectives
  • Intersectional experiences of marginalisation including those related with gender, race, ethnicity, indigeneity, queerness, disability, class and caste (among others)
  • Decolonisation of knowledge production and representation of the South
  • Qualitative methodologies
  • Theorising from the margins
  • Area focus South Asia particularly Pakistan and Afghanistan
  • Internal displacement

Aliya is the acting Deputy Chair of the United Kingdom Forum for International Education and Training (UKFIET) conference 2023.

Gates Cambridge Biography

 

Research Group Membership

 

Research Projects

1. ‘Understanding the impact of COVID-19 on learning experiences of secondary school going age children among Bangladeshi and Pakistani ethnic minority families’
Funder: Cambridge Humanities Research Grants Scheme
Research team: Professor Nidhi Singal and Dr Aliya Khalid
Status: Complete

2. Gendered Inequalities in Education and Capability Spaces for Women/Girls (and others) in Pakistan: Education and reconstruction after 2022 floods in Pakistan
Funder: British Association for International and Comparative Education (BAICE) Seedcorn Fund
Research team: Aliya Khalid, Soufia Siddiqui, Aditi Chidambaram, Indrani Sigamany
Status: Ongoing

3. Bridging the Local and Global: Women’s Spaces and Collectives’: On becoming caregivers and teachers: Immigrant mothers’ identities and philosophies of education in England during COVID
Team members: Aliya Khalid, Jane Rooney and Ruth Houghton, Lavinia Kamphausen, Kate spencer-Bennet, Alana Farrel
Funder: The British Academy
Status: Complete

4. Collaborative development of faculty for Pakistan undergraduate Teacher Education Colleges: Durbeen and Oxford knowledge exchange project
Team members: Aliya Khalid, Ann Childs, Trevor Mutton, Ian Thompson, Jenni Ingram and Katharine Burn
Funder: Malala Fund
Status: Ongoing

Dr Karen Skilling is an Associate Professor at the Department of Education at the University of Oxford. Karen is currently the Deputy Director of Doctoral Research, Lead of the PGCE mathematics education at the Department of Education, and co-ordinates the Doctoral Teaching Fellows for teacher education. In 2020, Karen established the STEM Discussion Group and also convenes the Subject Pedagogy Group seminars.

Karen’s research interests include: student engagement and motivation in mathematics; integrated STEM learning and project-based STEM activities; and vignette methods. Karen currently sits on the Executive Committee of BSRLM, and is a journal Editor for the Teaching Education Journal (TEJ) and Research in Mathematics Education (RME). Karen has also been co-Editor for several special issues, and a topic study co-lead at the Congress of the European Society for Research in Mathematics Education (CERME). Karen is a Visiting Fellow at King’s College London and been an HEA Fellow since 2016.

Awards include: Australian Postgraduate Award (Industry) (APAI): funded PhD role attached to MYTEAM Project awarded by Australian Research Council (2008 –2012); Postdoctoral Research Fellowship: Department of Education, University of Oxford (2013-14); and nominations for Most Outstanding Contribution to Student Experience at King’s College London (2015, 2016, 2017).

David Mills is an Associate Professor and Director of the Centre for Global Higher Education (CGHE).

His current research focuses on the political economy of the global science system, and its impact on institutional research and publishing cultures in African universities. His most recent book is ‘Who Counts: Ghanaian Academic Publishing and Global Science’, co-written with colleagues from the University of Ghana and Oxford, and available open access from African Minds:  https://www.africanminds.co.za/who-counts/

Trained in Anthropology, and with inter-disciplinary research interests, David uses ethnographic methods to study the inequalities created by global higher education. He is particularly interested in African university research cultures and the role of diamond Open Access scholarly journals within knowledge ecosystems.

He welcomes enquiries from potential doctoral students interested in studying African Higher Education, as well as research and publishing cultures.

Liam Francis Gearon (BA, Hons, MA, MPhil, Cert He, PhD, FHEA, FRSA, Docent) is Associate Professor in Religious Education in the Department of Education, Senior Research Fellow at Harris Manchester College, University of Oxford; Docent, University of Helsinki, Finland; Honorary Senior Research Fellow at the School of Education, University of Birmingham, UK; Conjoint Professor at Newcastle University, Australia; Visiting Professor at the Irish Centre for Catholic Studies, MIC, Limerick, Ireland; Extraordinary Professor, North-West University, South Africa.

Liam Francis Gearon is Founder-Convenor of the Philosophy, Religion, Education Research Group, providing  a unique interdisciplinary contribution to the research culture of the Department of Education at the University of Oxford. The Philosophy, religion and education Research Group specifically forges theoretical and empirical interconnections between the arts, humanities, philosophy and the social sciences through the common focus of education. Contributions of this research group have been made to matters such as: theories of research policy and impact; the cultural value of research in the arts and humanities; research ethics; the intersection of epistemological and ethical domains in research in schools; religion, radicalisation and counter-terrorism in schools and universities; and the creation of distinctive sub-field of study at the interface of education, security and intelligence studies.

A specialist in the interdisciplinary study of religion in education, and particularly noted for the systematic philosophical and history of ideas analysis on the epistemological foundations of religious education, his framing of the paradigms of religion in education – scriptural-theological; phenomenological; psychological-experiential; philosophical-conceptual; social-cultural; political-historical – has contributed new insights to secularisation theory in numerous, some award-winning, monographs, such as MasterClass in Religious Education (Gearon, 2013); On Holy Ground (Gearon, 2015) [2016 Society of Education Studies Book Prize]; Religious Authority and the Arts: Conversations in Political Theology (Gearon, 2015); and State Religious Education and the State of the Religious Life (Gearon and Prud’homme, 2018).

His theorisations of the politicisation and securitisation of religion in education have been the subject of intense international debate for several years. Landmark publications on security in education – ‘The Counter-Terrorist Classroom’ (2013); ‘The Counter-Terrorist Classroom’ (2017); ‘Terrorism and Counter-Terrorism Policy and Research in UK Universities’ (2018): ‘Research Ethics in the Securitised University’ (Gearon and Parsons, 2019) and ‘The Kill Chain’ (Gearon, 2020) – have enabled empirical, methodological and theoretical advances on elites’ theory, the ethics of security and radicalisation research (Gearon and Kuusisto, 2018; Kuusisto and Gearon, 2017; Benjamin, Gearon, Kuusisto, Koirikivi, 2021).

With cognate research interests in security across all phases of education, Liam has over a decade collaboratively developed an interdisciplinary sub-field at the boundary of universities, security and intelligence studies, including research ethics in the securitised university (Gearon and Parsons, 2019). One of the defining outcomes here is Liam’s quarter of a million-word edited collection arising from the international Colloquium at Oriel College he convened in 2017, the Routledge International Handbook of Universities, Security and Intelligence Studies (Gearon, 2019). Interdisciplinary and inter-agency work in this area has included the Nuffield Foundation funded Universities and National Security: Research and Policy Collaborations 2019-2020, with a cross-disciplinary research team of 14 distinguished Co-Investigators.

With a significant Academy of Finland research grant (2018-2022) with Arniika Kuusisto (Stockholm/Helsinki/ Oxford), we oversee the research of two highly productive early career, post-doctoral researchers on radicalisation. This includes notable social and policy impacts such as the development of a national strategy around extremism through education for the Ministry of Justice in Finland (Activities | Growing up radical? | University of Helsinki). With substantial quantitative and qualitative data gathered, the project has already produced a substantial number of quality research outputs (Publications | Growing up radical? | University of Helsinki).

With a doctorate in English literature, Liam has also drawn on arts and humanities theoretical knowledge and methodological approaches to advance what are now intense cross-disciplinary debates around ‘decolonising the curriculum’ in religious education. From a series of foundational papers addressing the relationship between religious education and postcolonial theory – Gearon (2001a) ‘The Imagined Other: Postcolonial Theory and Religious Education’; Gearon (2001b) ‘A Spirituality of Dissent: Religion, Culture and Postcolonial Criticism’; Gearon (2002a) ‘Human Rights and Religious Education: Some Postcolonial Perspectives’ – he has recently led an international team (UK, Finland, Sweden, South Africa) as Guest Editor of the British Journal of Religious Education, for a high profile special issue on religion and education in postcolonial context (Gearon, Kuusisto, Matemba, Benjamin, Du Preez, Koirikivi, and Simmonds, 2020).

As Principal Investigator, Liam has led funded research projects with the Academy of Finland, the Arts and Humanities Research Council, the British Academy, the Leverhulme Trust, the Nuffield Foundation, the Philosophy of Education Society of Great Britain, and the Society for Educational Studies, a career total of funding exceeding £5,000,000, including a £4.5 million grant to establish a centre for citizenship and human rights at the University of Surrey Roehampton.

Doctoral supervision and Graduate teaching

 PGCE Religious Education (Subject lead)

  • Masters in Learning and Teaching (Subject lead)
  • Comparative and International Education

EXTERNAL POSTS

2020- Docent, Helsinki University, Finland

2020- Extraordinary Professor, Faculty of Education, North-West University, South Africa

2019-2021 Visiting Professor, Irish Institute of Catholic Studies, MIC, Limerick, Ireland

2012-2020 Conjoint Professor, Newcastle University, Australia

2019-2023 Honorary Senior Research Fellow, School of Education, University of Birmingham

 

PREVIOUS EXTERNAL POSTS

2011-2018, Adjunct Professor, Australian Catholic University, Australia

2010-2011, Visiting Professor, Faculty of Education, University of Plymouth

2008-2010, Research Professor, Faculty of Education, University of Plymouth

2006-2008, Professor of Education, University of Roehampton

2000-2006, Reader in Education, University of Surrey Roehampton

2006-2008, Senior Fellow, Centre of Excellence in Human Rights, University of Surrey Roehampton

2005-2008, Vice-President, International Human Rights Education Consortium, New York, USA

2001-2005, Director, Centre for Research in Human Rights, University of Surrey, Roehampton

1996-2000, Senior Lecturer, Faculty of Education, Roehampton, London

 

UK RESEARCH COUNCIL PEER REVIEW COLLEGES

AHRC Expert Group on Covid Research Group and Research Grant Panel ‘Introducer’

AHRC Peer Review College (2019 Gold Standard award, for ‘Recognition of significant contributions to the AHRC Peer Review College’)

ESRC Peer Review College

Universities UK Peer Review College Global Challenges Research Fund (GCRF)

 

INTERNATIONAL RESEARCH COUNCIL PEER REVIEWER

Academy of Finland

Austrian Science Fund (FWF)

EU 7th Framework Program for Research
Hong Kong Research Grants Council’s Public Policy Research Fund (PPR)

Irish Research Council

John Templeton Foundation

National Research Foundation, South Africa

 

PROFESSIONAL AND RESEARCH ASSOCIATIONS

Association of University Lecturers in Religion and Education (AULRE, co-founder and former Chair)

British Educational Research Association (BERA)

European Educational Research Association (EERA)

International Seminar on Religious Education and Values (ISREV)

Philosophy of Education Society of Great Britain (PESGB)

Society for Research in Higher Education (SRHE)
Society for Educational Studies (SES)

Also:

Executive (2019-2022) Oxford Intelligence Group, Nuffield College, University of Oxford

Fellow, Higher Education Academy (FHEA)

Fellow, Royal Society of Arts (FRSA)

Cambridge Intelligence Seminar

 

OTHER ADMINISTRATIVE ROLES AT OXFORD

Elected by Congregation to the University of Oxford Prevent Steering Group

Social Sciences Divisional representative of the Permanent Private Halls Supervisory Committee (PPHSC), a senior committee of the University of Oxford overseeing governance of Blackfriars; Campion Hall; Regent’s Park College; St Benet’s; St Stephen’s House; Wycliffe Hall.

Member, Central University Research Ethics Committee (CUREC)

Chair, Department of Education Research Ethics Committee (DREC)

Member, Inter-Divisional Social Sciences and Humanities Research Ethics Committee (IDREC)

Chair, Bodleian Library Education Committee

Member and occasional Chair Social Sciences Divisional Library Committee

Education Advisory Group, Christ Church College, Oxford

 

EDITORSHIP OF INTERNATIONAL JOURNALS

Gearon, L. (Guest editor) (2021) Literature and Security, Special Issue, Text Matters: A Journal of Literature, Theory and Culture, with a planned formal launch at Lodz, Poland.

Gearon, L., (Lead Guest Editor with editorial team) Kuusisto, A., Matemba, Y., Benjamin, S., Du Preez, P., Koirikivi, P., Simmonds, S. (2020) Decolonising the Religious Education Curriculum: International Perspectives in Theory, Research, and Practice, Special Issue, British Journal of Religious Education.

Gearon, L. (Guest Editor) (2019) Special Issue of Religions 10 (1) on Religion, Security, Education.

Gearon, L. and Williams, E. (Guest Editors) (2019) Special Issue of the British Journal of Educational Studies, Writers and their Education, 67 (3), 283–289.

Gearon, L. and Williams, E. (Guest Editors) (2018) Special Issue of Journal of Philosophy of Education on Philosophy, Literature and Education, 52 (4), 577-777.

Gearon, L. (Guest Editor) (2015) British Journal of Educational Studies, Special Issue, Education, Security and Intelligence Studies, 63 (3) 263-411.

Tirri, K., (Finland) Campbell, E. (Canada), Gearon, L. (UK), Lovat, T. (Australia) (Guest Editors) (2012) The Moral Core of Teaching, Education Research International.

Gearon, L. (Guest Editor) (2008) Citizenship, Human Rights and Religion, British Journal of Religious Education, 30 (2) 93-108.

Gearon, L. (Guest Editor) (2006) Children’s Spirituality and Children’s Rights, International Journal of Children’s Spirituality, 11 (2) 193-310.

Simon Marginson is  Emeritus Professor of Higher Education at the University of Oxford, Director of the ESRC/RE Centre for Global Higher Education (CGHE), and Editor-in-Chief of the journal Higher Education.

Simon led the ESRC Centre for Global Higher Education between November 2015 and April 2024. His research is focused primarily on global and international higher education, higher education in East Asia, the public and social contributions of higher education, and higher education and social equality. He is currently preparing an integrated theorisation of higher education. His scholarship is widely published and cited (Google h-index 67 in September 2019). Books include Higher Education and the Common Good (Melbourne University Publishing, 2016); High Participation Systems of Higher Education, edited with Brendan Cantwell and Anna Smolentseva (Oxford University Press, 2018); Changing Higher Education in East Asia, edited with Xin Xu (Bloomsbury, 2022) and Assessing the Contributions of Higher Education, edited with Brendan Cantwell, Daria Platonova and Anna Smolentseva (Edward Elgar, 2023).

Selected Publications
Books
  • Marginson, S. (2016).The Dream is Over: The crisis of Clark Kerr’s California Idea of higher education. Berkeley: University of California Press.
  • Marginson, S. (2016).Higher Education and the Common Good. Melbourne: Melbourne University Publishing.
  • Tran, L. & Marginson, S. (eds.). (2018).Internationalisation of Vietnamese Higher Education. Dordrecht: Springer Nature.
  • Carnoy, M., Froumin, I., Leshukov, O. & Marginson, S. (eds.). (2018) Higher Education in Federal Countries. New Delhi: Sage.
  • Cantwell, B., Marginson, S. & Smolentseva, A. (eds.). (2018) High Participation Systems of Higher Education. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
  • Callender, C., Locke, W. & Marginson, S. (eds.) (2020). Changing Higher Education for a Changing World. London: Bloomsbury.
  • Chattopadhyay, S., Marginson, S. & Varghese, N.V. (eds.) (2021). Changing Higher Education in India. London: Bloomsbury.
  • Marginson, S. & Xu, X. (eds.) (2022). Changing Higher Education in East Asia. (2022). London: Bloomsbury.
  • Marginson, S., Cantwell, B., Platonova, D. & Smolentseva, A. (eds.) (2023). Assessing the contributions of higher education. Cheltenham: Edward Elgar.
Recent Journal Papers
  • Marginson, S. (2016). The worldwide trend to high participation higher education: Dynamics of social stratification in inclusive systems. Higher Education, 72 (4), 413-435.
  • Marginson, S. (2018). Private/public in higher education: A synthesis of economic and political approaches. Studies in Higher Education, 43 (2), 322-337
  • Marginson, S. (2018) Global trends in higher education financing: The United Kingdom. International J. Educational Development, 58, 26-36
  • Marginson, S. (2018) National/global synergy in the development of higher education and science in China since 1978. Frontiers of Education in China, 13 (4), 486–512
  • Marginson, S. (2019) Limitations of human capital theory. Studies in Higher Education, 44 (2), 287-301
  • Marginson, S. and Yang, L. (2022). Individual and collective outcomes of higher education: A comparison of Anglo-American and Chinese approaches. Globalisation, Societies and Education, 20 (1), 1-32.
  • Marginson, S. (2022). ‘All things are in flux’: China in global science. Higher Education, 83 (4), 881-910.
  • Marginson, S. (2022). What drives global science? The four competing narratives. Studies in Higher Education, 47 (8), 1566-1584.
  • Marginson, S. (2022). Global science and national comparisons: Beyond bibliometrics and scientometrics. Comparative Education, 58 (2), 125-146.
  • Marginson, S. (2022). What is global higher education? Oxford Review of Education, 48 (4), 492-517.
  • Marginson S. (2022). Space and scale in higher education: The glonacal heuristic revisited. Higher Education, 84 (6),1365-1395.
  • Marginson, S. & Xu, X. (2023). Hegemony and inequality in global science: Problems of the center-periphery model. Comparative Education Review, 67 (1). https://doi.org/10.1086/722760
  • Marginson, S. (2023). Student self-formation: An emerging paradigm in higher education. Studies in Higher Education, https://doi.org/10.1080/03075079.2023.2252826 (2023).
  • Marginson, S. (2023). Limitations of the leading definition of ‘internationalisation’ of higher education: Is the idea wrong or is the fault in reality? Globalisation, Societies and Education, https://doi.org/10.1080/14767724.2023.2264223
  • Marginson, S. and Yang ,L. (2023). Has the public good been emptied out of higher education in England? Higher Education. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10734-023-01117-6

Maia Chankseliani is Associate Professor of Comparative and International Education at the University of Oxford where she leads a flagship master’s course in Comparative and International Education. She convenes the Comparative and International Education Research Group at the Department of Education.

Within comparative and international education, Maia Chankseliani works at the intersection of tertiary education and development. She researches societal, institutional, and policy forces that shape tertiary education and the potential of tertiary education and research for transforming societies.

Methodologically, she utilises both qualitative and quantitative methods. Her work often combines secondary data analysis with insights gathered through semi-structured interviews and contextualised case studies.

Maia Chankseliani has published four books in the field of comparative and international education: What Happened to the Soviet University? (2022), Building Research Capacity at Universities: Insights from Post-Soviet Countries (2022), Comparing Post-Socialist Transformations: Purposes, Policies, and Practices in Education (2018), and Fairness in Access to Higher Education in a Global Perspective: Reconciling Excellence, Efficiency, and Justice (2013).

She currently leads a major research project examining the impact of international mobility on world development (funded by the U.S. Department of State). Maia Chankseliani has worked on a number of externally funded research projects and consultancies involving the UK Government agencies responsible for education and skills, UKRI/ESRC, British Council, World Bank, Qatar Foundation, the European Commission.

With a background in education research, teaching, policy-making, leadership, and consultancy, Maia Chankseliani brings to her role extensive experience in diverse international settings. This breadth of experience informs her research and enables her to bridge theory and practice.

Maia Chankseliani engages with governments and gives academic and policy-relevant talks nationally and internationally. Her research regularly features in national and international media.

She holds a BA in Philology from Tbilisi State University (Georgia), an Ed. M in International Education Policy from Harvard University (USA), and a PhD in Education from the University of Cambridge (UK).

Maia Chankseliani serves as the Editor-in-Chief of the International Journal of Educational Research.

Aliya teaches on the Comparative and International Education MSc programme at our Department. She is also a Junior Research Fellow at Lady Margaret Hall. Her research focuses on young people and families’ experiences of education in turbulent times.

For example, educational challenges and rehabilitation during COVID-19 and after the 2022 floods in Pakistan. Her current geographical focus includes ethnically diverse communities (Pakistani and Bangladeshi) in England as well as marginalised communities in Pakistan.

Aliya’s PhD explored the complexities of gender and international education, and her current work focuses on decolonising educational research practices and the experience of Southern-ness globally. Aliya’s specialist areas are parental, mothers’ and young people’s perspectives of and aspirations for education, and their own modalities of agency to fulfil their dreams.

Aliya publishes on the topics of Southern epistemologies and methodologies and teaches on related topics of decolonisation of knowledge production and the politics of representation. She is currently leading multiple projects in England and Pakistan focusing on girls’ education, gender experiences of education, mothers’ perspectives on educating their children, teacher educators, displaced peoples experiences in England and Pakistan.

Aliya is accepting DPhil students interested in these areas:

  • Southern epistemologies and methodologies
  • The capability approach and social justice
  • Negative capability
  • Deconstruction of the silence/violence binary
  • Marginalised peoples’ perspectives
  • Intersectional experiences of marginalisation including those related with gender, race, ethnicity, indigeneity, queerness, disability, class and caste (among others)
  • Decolonisation of knowledge production and representation of the South
  • Qualitative methodologies
  • Theorising from the margins
  • Area focus South Asia particularly Pakistan and Afghanistan
  • Internal displacement

Aliya is the acting Deputy Chair of the United Kingdom Forum for International Education and Training (UKFIET) conference 2023.

Gates Cambridge Biography

 

Research Group Membership

 

Research Projects

1. ‘Understanding the impact of COVID-19 on learning experiences of secondary school going age children among Bangladeshi and Pakistani ethnic minority families’
Funder: Cambridge Humanities Research Grants Scheme
Research team: Professor Nidhi Singal and Dr Aliya Khalid
Status: Complete

2. Gendered Inequalities in Education and Capability Spaces for Women/Girls (and others) in Pakistan: Education and reconstruction after 2022 floods in Pakistan
Funder: British Association for International and Comparative Education (BAICE) Seedcorn Fund
Research team: Aliya Khalid, Soufia Siddiqui, Aditi Chidambaram, Indrani Sigamany
Status: Ongoing

3. Bridging the Local and Global: Women’s Spaces and Collectives’: On becoming caregivers and teachers: Immigrant mothers’ identities and philosophies of education in England during COVID
Team members: Aliya Khalid, Jane Rooney and Ruth Houghton, Lavinia Kamphausen, Kate spencer-Bennet, Alana Farrel
Funder: The British Academy
Status: Complete

4. Collaborative development of faculty for Pakistan undergraduate Teacher Education Colleges: Durbeen and Oxford knowledge exchange project
Team members: Aliya Khalid, Ann Childs, Trevor Mutton, Ian Thompson, Jenni Ingram and Katharine Burn
Funder: Malala Fund
Status: Ongoing

Dr Karen Skilling is an Associate Professor at the Department of Education at the University of Oxford. Karen is currently the Deputy Director of Doctoral Research, Lead of the PGCE mathematics education at the Department of Education, and co-ordinates the Doctoral Teaching Fellows for teacher education. In 2020, Karen established the STEM Discussion Group and also convenes the Subject Pedagogy Group seminars.

Karen’s research interests include: student engagement and motivation in mathematics; integrated STEM learning and project-based STEM activities; and vignette methods. Karen currently sits on the Executive Committee of BSRLM, and is a journal Editor for the Teaching Education Journal (TEJ) and Research in Mathematics Education (RME). Karen has also been co-Editor for several special issues, and a topic study co-lead at the Congress of the European Society for Research in Mathematics Education (CERME). Karen is a Visiting Fellow at King’s College London and been an HEA Fellow since 2016.

Awards include: Australian Postgraduate Award (Industry) (APAI): funded PhD role attached to MYTEAM Project awarded by Australian Research Council (2008 –2012); Postdoctoral Research Fellowship: Department of Education, University of Oxford (2013-14); and nominations for Most Outstanding Contribution to Student Experience at King’s College London (2015, 2016, 2017).

David Mills is an Associate Professor and Director of the Centre for Global Higher Education (CGHE).

His current research focuses on the political economy of the global science system, and its impact on institutional research and publishing cultures in African universities. His most recent book is ‘Who Counts: Ghanaian Academic Publishing and Global Science’, co-written with colleagues from the University of Ghana and Oxford, and available open access from African Minds:  https://www.africanminds.co.za/who-counts/

Trained in Anthropology, and with inter-disciplinary research interests, David uses ethnographic methods to study the inequalities created by global higher education. He is particularly interested in African university research cultures and the role of diamond Open Access scholarly journals within knowledge ecosystems.

He welcomes enquiries from potential doctoral students interested in studying African Higher Education, as well as research and publishing cultures.

Liam Francis Gearon (BA, Hons, MA, MPhil, Cert He, PhD, FHEA, FRSA, Docent) is Associate Professor in Religious Education in the Department of Education, Senior Research Fellow at Harris Manchester College, University of Oxford; Docent, University of Helsinki, Finland; Honorary Senior Research Fellow at the School of Education, University of Birmingham, UK; Conjoint Professor at Newcastle University, Australia; Visiting Professor at the Irish Centre for Catholic Studies, MIC, Limerick, Ireland; Extraordinary Professor, North-West University, South Africa.

Liam Francis Gearon is Founder-Convenor of the Philosophy, Religion, Education Research Group, providing  a unique interdisciplinary contribution to the research culture of the Department of Education at the University of Oxford. The Philosophy, religion and education Research Group specifically forges theoretical and empirical interconnections between the arts, humanities, philosophy and the social sciences through the common focus of education. Contributions of this research group have been made to matters such as: theories of research policy and impact; the cultural value of research in the arts and humanities; research ethics; the intersection of epistemological and ethical domains in research in schools; religion, radicalisation and counter-terrorism in schools and universities; and the creation of distinctive sub-field of study at the interface of education, security and intelligence studies.

A specialist in the interdisciplinary study of religion in education, and particularly noted for the systematic philosophical and history of ideas analysis on the epistemological foundations of religious education, his framing of the paradigms of religion in education – scriptural-theological; phenomenological; psychological-experiential; philosophical-conceptual; social-cultural; political-historical – has contributed new insights to secularisation theory in numerous, some award-winning, monographs, such as MasterClass in Religious Education (Gearon, 2013); On Holy Ground (Gearon, 2015) [2016 Society of Education Studies Book Prize]; Religious Authority and the Arts: Conversations in Political Theology (Gearon, 2015); and State Religious Education and the State of the Religious Life (Gearon and Prud’homme, 2018).

His theorisations of the politicisation and securitisation of religion in education have been the subject of intense international debate for several years. Landmark publications on security in education – ‘The Counter-Terrorist Classroom’ (2013); ‘The Counter-Terrorist Classroom’ (2017); ‘Terrorism and Counter-Terrorism Policy and Research in UK Universities’ (2018): ‘Research Ethics in the Securitised University’ (Gearon and Parsons, 2019) and ‘The Kill Chain’ (Gearon, 2020) – have enabled empirical, methodological and theoretical advances on elites’ theory, the ethics of security and radicalisation research (Gearon and Kuusisto, 2018; Kuusisto and Gearon, 2017; Benjamin, Gearon, Kuusisto, Koirikivi, 2021).

With cognate research interests in security across all phases of education, Liam has over a decade collaboratively developed an interdisciplinary sub-field at the boundary of universities, security and intelligence studies, including research ethics in the securitised university (Gearon and Parsons, 2019). One of the defining outcomes here is Liam’s quarter of a million-word edited collection arising from the international Colloquium at Oriel College he convened in 2017, the Routledge International Handbook of Universities, Security and Intelligence Studies (Gearon, 2019). Interdisciplinary and inter-agency work in this area has included the Nuffield Foundation funded Universities and National Security: Research and Policy Collaborations 2019-2020, with a cross-disciplinary research team of 14 distinguished Co-Investigators.

With a significant Academy of Finland research grant (2018-2022) with Arniika Kuusisto (Stockholm/Helsinki/ Oxford), we oversee the research of two highly productive early career, post-doctoral researchers on radicalisation. This includes notable social and policy impacts such as the development of a national strategy around extremism through education for the Ministry of Justice in Finland (Activities | Growing up radical? | University of Helsinki). With substantial quantitative and qualitative data gathered, the project has already produced a substantial number of quality research outputs (Publications | Growing up radical? | University of Helsinki).

With a doctorate in English literature, Liam has also drawn on arts and humanities theoretical knowledge and methodological approaches to advance what are now intense cross-disciplinary debates around ‘decolonising the curriculum’ in religious education. From a series of foundational papers addressing the relationship between religious education and postcolonial theory – Gearon (2001a) ‘The Imagined Other: Postcolonial Theory and Religious Education’; Gearon (2001b) ‘A Spirituality of Dissent: Religion, Culture and Postcolonial Criticism’; Gearon (2002a) ‘Human Rights and Religious Education: Some Postcolonial Perspectives’ – he has recently led an international team (UK, Finland, Sweden, South Africa) as Guest Editor of the British Journal of Religious Education, for a high profile special issue on religion and education in postcolonial context (Gearon, Kuusisto, Matemba, Benjamin, Du Preez, Koirikivi, and Simmonds, 2020).

As Principal Investigator, Liam has led funded research projects with the Academy of Finland, the Arts and Humanities Research Council, the British Academy, the Leverhulme Trust, the Nuffield Foundation, the Philosophy of Education Society of Great Britain, and the Society for Educational Studies, a career total of funding exceeding £5,000,000, including a £4.5 million grant to establish a centre for citizenship and human rights at the University of Surrey Roehampton.

Doctoral supervision and Graduate teaching

 PGCE Religious Education (Subject lead)

  • Masters in Learning and Teaching (Subject lead)
  • Comparative and International Education

EXTERNAL POSTS

2020- Docent, Helsinki University, Finland

2020- Extraordinary Professor, Faculty of Education, North-West University, South Africa

2019-2021 Visiting Professor, Irish Institute of Catholic Studies, MIC, Limerick, Ireland

2012-2020 Conjoint Professor, Newcastle University, Australia

2019-2023 Honorary Senior Research Fellow, School of Education, University of Birmingham

 

PREVIOUS EXTERNAL POSTS

2011-2018, Adjunct Professor, Australian Catholic University, Australia

2010-2011, Visiting Professor, Faculty of Education, University of Plymouth

2008-2010, Research Professor, Faculty of Education, University of Plymouth

2006-2008, Professor of Education, University of Roehampton

2000-2006, Reader in Education, University of Surrey Roehampton

2006-2008, Senior Fellow, Centre of Excellence in Human Rights, University of Surrey Roehampton

2005-2008, Vice-President, International Human Rights Education Consortium, New York, USA

2001-2005, Director, Centre for Research in Human Rights, University of Surrey, Roehampton

1996-2000, Senior Lecturer, Faculty of Education, Roehampton, London

 

UK RESEARCH COUNCIL PEER REVIEW COLLEGES

AHRC Expert Group on Covid Research Group and Research Grant Panel ‘Introducer’

AHRC Peer Review College (2019 Gold Standard award, for ‘Recognition of significant contributions to the AHRC Peer Review College’)

ESRC Peer Review College

Universities UK Peer Review College Global Challenges Research Fund (GCRF)

 

INTERNATIONAL RESEARCH COUNCIL PEER REVIEWER

Academy of Finland

Austrian Science Fund (FWF)

EU 7th Framework Program for Research
Hong Kong Research Grants Council’s Public Policy Research Fund (PPR)

Irish Research Council

John Templeton Foundation

National Research Foundation, South Africa

 

PROFESSIONAL AND RESEARCH ASSOCIATIONS

Association of University Lecturers in Religion and Education (AULRE, co-founder and former Chair)

British Educational Research Association (BERA)

European Educational Research Association (EERA)

International Seminar on Religious Education and Values (ISREV)

Philosophy of Education Society of Great Britain (PESGB)

Society for Research in Higher Education (SRHE)
Society for Educational Studies (SES)

Also:

Executive (2019-2022) Oxford Intelligence Group, Nuffield College, University of Oxford

Fellow, Higher Education Academy (FHEA)

Fellow, Royal Society of Arts (FRSA)

Cambridge Intelligence Seminar

 

OTHER ADMINISTRATIVE ROLES AT OXFORD

Elected by Congregation to the University of Oxford Prevent Steering Group

Social Sciences Divisional representative of the Permanent Private Halls Supervisory Committee (PPHSC), a senior committee of the University of Oxford overseeing governance of Blackfriars; Campion Hall; Regent’s Park College; St Benet’s; St Stephen’s House; Wycliffe Hall.

Member, Central University Research Ethics Committee (CUREC)

Chair, Department of Education Research Ethics Committee (DREC)

Member, Inter-Divisional Social Sciences and Humanities Research Ethics Committee (IDREC)

Chair, Bodleian Library Education Committee

Member and occasional Chair Social Sciences Divisional Library Committee

Education Advisory Group, Christ Church College, Oxford

 

EDITORSHIP OF INTERNATIONAL JOURNALS

Gearon, L. (Guest editor) (2021) Literature and Security, Special Issue, Text Matters: A Journal of Literature, Theory and Culture, with a planned formal launch at Lodz, Poland.

Gearon, L., (Lead Guest Editor with editorial team) Kuusisto, A., Matemba, Y., Benjamin, S., Du Preez, P., Koirikivi, P., Simmonds, S. (2020) Decolonising the Religious Education Curriculum: International Perspectives in Theory, Research, and Practice, Special Issue, British Journal of Religious Education.

Gearon, L. (Guest Editor) (2019) Special Issue of Religions 10 (1) on Religion, Security, Education.

Gearon, L. and Williams, E. (Guest Editors) (2019) Special Issue of the British Journal of Educational Studies, Writers and their Education, 67 (3), 283–289.

Gearon, L. and Williams, E. (Guest Editors) (2018) Special Issue of Journal of Philosophy of Education on Philosophy, Literature and Education, 52 (4), 577-777.

Gearon, L. (Guest Editor) (2015) British Journal of Educational Studies, Special Issue, Education, Security and Intelligence Studies, 63 (3) 263-411.

Tirri, K., (Finland) Campbell, E. (Canada), Gearon, L. (UK), Lovat, T. (Australia) (Guest Editors) (2012) The Moral Core of Teaching, Education Research International.

Gearon, L. (Guest Editor) (2008) Citizenship, Human Rights and Religion, British Journal of Religious Education, 30 (2) 93-108.

Gearon, L. (Guest Editor) (2006) Children’s Spirituality and Children’s Rights, International Journal of Children’s Spirituality, 11 (2) 193-310.

Simon Marginson is  Emeritus Professor of Higher Education at the University of Oxford, Director of the ESRC/RE Centre for Global Higher Education (CGHE), and Editor-in-Chief of the journal Higher Education.

Simon led the ESRC Centre for Global Higher Education between November 2015 and April 2024. His research is focused primarily on global and international higher education, higher education in East Asia, the public and social contributions of higher education, and higher education and social equality. He is currently preparing an integrated theorisation of higher education. His scholarship is widely published and cited (Google h-index 67 in September 2019). Books include Higher Education and the Common Good (Melbourne University Publishing, 2016); High Participation Systems of Higher Education, edited with Brendan Cantwell and Anna Smolentseva (Oxford University Press, 2018); Changing Higher Education in East Asia, edited with Xin Xu (Bloomsbury, 2022) and Assessing the Contributions of Higher Education, edited with Brendan Cantwell, Daria Platonova and Anna Smolentseva (Edward Elgar, 2023).

Selected Publications
Books
  • Marginson, S. (2016).The Dream is Over: The crisis of Clark Kerr’s California Idea of higher education. Berkeley: University of California Press.
  • Marginson, S. (2016).Higher Education and the Common Good. Melbourne: Melbourne University Publishing.
  • Tran, L. & Marginson, S. (eds.). (2018).Internationalisation of Vietnamese Higher Education. Dordrecht: Springer Nature.
  • Carnoy, M., Froumin, I., Leshukov, O. & Marginson, S. (eds.). (2018) Higher Education in Federal Countries. New Delhi: Sage.
  • Cantwell, B., Marginson, S. & Smolentseva, A. (eds.). (2018) High Participation Systems of Higher Education. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
  • Callender, C., Locke, W. & Marginson, S. (eds.) (2020). Changing Higher Education for a Changing World. London: Bloomsbury.
  • Chattopadhyay, S., Marginson, S. & Varghese, N.V. (eds.) (2021). Changing Higher Education in India. London: Bloomsbury.
  • Marginson, S. & Xu, X. (eds.) (2022). Changing Higher Education in East Asia. (2022). London: Bloomsbury.
  • Marginson, S., Cantwell, B., Platonova, D. & Smolentseva, A. (eds.) (2023). Assessing the contributions of higher education. Cheltenham: Edward Elgar.
Recent Journal Papers
  • Marginson, S. (2016). The worldwide trend to high participation higher education: Dynamics of social stratification in inclusive systems. Higher Education, 72 (4), 413-435.
  • Marginson, S. (2018). Private/public in higher education: A synthesis of economic and political approaches. Studies in Higher Education, 43 (2), 322-337
  • Marginson, S. (2018) Global trends in higher education financing: The United Kingdom. International J. Educational Development, 58, 26-36
  • Marginson, S. (2018) National/global synergy in the development of higher education and science in China since 1978. Frontiers of Education in China, 13 (4), 486–512
  • Marginson, S. (2019) Limitations of human capital theory. Studies in Higher Education, 44 (2), 287-301
  • Marginson, S. and Yang, L. (2022). Individual and collective outcomes of higher education: A comparison of Anglo-American and Chinese approaches. Globalisation, Societies and Education, 20 (1), 1-32.
  • Marginson, S. (2022). ‘All things are in flux’: China in global science. Higher Education, 83 (4), 881-910.
  • Marginson, S. (2022). What drives global science? The four competing narratives. Studies in Higher Education, 47 (8), 1566-1584.
  • Marginson, S. (2022). Global science and national comparisons: Beyond bibliometrics and scientometrics. Comparative Education, 58 (2), 125-146.
  • Marginson, S. (2022). What is global higher education? Oxford Review of Education, 48 (4), 492-517.
  • Marginson S. (2022). Space and scale in higher education: The glonacal heuristic revisited. Higher Education, 84 (6),1365-1395.
  • Marginson, S. & Xu, X. (2023). Hegemony and inequality in global science: Problems of the center-periphery model. Comparative Education Review, 67 (1). https://doi.org/10.1086/722760
  • Marginson, S. (2023). Student self-formation: An emerging paradigm in higher education. Studies in Higher Education, https://doi.org/10.1080/03075079.2023.2252826 (2023).
  • Marginson, S. (2023). Limitations of the leading definition of ‘internationalisation’ of higher education: Is the idea wrong or is the fault in reality? Globalisation, Societies and Education, https://doi.org/10.1080/14767724.2023.2264223
  • Marginson, S. and Yang ,L. (2023). Has the public good been emptied out of higher education in England? Higher Education. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10734-023-01117-6

Maia Chankseliani is Associate Professor of Comparative and International Education at the University of Oxford where she leads a flagship master’s course in Comparative and International Education. She convenes the Comparative and International Education Research Group at the Department of Education.

Within comparative and international education, Maia Chankseliani works at the intersection of tertiary education and development. She researches societal, institutional, and policy forces that shape tertiary education and the potential of tertiary education and research for transforming societies.

Methodologically, she utilises both qualitative and quantitative methods. Her work often combines secondary data analysis with insights gathered through semi-structured interviews and contextualised case studies.

Maia Chankseliani has published four books in the field of comparative and international education: What Happened to the Soviet University? (2022), Building Research Capacity at Universities: Insights from Post-Soviet Countries (2022), Comparing Post-Socialist Transformations: Purposes, Policies, and Practices in Education (2018), and Fairness in Access to Higher Education in a Global Perspective: Reconciling Excellence, Efficiency, and Justice (2013).

She currently leads a major research project examining the impact of international mobility on world development (funded by the U.S. Department of State). Maia Chankseliani has worked on a number of externally funded research projects and consultancies involving the UK Government agencies responsible for education and skills, UKRI/ESRC, British Council, World Bank, Qatar Foundation, the European Commission.

With a background in education research, teaching, policy-making, leadership, and consultancy, Maia Chankseliani brings to her role extensive experience in diverse international settings. This breadth of experience informs her research and enables her to bridge theory and practice.

Maia Chankseliani engages with governments and gives academic and policy-relevant talks nationally and internationally. Her research regularly features in national and international media.

She holds a BA in Philology from Tbilisi State University (Georgia), an Ed. M in International Education Policy from Harvard University (USA), and a PhD in Education from the University of Cambridge (UK).

Maia Chankseliani serves as the Editor-in-Chief of the International Journal of Educational Research.

Aliya teaches on the Comparative and International Education MSc programme at our Department. She is also a Junior Research Fellow at Lady Margaret Hall. Her research focuses on young people and families’ experiences of education in turbulent times.

For example, educational challenges and rehabilitation during COVID-19 and after the 2022 floods in Pakistan. Her current geographical focus includes ethnically diverse communities (Pakistani and Bangladeshi) in England as well as marginalised communities in Pakistan.

Aliya’s PhD explored the complexities of gender and international education, and her current work focuses on decolonising educational research practices and the experience of Southern-ness globally. Aliya’s specialist areas are parental, mothers’ and young people’s perspectives of and aspirations for education, and their own modalities of agency to fulfil their dreams.

Aliya publishes on the topics of Southern epistemologies and methodologies and teaches on related topics of decolonisation of knowledge production and the politics of representation. She is currently leading multiple projects in England and Pakistan focusing on girls’ education, gender experiences of education, mothers’ perspectives on educating their children, teacher educators, displaced peoples experiences in England and Pakistan.

Aliya is accepting DPhil students interested in these areas:

  • Southern epistemologies and methodologies
  • The capability approach and social justice
  • Negative capability
  • Deconstruction of the silence/violence binary
  • Marginalised peoples’ perspectives
  • Intersectional experiences of marginalisation including those related with gender, race, ethnicity, indigeneity, queerness, disability, class and caste (among others)
  • Decolonisation of knowledge production and representation of the South
  • Qualitative methodologies
  • Theorising from the margins
  • Area focus South Asia particularly Pakistan and Afghanistan
  • Internal displacement

Aliya is the acting Deputy Chair of the United Kingdom Forum for International Education and Training (UKFIET) conference 2023.

Gates Cambridge Biography

 

Research Group Membership

 

Research Projects

1. ‘Understanding the impact of COVID-19 on learning experiences of secondary school going age children among Bangladeshi and Pakistani ethnic minority families’
Funder: Cambridge Humanities Research Grants Scheme
Research team: Professor Nidhi Singal and Dr Aliya Khalid
Status: Complete

2. Gendered Inequalities in Education and Capability Spaces for Women/Girls (and others) in Pakistan: Education and reconstruction after 2022 floods in Pakistan
Funder: British Association for International and Comparative Education (BAICE) Seedcorn Fund
Research team: Aliya Khalid, Soufia Siddiqui, Aditi Chidambaram, Indrani Sigamany
Status: Ongoing

3. Bridging the Local and Global: Women’s Spaces and Collectives’: On becoming caregivers and teachers: Immigrant mothers’ identities and philosophies of education in England during COVID
Team members: Aliya Khalid, Jane Rooney and Ruth Houghton, Lavinia Kamphausen, Kate spencer-Bennet, Alana Farrel
Funder: The British Academy
Status: Complete

4. Collaborative development of faculty for Pakistan undergraduate Teacher Education Colleges: Durbeen and Oxford knowledge exchange project
Team members: Aliya Khalid, Ann Childs, Trevor Mutton, Ian Thompson, Jenni Ingram and Katharine Burn
Funder: Malala Fund
Status: Ongoing

Dr Karen Skilling is an Associate Professor at the Department of Education at the University of Oxford. Karen is currently the Deputy Director of Doctoral Research, Lead of the PGCE mathematics education at the Department of Education, and co-ordinates the Doctoral Teaching Fellows for teacher education. In 2020, Karen established the STEM Discussion Group and also convenes the Subject Pedagogy Group seminars.

Karen’s research interests include: student engagement and motivation in mathematics; integrated STEM learning and project-based STEM activities; and vignette methods. Karen currently sits on the Executive Committee of BSRLM, and is a journal Editor for the Teaching Education Journal (TEJ) and Research in Mathematics Education (RME). Karen has also been co-Editor for several special issues, and a topic study co-lead at the Congress of the European Society for Research in Mathematics Education (CERME). Karen is a Visiting Fellow at King’s College London and been an HEA Fellow since 2016.

Awards include: Australian Postgraduate Award (Industry) (APAI): funded PhD role attached to MYTEAM Project awarded by Australian Research Council (2008 –2012); Postdoctoral Research Fellowship: Department of Education, University of Oxford (2013-14); and nominations for Most Outstanding Contribution to Student Experience at King’s College London (2015, 2016, 2017).

David Mills is an Associate Professor and Director of the Centre for Global Higher Education (CGHE).

His current research focuses on the political economy of the global science system, and its impact on institutional research and publishing cultures in African universities. His most recent book is ‘Who Counts: Ghanaian Academic Publishing and Global Science’, co-written with colleagues from the University of Ghana and Oxford, and available open access from African Minds:  https://www.africanminds.co.za/who-counts/

Trained in Anthropology, and with inter-disciplinary research interests, David uses ethnographic methods to study the inequalities created by global higher education. He is particularly interested in African university research cultures and the role of diamond Open Access scholarly journals within knowledge ecosystems.

He welcomes enquiries from potential doctoral students interested in studying African Higher Education, as well as research and publishing cultures.

Liam Francis Gearon (BA, Hons, MA, MPhil, Cert He, PhD, FHEA, FRSA, Docent) is Associate Professor in Religious Education in the Department of Education, Senior Research Fellow at Harris Manchester College, University of Oxford; Docent, University of Helsinki, Finland; Honorary Senior Research Fellow at the School of Education, University of Birmingham, UK; Conjoint Professor at Newcastle University, Australia; Visiting Professor at the Irish Centre for Catholic Studies, MIC, Limerick, Ireland; Extraordinary Professor, North-West University, South Africa.

Liam Francis Gearon is Founder-Convenor of the Philosophy, Religion, Education Research Group, providing  a unique interdisciplinary contribution to the research culture of the Department of Education at the University of Oxford. The Philosophy, religion and education Research Group specifically forges theoretical and empirical interconnections between the arts, humanities, philosophy and the social sciences through the common focus of education. Contributions of this research group have been made to matters such as: theories of research policy and impact; the cultural value of research in the arts and humanities; research ethics; the intersection of epistemological and ethical domains in research in schools; religion, radicalisation and counter-terrorism in schools and universities; and the creation of distinctive sub-field of study at the interface of education, security and intelligence studies.

A specialist in the interdisciplinary study of religion in education, and particularly noted for the systematic philosophical and history of ideas analysis on the epistemological foundations of religious education, his framing of the paradigms of religion in education – scriptural-theological; phenomenological; psychological-experiential; philosophical-conceptual; social-cultural; political-historical – has contributed new insights to secularisation theory in numerous, some award-winning, monographs, such as MasterClass in Religious Education (Gearon, 2013); On Holy Ground (Gearon, 2015) [2016 Society of Education Studies Book Prize]; Religious Authority and the Arts: Conversations in Political Theology (Gearon, 2015); and State Religious Education and the State of the Religious Life (Gearon and Prud’homme, 2018).

His theorisations of the politicisation and securitisation of religion in education have been the subject of intense international debate for several years. Landmark publications on security in education – ‘The Counter-Terrorist Classroom’ (2013); ‘The Counter-Terrorist Classroom’ (2017); ‘Terrorism and Counter-Terrorism Policy and Research in UK Universities’ (2018): ‘Research Ethics in the Securitised University’ (Gearon and Parsons, 2019) and ‘The Kill Chain’ (Gearon, 2020) – have enabled empirical, methodological and theoretical advances on elites’ theory, the ethics of security and radicalisation research (Gearon and Kuusisto, 2018; Kuusisto and Gearon, 2017; Benjamin, Gearon, Kuusisto, Koirikivi, 2021).

With cognate research interests in security across all phases of education, Liam has over a decade collaboratively developed an interdisciplinary sub-field at the boundary of universities, security and intelligence studies, including research ethics in the securitised university (Gearon and Parsons, 2019). One of the defining outcomes here is Liam’s quarter of a million-word edited collection arising from the international Colloquium at Oriel College he convened in 2017, the Routledge International Handbook of Universities, Security and Intelligence Studies (Gearon, 2019). Interdisciplinary and inter-agency work in this area has included the Nuffield Foundation funded Universities and National Security: Research and Policy Collaborations 2019-2020, with a cross-disciplinary research team of 14 distinguished Co-Investigators.

With a significant Academy of Finland research grant (2018-2022) with Arniika Kuusisto (Stockholm/Helsinki/ Oxford), we oversee the research of two highly productive early career, post-doctoral researchers on radicalisation. This includes notable social and policy impacts such as the development of a national strategy around extremism through education for the Ministry of Justice in Finland (Activities | Growing up radical? | University of Helsinki). With substantial quantitative and qualitative data gathered, the project has already produced a substantial number of quality research outputs (Publications | Growing up radical? | University of Helsinki).

With a doctorate in English literature, Liam has also drawn on arts and humanities theoretical knowledge and methodological approaches to advance what are now intense cross-disciplinary debates around ‘decolonising the curriculum’ in religious education. From a series of foundational papers addressing the relationship between religious education and postcolonial theory – Gearon (2001a) ‘The Imagined Other: Postcolonial Theory and Religious Education’; Gearon (2001b) ‘A Spirituality of Dissent: Religion, Culture and Postcolonial Criticism’; Gearon (2002a) ‘Human Rights and Religious Education: Some Postcolonial Perspectives’ – he has recently led an international team (UK, Finland, Sweden, South Africa) as Guest Editor of the British Journal of Religious Education, for a high profile special issue on religion and education in postcolonial context (Gearon, Kuusisto, Matemba, Benjamin, Du Preez, Koirikivi, and Simmonds, 2020).

As Principal Investigator, Liam has led funded research projects with the Academy of Finland, the Arts and Humanities Research Council, the British Academy, the Leverhulme Trust, the Nuffield Foundation, the Philosophy of Education Society of Great Britain, and the Society for Educational Studies, a career total of funding exceeding £5,000,000, including a £4.5 million grant to establish a centre for citizenship and human rights at the University of Surrey Roehampton.

Doctoral supervision and Graduate teaching

 PGCE Religious Education (Subject lead)

  • Masters in Learning and Teaching (Subject lead)
  • Comparative and International Education

EXTERNAL POSTS

2020- Docent, Helsinki University, Finland

2020- Extraordinary Professor, Faculty of Education, North-West University, South Africa

2019-2021 Visiting Professor, Irish Institute of Catholic Studies, MIC, Limerick, Ireland

2012-2020 Conjoint Professor, Newcastle University, Australia

2019-2023 Honorary Senior Research Fellow, School of Education, University of Birmingham

 

PREVIOUS EXTERNAL POSTS

2011-2018, Adjunct Professor, Australian Catholic University, Australia

2010-2011, Visiting Professor, Faculty of Education, University of Plymouth

2008-2010, Research Professor, Faculty of Education, University of Plymouth

2006-2008, Professor of Education, University of Roehampton

2000-2006, Reader in Education, University of Surrey Roehampton

2006-2008, Senior Fellow, Centre of Excellence in Human Rights, University of Surrey Roehampton

2005-2008, Vice-President, International Human Rights Education Consortium, New York, USA

2001-2005, Director, Centre for Research in Human Rights, University of Surrey, Roehampton

1996-2000, Senior Lecturer, Faculty of Education, Roehampton, London

 

UK RESEARCH COUNCIL PEER REVIEW COLLEGES

AHRC Expert Group on Covid Research Group and Research Grant Panel ‘Introducer’

AHRC Peer Review College (2019 Gold Standard award, for ‘Recognition of significant contributions to the AHRC Peer Review College’)

ESRC Peer Review College

Universities UK Peer Review College Global Challenges Research Fund (GCRF)

 

INTERNATIONAL RESEARCH COUNCIL PEER REVIEWER

Academy of Finland

Austrian Science Fund (FWF)

EU 7th Framework Program for Research
Hong Kong Research Grants Council’s Public Policy Research Fund (PPR)

Irish Research Council

John Templeton Foundation

National Research Foundation, South Africa

 

PROFESSIONAL AND RESEARCH ASSOCIATIONS

Association of University Lecturers in Religion and Education (AULRE, co-founder and former Chair)

British Educational Research Association (BERA)

European Educational Research Association (EERA)

International Seminar on Religious Education and Values (ISREV)

Philosophy of Education Society of Great Britain (PESGB)

Society for Research in Higher Education (SRHE)
Society for Educational Studies (SES)

Also:

Executive (2019-2022) Oxford Intelligence Group, Nuffield College, University of Oxford

Fellow, Higher Education Academy (FHEA)

Fellow, Royal Society of Arts (FRSA)

Cambridge Intelligence Seminar

 

OTHER ADMINISTRATIVE ROLES AT OXFORD

Elected by Congregation to the University of Oxford Prevent Steering Group

Social Sciences Divisional representative of the Permanent Private Halls Supervisory Committee (PPHSC), a senior committee of the University of Oxford overseeing governance of Blackfriars; Campion Hall; Regent’s Park College; St Benet’s; St Stephen’s House; Wycliffe Hall.

Member, Central University Research Ethics Committee (CUREC)

Chair, Department of Education Research Ethics Committee (DREC)

Member, Inter-Divisional Social Sciences and Humanities Research Ethics Committee (IDREC)

Chair, Bodleian Library Education Committee

Member and occasional Chair Social Sciences Divisional Library Committee

Education Advisory Group, Christ Church College, Oxford

 

EDITORSHIP OF INTERNATIONAL JOURNALS

Gearon, L. (Guest editor) (2021) Literature and Security, Special Issue, Text Matters: A Journal of Literature, Theory and Culture, with a planned formal launch at Lodz, Poland.

Gearon, L., (Lead Guest Editor with editorial team) Kuusisto, A., Matemba, Y., Benjamin, S., Du Preez, P., Koirikivi, P., Simmonds, S. (2020) Decolonising the Religious Education Curriculum: International Perspectives in Theory, Research, and Practice, Special Issue, British Journal of Religious Education.

Gearon, L. (Guest Editor) (2019) Special Issue of Religions 10 (1) on Religion, Security, Education.

Gearon, L. and Williams, E. (Guest Editors) (2019) Special Issue of the British Journal of Educational Studies, Writers and their Education, 67 (3), 283–289.

Gearon, L. and Williams, E. (Guest Editors) (2018) Special Issue of Journal of Philosophy of Education on Philosophy, Literature and Education, 52 (4), 577-777.

Gearon, L. (Guest Editor) (2015) British Journal of Educational Studies, Special Issue, Education, Security and Intelligence Studies, 63 (3) 263-411.

Tirri, K., (Finland) Campbell, E. (Canada), Gearon, L. (UK), Lovat, T. (Australia) (Guest Editors) (2012) The Moral Core of Teaching, Education Research International.

Gearon, L. (Guest Editor) (2008) Citizenship, Human Rights and Religion, British Journal of Religious Education, 30 (2) 93-108.

Gearon, L. (Guest Editor) (2006) Children’s Spirituality and Children’s Rights, International Journal of Children’s Spirituality, 11 (2) 193-310.

Simon Marginson is  Emeritus Professor of Higher Education at the University of Oxford, Director of the ESRC/RE Centre for Global Higher Education (CGHE), and Editor-in-Chief of the journal Higher Education.

Simon led the ESRC Centre for Global Higher Education between November 2015 and April 2024. His research is focused primarily on global and international higher education, higher education in East Asia, the public and social contributions of higher education, and higher education and social equality. He is currently preparing an integrated theorisation of higher education. His scholarship is widely published and cited (Google h-index 67 in September 2019). Books include Higher Education and the Common Good (Melbourne University Publishing, 2016); High Participation Systems of Higher Education, edited with Brendan Cantwell and Anna Smolentseva (Oxford University Press, 2018); Changing Higher Education in East Asia, edited with Xin Xu (Bloomsbury, 2022) and Assessing the Contributions of Higher Education, edited with Brendan Cantwell, Daria Platonova and Anna Smolentseva (Edward Elgar, 2023).

Selected Publications
Books
  • Marginson, S. (2016).The Dream is Over: The crisis of Clark Kerr’s California Idea of higher education. Berkeley: University of California Press.
  • Marginson, S. (2016).Higher Education and the Common Good. Melbourne: Melbourne University Publishing.
  • Tran, L. & Marginson, S. (eds.). (2018).Internationalisation of Vietnamese Higher Education. Dordrecht: Springer Nature.
  • Carnoy, M., Froumin, I., Leshukov, O. & Marginson, S. (eds.). (2018) Higher Education in Federal Countries. New Delhi: Sage.
  • Cantwell, B., Marginson, S. & Smolentseva, A. (eds.). (2018) High Participation Systems of Higher Education. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
  • Callender, C., Locke, W. & Marginson, S. (eds.) (2020). Changing Higher Education for a Changing World. London: Bloomsbury.
  • Chattopadhyay, S., Marginson, S. & Varghese, N.V. (eds.) (2021). Changing Higher Education in India. London: Bloomsbury.
  • Marginson, S. & Xu, X. (eds.) (2022). Changing Higher Education in East Asia. (2022). London: Bloomsbury.
  • Marginson, S., Cantwell, B., Platonova, D. & Smolentseva, A. (eds.) (2023). Assessing the contributions of higher education. Cheltenham: Edward Elgar.
Recent Journal Papers
  • Marginson, S. (2016). The worldwide trend to high participation higher education: Dynamics of social stratification in inclusive systems. Higher Education, 72 (4), 413-435.
  • Marginson, S. (2018). Private/public in higher education: A synthesis of economic and political approaches. Studies in Higher Education, 43 (2), 322-337
  • Marginson, S. (2018) Global trends in higher education financing: The United Kingdom. International J. Educational Development, 58, 26-36
  • Marginson, S. (2018) National/global synergy in the development of higher education and science in China since 1978. Frontiers of Education in China, 13 (4), 486–512
  • Marginson, S. (2019) Limitations of human capital theory. Studies in Higher Education, 44 (2), 287-301
  • Marginson, S. and Yang, L. (2022). Individual and collective outcomes of higher education: A comparison of Anglo-American and Chinese approaches. Globalisation, Societies and Education, 20 (1), 1-32.
  • Marginson, S. (2022). ‘All things are in flux’: China in global science. Higher Education, 83 (4), 881-910.
  • Marginson, S. (2022). What drives global science? The four competing narratives. Studies in Higher Education, 47 (8), 1566-1584.
  • Marginson, S. (2022). Global science and national comparisons: Beyond bibliometrics and scientometrics. Comparative Education, 58 (2), 125-146.
  • Marginson, S. (2022). What is global higher education? Oxford Review of Education, 48 (4), 492-517.
  • Marginson S. (2022). Space and scale in higher education: The glonacal heuristic revisited. Higher Education, 84 (6),1365-1395.
  • Marginson, S. & Xu, X. (2023). Hegemony and inequality in global science: Problems of the center-periphery model. Comparative Education Review, 67 (1). https://doi.org/10.1086/722760
  • Marginson, S. (2023). Student self-formation: An emerging paradigm in higher education. Studies in Higher Education, https://doi.org/10.1080/03075079.2023.2252826 (2023).
  • Marginson, S. (2023). Limitations of the leading definition of ‘internationalisation’ of higher education: Is the idea wrong or is the fault in reality? Globalisation, Societies and Education, https://doi.org/10.1080/14767724.2023.2264223
  • Marginson, S. and Yang ,L. (2023). Has the public good been emptied out of higher education in England? Higher Education. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10734-023-01117-6

Maia Chankseliani is Associate Professor of Comparative and International Education at the University of Oxford where she leads a flagship master’s course in Comparative and International Education. She convenes the Comparative and International Education Research Group at the Department of Education.

Within comparative and international education, Maia Chankseliani works at the intersection of tertiary education and development. She researches societal, institutional, and policy forces that shape tertiary education and the potential of tertiary education and research for transforming societies.

Methodologically, she utilises both qualitative and quantitative methods. Her work often combines secondary data analysis with insights gathered through semi-structured interviews and contextualised case studies.

Maia Chankseliani has published four books in the field of comparative and international education: What Happened to the Soviet University? (2022), Building Research Capacity at Universities: Insights from Post-Soviet Countries (2022), Comparing Post-Socialist Transformations: Purposes, Policies, and Practices in Education (2018), and Fairness in Access to Higher Education in a Global Perspective: Reconciling Excellence, Efficiency, and Justice (2013).

She currently leads a major research project examining the impact of international mobility on world development (funded by the U.S. Department of State). Maia Chankseliani has worked on a number of externally funded research projects and consultancies involving the UK Government agencies responsible for education and skills, UKRI/ESRC, British Council, World Bank, Qatar Foundation, the European Commission.

With a background in education research, teaching, policy-making, leadership, and consultancy, Maia Chankseliani brings to her role extensive experience in diverse international settings. This breadth of experience informs her research and enables her to bridge theory and practice.

Maia Chankseliani engages with governments and gives academic and policy-relevant talks nationally and internationally. Her research regularly features in national and international media.

She holds a BA in Philology from Tbilisi State University (Georgia), an Ed. M in International Education Policy from Harvard University (USA), and a PhD in Education from the University of Cambridge (UK).

Maia Chankseliani serves as the Editor-in-Chief of the International Journal of Educational Research.

Aliya teaches on the Comparative and International Education MSc programme at our Department. She is also a Junior Research Fellow at Lady Margaret Hall. Her research focuses on young people and families’ experiences of education in turbulent times.

For example, educational challenges and rehabilitation during COVID-19 and after the 2022 floods in Pakistan. Her current geographical focus includes ethnically diverse communities (Pakistani and Bangladeshi) in England as well as marginalised communities in Pakistan.

Aliya’s PhD explored the complexities of gender and international education, and her current work focuses on decolonising educational research practices and the experience of Southern-ness globally. Aliya’s specialist areas are parental, mothers’ and young people’s perspectives of and aspirations for education, and their own modalities of agency to fulfil their dreams.

Aliya publishes on the topics of Southern epistemologies and methodologies and teaches on related topics of decolonisation of knowledge production and the politics of representation. She is currently leading multiple projects in England and Pakistan focusing on girls’ education, gender experiences of education, mothers’ perspectives on educating their children, teacher educators, displaced peoples experiences in England and Pakistan.

Aliya is accepting DPhil students interested in these areas:

  • Southern epistemologies and methodologies
  • The capability approach and social justice
  • Negative capability
  • Deconstruction of the silence/violence binary
  • Marginalised peoples’ perspectives
  • Intersectional experiences of marginalisation including those related with gender, race, ethnicity, indigeneity, queerness, disability, class and caste (among others)
  • Decolonisation of knowledge production and representation of the South
  • Qualitative methodologies
  • Theorising from the margins
  • Area focus South Asia particularly Pakistan and Afghanistan
  • Internal displacement

Aliya is the acting Deputy Chair of the United Kingdom Forum for International Education and Training (UKFIET) conference 2023.

Gates Cambridge Biography

 

Research Group Membership

 

Research Projects

1. ‘Understanding the impact of COVID-19 on learning experiences of secondary school going age children among Bangladeshi and Pakistani ethnic minority families’
Funder: Cambridge Humanities Research Grants Scheme
Research team: Professor Nidhi Singal and Dr Aliya Khalid
Status: Complete

2. Gendered Inequalities in Education and Capability Spaces for Women/Girls (and others) in Pakistan: Education and reconstruction after 2022 floods in Pakistan
Funder: British Association for International and Comparative Education (BAICE) Seedcorn Fund
Research team: Aliya Khalid, Soufia Siddiqui, Aditi Chidambaram, Indrani Sigamany
Status: Ongoing

3. Bridging the Local and Global: Women’s Spaces and Collectives’: On becoming caregivers and teachers: Immigrant mothers’ identities and philosophies of education in England during COVID
Team members: Aliya Khalid, Jane Rooney and Ruth Houghton, Lavinia Kamphausen, Kate spencer-Bennet, Alana Farrel
Funder: The British Academy
Status: Complete

4. Collaborative development of faculty for Pakistan undergraduate Teacher Education Colleges: Durbeen and Oxford knowledge exchange project
Team members: Aliya Khalid, Ann Childs, Trevor Mutton, Ian Thompson, Jenni Ingram and Katharine Burn
Funder: Malala Fund
Status: Ongoing

Dr Karen Skilling is an Associate Professor at the Department of Education at the University of Oxford. Karen is currently the Deputy Director of Doctoral Research, Lead of the PGCE mathematics education at the Department of Education, and co-ordinates the Doctoral Teaching Fellows for teacher education. In 2020, Karen established the STEM Discussion Group and also convenes the Subject Pedagogy Group seminars.

Karen’s research interests include: student engagement and motivation in mathematics; integrated STEM learning and project-based STEM activities; and vignette methods. Karen currently sits on the Executive Committee of BSRLM, and is a journal Editor for the Teaching Education Journal (TEJ) and Research in Mathematics Education (RME). Karen has also been co-Editor for several special issues, and a topic study co-lead at the Congress of the European Society for Research in Mathematics Education (CERME). Karen is a Visiting Fellow at King’s College London and been an HEA Fellow since 2016.

Awards include: Australian Postgraduate Award (Industry) (APAI): funded PhD role attached to MYTEAM Project awarded by Australian Research Council (2008 –2012); Postdoctoral Research Fellowship: Department of Education, University of Oxford (2013-14); and nominations for Most Outstanding Contribution to Student Experience at King’s College London (2015, 2016, 2017).

David Mills is an Associate Professor and Director of the Centre for Global Higher Education (CGHE).

His current research focuses on the political economy of the global science system, and its impact on institutional research and publishing cultures in African universities. His most recent book is ‘Who Counts: Ghanaian Academic Publishing and Global Science’, co-written with colleagues from the University of Ghana and Oxford, and available open access from African Minds:  https://www.africanminds.co.za/who-counts/

Trained in Anthropology, and with inter-disciplinary research interests, David uses ethnographic methods to study the inequalities created by global higher education. He is particularly interested in African university research cultures and the role of diamond Open Access scholarly journals within knowledge ecosystems.

He welcomes enquiries from potential doctoral students interested in studying African Higher Education, as well as research and publishing cultures.

Liam Francis Gearon (BA, Hons, MA, MPhil, Cert He, PhD, FHEA, FRSA, Docent) is Associate Professor in Religious Education in the Department of Education, Senior Research Fellow at Harris Manchester College, University of Oxford; Docent, University of Helsinki, Finland; Honorary Senior Research Fellow at the School of Education, University of Birmingham, UK; Conjoint Professor at Newcastle University, Australia; Visiting Professor at the Irish Centre for Catholic Studies, MIC, Limerick, Ireland; Extraordinary Professor, North-West University, South Africa.

Liam Francis Gearon is Founder-Convenor of the Philosophy, Religion, Education Research Group, providing  a unique interdisciplinary contribution to the research culture of the Department of Education at the University of Oxford. The Philosophy, religion and education Research Group specifically forges theoretical and empirical interconnections between the arts, humanities, philosophy and the social sciences through the common focus of education. Contributions of this research group have been made to matters such as: theories of research policy and impact; the cultural value of research in the arts and humanities; research ethics; the intersection of epistemological and ethical domains in research in schools; religion, radicalisation and counter-terrorism in schools and universities; and the creation of distinctive sub-field of study at the interface of education, security and intelligence studies.

A specialist in the interdisciplinary study of religion in education, and particularly noted for the systematic philosophical and history of ideas analysis on the epistemological foundations of religious education, his framing of the paradigms of religion in education – scriptural-theological; phenomenological; psychological-experiential; philosophical-conceptual; social-cultural; political-historical – has contributed new insights to secularisation theory in numerous, some award-winning, monographs, such as MasterClass in Religious Education (Gearon, 2013); On Holy Ground (Gearon, 2015) [2016 Society of Education Studies Book Prize]; Religious Authority and the Arts: Conversations in Political Theology (Gearon, 2015); and State Religious Education and the State of the Religious Life (Gearon and Prud’homme, 2018).

His theorisations of the politicisation and securitisation of religion in education have been the subject of intense international debate for several years. Landmark publications on security in education – ‘The Counter-Terrorist Classroom’ (2013); ‘The Counter-Terrorist Classroom’ (2017); ‘Terrorism and Counter-Terrorism Policy and Research in UK Universities’ (2018): ‘Research Ethics in the Securitised University’ (Gearon and Parsons, 2019) and ‘The Kill Chain’ (Gearon, 2020) – have enabled empirical, methodological and theoretical advances on elites’ theory, the ethics of security and radicalisation research (Gearon and Kuusisto, 2018; Kuusisto and Gearon, 2017; Benjamin, Gearon, Kuusisto, Koirikivi, 2021).

With cognate research interests in security across all phases of education, Liam has over a decade collaboratively developed an interdisciplinary sub-field at the boundary of universities, security and intelligence studies, including research ethics in the securitised university (Gearon and Parsons, 2019). One of the defining outcomes here is Liam’s quarter of a million-word edited collection arising from the international Colloquium at Oriel College he convened in 2017, the Routledge International Handbook of Universities, Security and Intelligence Studies (Gearon, 2019). Interdisciplinary and inter-agency work in this area has included the Nuffield Foundation funded Universities and National Security: Research and Policy Collaborations 2019-2020, with a cross-disciplinary research team of 14 distinguished Co-Investigators.

With a significant Academy of Finland research grant (2018-2022) with Arniika Kuusisto (Stockholm/Helsinki/ Oxford), we oversee the research of two highly productive early career, post-doctoral researchers on radicalisation. This includes notable social and policy impacts such as the development of a national strategy around extremism through education for the Ministry of Justice in Finland (Activities | Growing up radical? | University of Helsinki). With substantial quantitative and qualitative data gathered, the project has already produced a substantial number of quality research outputs (Publications | Growing up radical? | University of Helsinki).

With a doctorate in English literature, Liam has also drawn on arts and humanities theoretical knowledge and methodological approaches to advance what are now intense cross-disciplinary debates around ‘decolonising the curriculum’ in religious education. From a series of foundational papers addressing the relationship between religious education and postcolonial theory – Gearon (2001a) ‘The Imagined Other: Postcolonial Theory and Religious Education’; Gearon (2001b) ‘A Spirituality of Dissent: Religion, Culture and Postcolonial Criticism’; Gearon (2002a) ‘Human Rights and Religious Education: Some Postcolonial Perspectives’ – he has recently led an international team (UK, Finland, Sweden, South Africa) as Guest Editor of the British Journal of Religious Education, for a high profile special issue on religion and education in postcolonial context (Gearon, Kuusisto, Matemba, Benjamin, Du Preez, Koirikivi, and Simmonds, 2020).

As Principal Investigator, Liam has led funded research projects with the Academy of Finland, the Arts and Humanities Research Council, the British Academy, the Leverhulme Trust, the Nuffield Foundation, the Philosophy of Education Society of Great Britain, and the Society for Educational Studies, a career total of funding exceeding £5,000,000, including a £4.5 million grant to establish a centre for citizenship and human rights at the University of Surrey Roehampton.

Doctoral supervision and Graduate teaching

 PGCE Religious Education (Subject lead)

  • Masters in Learning and Teaching (Subject lead)
  • Comparative and International Education

EXTERNAL POSTS

2020- Docent, Helsinki University, Finland

2020- Extraordinary Professor, Faculty of Education, North-West University, South Africa

2019-2021 Visiting Professor, Irish Institute of Catholic Studies, MIC, Limerick, Ireland

2012-2020 Conjoint Professor, Newcastle University, Australia

2019-2023 Honorary Senior Research Fellow, School of Education, University of Birmingham

 

PREVIOUS EXTERNAL POSTS

2011-2018, Adjunct Professor, Australian Catholic University, Australia

2010-2011, Visiting Professor, Faculty of Education, University of Plymouth

2008-2010, Research Professor, Faculty of Education, University of Plymouth

2006-2008, Professor of Education, University of Roehampton

2000-2006, Reader in Education, University of Surrey Roehampton

2006-2008, Senior Fellow, Centre of Excellence in Human Rights, University of Surrey Roehampton

2005-2008, Vice-President, International Human Rights Education Consortium, New York, USA

2001-2005, Director, Centre for Research in Human Rights, University of Surrey, Roehampton

1996-2000, Senior Lecturer, Faculty of Education, Roehampton, London

 

UK RESEARCH COUNCIL PEER REVIEW COLLEGES

AHRC Expert Group on Covid Research Group and Research Grant Panel ‘Introducer’

AHRC Peer Review College (2019 Gold Standard award, for ‘Recognition of significant contributions to the AHRC Peer Review College’)

ESRC Peer Review College

Universities UK Peer Review College Global Challenges Research Fund (GCRF)

 

INTERNATIONAL RESEARCH COUNCIL PEER REVIEWER

Academy of Finland

Austrian Science Fund (FWF)

EU 7th Framework Program for Research
Hong Kong Research Grants Council’s Public Policy Research Fund (PPR)

Irish Research Council

John Templeton Foundation

National Research Foundation, South Africa

 

PROFESSIONAL AND RESEARCH ASSOCIATIONS

Association of University Lecturers in Religion and Education (AULRE, co-founder and former Chair)

British Educational Research Association (BERA)

European Educational Research Association (EERA)

International Seminar on Religious Education and Values (ISREV)

Philosophy of Education Society of Great Britain (PESGB)

Society for Research in Higher Education (SRHE)
Society for Educational Studies (SES)

Also:

Executive (2019-2022) Oxford Intelligence Group, Nuffield College, University of Oxford

Fellow, Higher Education Academy (FHEA)

Fellow, Royal Society of Arts (FRSA)

Cambridge Intelligence Seminar

 

OTHER ADMINISTRATIVE ROLES AT OXFORD

Elected by Congregation to the University of Oxford Prevent Steering Group

Social Sciences Divisional representative of the Permanent Private Halls Supervisory Committee (PPHSC), a senior committee of the University of Oxford overseeing governance of Blackfriars; Campion Hall; Regent’s Park College; St Benet’s; St Stephen’s House; Wycliffe Hall.

Member, Central University Research Ethics Committee (CUREC)

Chair, Department of Education Research Ethics Committee (DREC)

Member, Inter-Divisional Social Sciences and Humanities Research Ethics Committee (IDREC)

Chair, Bodleian Library Education Committee

Member and occasional Chair Social Sciences Divisional Library Committee

Education Advisory Group, Christ Church College, Oxford

 

EDITORSHIP OF INTERNATIONAL JOURNALS

Gearon, L. (Guest editor) (2021) Literature and Security, Special Issue, Text Matters: A Journal of Literature, Theory and Culture, with a planned formal launch at Lodz, Poland.

Gearon, L., (Lead Guest Editor with editorial team) Kuusisto, A., Matemba, Y., Benjamin, S., Du Preez, P., Koirikivi, P., Simmonds, S. (2020) Decolonising the Religious Education Curriculum: International Perspectives in Theory, Research, and Practice, Special Issue, British Journal of Religious Education.

Gearon, L. (Guest Editor) (2019) Special Issue of Religions 10 (1) on Religion, Security, Education.

Gearon, L. and Williams, E. (Guest Editors) (2019) Special Issue of the British Journal of Educational Studies, Writers and their Education, 67 (3), 283–289.

Gearon, L. and Williams, E. (Guest Editors) (2018) Special Issue of Journal of Philosophy of Education on Philosophy, Literature and Education, 52 (4), 577-777.

Gearon, L. (Guest Editor) (2015) British Journal of Educational Studies, Special Issue, Education, Security and Intelligence Studies, 63 (3) 263-411.

Tirri, K., (Finland) Campbell, E. (Canada), Gearon, L. (UK), Lovat, T. (Australia) (Guest Editors) (2012) The Moral Core of Teaching, Education Research International.

Gearon, L. (Guest Editor) (2008) Citizenship, Human Rights and Religion, British Journal of Religious Education, 30 (2) 93-108.

Gearon, L. (Guest Editor) (2006) Children’s Spirituality and Children’s Rights, International Journal of Children’s Spirituality, 11 (2) 193-310.

Simon Marginson is  Emeritus Professor of Higher Education at the University of Oxford, Director of the ESRC/RE Centre for Global Higher Education (CGHE), and Editor-in-Chief of the journal Higher Education.

Simon led the ESRC Centre for Global Higher Education between November 2015 and April 2024. His research is focused primarily on global and international higher education, higher education in East Asia, the public and social contributions of higher education, and higher education and social equality. He is currently preparing an integrated theorisation of higher education. His scholarship is widely published and cited (Google h-index 67 in September 2019). Books include Higher Education and the Common Good (Melbourne University Publishing, 2016); High Participation Systems of Higher Education, edited with Brendan Cantwell and Anna Smolentseva (Oxford University Press, 2018); Changing Higher Education in East Asia, edited with Xin Xu (Bloomsbury, 2022) and Assessing the Contributions of Higher Education, edited with Brendan Cantwell, Daria Platonova and Anna Smolentseva (Edward Elgar, 2023).

Selected Publications
Books
  • Marginson, S. (2016).The Dream is Over: The crisis of Clark Kerr’s California Idea of higher education. Berkeley: University of California Press.
  • Marginson, S. (2016).Higher Education and the Common Good. Melbourne: Melbourne University Publishing.
  • Tran, L. & Marginson, S. (eds.). (2018).Internationalisation of Vietnamese Higher Education. Dordrecht: Springer Nature.
  • Carnoy, M., Froumin, I., Leshukov, O. & Marginson, S. (eds.). (2018) Higher Education in Federal Countries. New Delhi: Sage.
  • Cantwell, B., Marginson, S. & Smolentseva, A. (eds.). (2018) High Participation Systems of Higher Education. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
  • Callender, C., Locke, W. & Marginson, S. (eds.) (2020). Changing Higher Education for a Changing World. London: Bloomsbury.
  • Chattopadhyay, S., Marginson, S. & Varghese, N.V. (eds.) (2021). Changing Higher Education in India. London: Bloomsbury.
  • Marginson, S. & Xu, X. (eds.) (2022). Changing Higher Education in East Asia. (2022). London: Bloomsbury.
  • Marginson, S., Cantwell, B., Platonova, D. & Smolentseva, A. (eds.) (2023). Assessing the contributions of higher education. Cheltenham: Edward Elgar.
Recent Journal Papers
  • Marginson, S. (2016). The worldwide trend to high participation higher education: Dynamics of social stratification in inclusive systems. Higher Education, 72 (4), 413-435.
  • Marginson, S. (2018). Private/public in higher education: A synthesis of economic and political approaches. Studies in Higher Education, 43 (2), 322-337
  • Marginson, S. (2018) Global trends in higher education financing: The United Kingdom. International J. Educational Development, 58, 26-36
  • Marginson, S. (2018) National/global synergy in the development of higher education and science in China since 1978. Frontiers of Education in China, 13 (4), 486–512
  • Marginson, S. (2019) Limitations of human capital theory. Studies in Higher Education, 44 (2), 287-301
  • Marginson, S. and Yang, L. (2022). Individual and collective outcomes of higher education: A comparison of Anglo-American and Chinese approaches. Globalisation, Societies and Education, 20 (1), 1-32.
  • Marginson, S. (2022). ‘All things are in flux’: China in global science. Higher Education, 83 (4), 881-910.
  • Marginson, S. (2022). What drives global science? The four competing narratives. Studies in Higher Education, 47 (8), 1566-1584.
  • Marginson, S. (2022). Global science and national comparisons: Beyond bibliometrics and scientometrics. Comparative Education, 58 (2), 125-146.
  • Marginson, S. (2022). What is global higher education? Oxford Review of Education, 48 (4), 492-517.
  • Marginson S. (2022). Space and scale in higher education: The glonacal heuristic revisited. Higher Education, 84 (6),1365-1395.
  • Marginson, S. & Xu, X. (2023). Hegemony and inequality in global science: Problems of the center-periphery model. Comparative Education Review, 67 (1). https://doi.org/10.1086/722760
  • Marginson, S. (2023). Student self-formation: An emerging paradigm in higher education. Studies in Higher Education, https://doi.org/10.1080/03075079.2023.2252826 (2023).
  • Marginson, S. (2023). Limitations of the leading definition of ‘internationalisation’ of higher education: Is the idea wrong or is the fault in reality? Globalisation, Societies and Education, https://doi.org/10.1080/14767724.2023.2264223
  • Marginson, S. and Yang ,L. (2023). Has the public good been emptied out of higher education in England? Higher Education. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10734-023-01117-6

Maia Chankseliani is Associate Professor of Comparative and International Education at the University of Oxford where she leads a flagship master’s course in Comparative and International Education. She convenes the Comparative and International Education Research Group at the Department of Education.

Within comparative and international education, Maia Chankseliani works at the intersection of tertiary education and development. She researches societal, institutional, and policy forces that shape tertiary education and the potential of tertiary education and research for transforming societies.

Methodologically, she utilises both qualitative and quantitative methods. Her work often combines secondary data analysis with insights gathered through semi-structured interviews and contextualised case studies.

Maia Chankseliani has published four books in the field of comparative and international education: What Happened to the Soviet University? (2022), Building Research Capacity at Universities: Insights from Post-Soviet Countries (2022), Comparing Post-Socialist Transformations: Purposes, Policies, and Practices in Education (2018), and Fairness in Access to Higher Education in a Global Perspective: Reconciling Excellence, Efficiency, and Justice (2013).

She currently leads a major research project examining the impact of international mobility on world development (funded by the U.S. Department of State). Maia Chankseliani has worked on a number of externally funded research projects and consultancies involving the UK Government agencies responsible for education and skills, UKRI/ESRC, British Council, World Bank, Qatar Foundation, the European Commission.

With a background in education research, teaching, policy-making, leadership, and consultancy, Maia Chankseliani brings to her role extensive experience in diverse international settings. This breadth of experience informs her research and enables her to bridge theory and practice.

Maia Chankseliani engages with governments and gives academic and policy-relevant talks nationally and internationally. Her research regularly features in national and international media.

She holds a BA in Philology from Tbilisi State University (Georgia), an Ed. M in International Education Policy from Harvard University (USA), and a PhD in Education from the University of Cambridge (UK).

Maia Chankseliani serves as the Editor-in-Chief of the International Journal of Educational Research.

Aliya teaches on the Comparative and International Education MSc programme at our Department. She is also a Junior Research Fellow at Lady Margaret Hall. Her research focuses on young people and families’ experiences of education in turbulent times.

For example, educational challenges and rehabilitation during COVID-19 and after the 2022 floods in Pakistan. Her current geographical focus includes ethnically diverse communities (Pakistani and Bangladeshi) in England as well as marginalised communities in Pakistan.

Aliya’s PhD explored the complexities of gender and international education, and her current work focuses on decolonising educational research practices and the experience of Southern-ness globally. Aliya’s specialist areas are parental, mothers’ and young people’s perspectives of and aspirations for education, and their own modalities of agency to fulfil their dreams.

Aliya publishes on the topics of Southern epistemologies and methodologies and teaches on related topics of decolonisation of knowledge production and the politics of representation. She is currently leading multiple projects in England and Pakistan focusing on girls’ education, gender experiences of education, mothers’ perspectives on educating their children, teacher educators, displaced peoples experiences in England and Pakistan.

Aliya is accepting DPhil students interested in these areas:

  • Southern epistemologies and methodologies
  • The capability approach and social justice
  • Negative capability
  • Deconstruction of the silence/violence binary
  • Marginalised peoples’ perspectives
  • Intersectional experiences of marginalisation including those related with gender, race, ethnicity, indigeneity, queerness, disability, class and caste (among others)
  • Decolonisation of knowledge production and representation of the South
  • Qualitative methodologies
  • Theorising from the margins
  • Area focus South Asia particularly Pakistan and Afghanistan
  • Internal displacement

Aliya is the acting Deputy Chair of the United Kingdom Forum for International Education and Training (UKFIET) conference 2023.

Gates Cambridge Biography

 

Research Group Membership

 

Research Projects

1. ‘Understanding the impact of COVID-19 on learning experiences of secondary school going age children among Bangladeshi and Pakistani ethnic minority families’
Funder: Cambridge Humanities Research Grants Scheme
Research team: Professor Nidhi Singal and Dr Aliya Khalid
Status: Complete

2. Gendered Inequalities in Education and Capability Spaces for Women/Girls (and others) in Pakistan: Education and reconstruction after 2022 floods in Pakistan
Funder: British Association for International and Comparative Education (BAICE) Seedcorn Fund
Research team: Aliya Khalid, Soufia Siddiqui, Aditi Chidambaram, Indrani Sigamany
Status: Ongoing

3. Bridging the Local and Global: Women’s Spaces and Collectives’: On becoming caregivers and teachers: Immigrant mothers’ identities and philosophies of education in England during COVID
Team members: Aliya Khalid, Jane Rooney and Ruth Houghton, Lavinia Kamphausen, Kate spencer-Bennet, Alana Farrel
Funder: The British Academy
Status: Complete

4. Collaborative development of faculty for Pakistan undergraduate Teacher Education Colleges: Durbeen and Oxford knowledge exchange project
Team members: Aliya Khalid, Ann Childs, Trevor Mutton, Ian Thompson, Jenni Ingram and Katharine Burn
Funder: Malala Fund
Status: Ongoing

Dr Karen Skilling is an Associate Professor at the Department of Education at the University of Oxford. Karen is currently the Deputy Director of Doctoral Research, Lead of the PGCE mathematics education at the Department of Education, and co-ordinates the Doctoral Teaching Fellows for teacher education. In 2020, Karen established the STEM Discussion Group and also convenes the Subject Pedagogy Group seminars.

Karen’s research interests include: student engagement and motivation in mathematics; integrated STEM learning and project-based STEM activities; and vignette methods. Karen currently sits on the Executive Committee of BSRLM, and is a journal Editor for the Teaching Education Journal (TEJ) and Research in Mathematics Education (RME). Karen has also been co-Editor for several special issues, and a topic study co-lead at the Congress of the European Society for Research in Mathematics Education (CERME). Karen is a Visiting Fellow at King’s College London and been an HEA Fellow since 2016.

Awards include: Australian Postgraduate Award (Industry) (APAI): funded PhD role attached to MYTEAM Project awarded by Australian Research Council (2008 –2012); Postdoctoral Research Fellowship: Department of Education, University of Oxford (2013-14); and nominations for Most Outstanding Contribution to Student Experience at King’s College London (2015, 2016, 2017).

David Mills is an Associate Professor and Director of the Centre for Global Higher Education (CGHE).

His current research focuses on the political economy of the global science system, and its impact on institutional research and publishing cultures in African universities. His most recent book is ‘Who Counts: Ghanaian Academic Publishing and Global Science’, co-written with colleagues from the University of Ghana and Oxford, and available open access from African Minds:  https://www.africanminds.co.za/who-counts/

Trained in Anthropology, and with inter-disciplinary research interests, David uses ethnographic methods to study the inequalities created by global higher education. He is particularly interested in African university research cultures and the role of diamond Open Access scholarly journals within knowledge ecosystems.

He welcomes enquiries from potential doctoral students interested in studying African Higher Education, as well as research and publishing cultures.

Liam Francis Gearon (BA, Hons, MA, MPhil, Cert He, PhD, FHEA, FRSA, Docent) is Associate Professor in Religious Education in the Department of Education, Senior Research Fellow at Harris Manchester College, University of Oxford; Docent, University of Helsinki, Finland; Honorary Senior Research Fellow at the School of Education, University of Birmingham, UK; Conjoint Professor at Newcastle University, Australia; Visiting Professor at the Irish Centre for Catholic Studies, MIC, Limerick, Ireland; Extraordinary Professor, North-West University, South Africa.

Liam Francis Gearon is Founder-Convenor of the Philosophy, Religion, Education Research Group, providing  a unique interdisciplinary contribution to the research culture of the Department of Education at the University of Oxford. The Philosophy, religion and education Research Group specifically forges theoretical and empirical interconnections between the arts, humanities, philosophy and the social sciences through the common focus of education. Contributions of this research group have been made to matters such as: theories of research policy and impact; the cultural value of research in the arts and humanities; research ethics; the intersection of epistemological and ethical domains in research in schools; religion, radicalisation and counter-terrorism in schools and universities; and the creation of distinctive sub-field of study at the interface of education, security and intelligence studies.

A specialist in the interdisciplinary study of religion in education, and particularly noted for the systematic philosophical and history of ideas analysis on the epistemological foundations of religious education, his framing of the paradigms of religion in education – scriptural-theological; phenomenological; psychological-experiential; philosophical-conceptual; social-cultural; political-historical – has contributed new insights to secularisation theory in numerous, some award-winning, monographs, such as MasterClass in Religious Education (Gearon, 2013); On Holy Ground (Gearon, 2015) [2016 Society of Education Studies Book Prize]; Religious Authority and the Arts: Conversations in Political Theology (Gearon, 2015); and State Religious Education and the State of the Religious Life (Gearon and Prud’homme, 2018).

His theorisations of the politicisation and securitisation of religion in education have been the subject of intense international debate for several years. Landmark publications on security in education – ‘The Counter-Terrorist Classroom’ (2013); ‘The Counter-Terrorist Classroom’ (2017); ‘Terrorism and Counter-Terrorism Policy and Research in UK Universities’ (2018): ‘Research Ethics in the Securitised University’ (Gearon and Parsons, 2019) and ‘The Kill Chain’ (Gearon, 2020) – have enabled empirical, methodological and theoretical advances on elites’ theory, the ethics of security and radicalisation research (Gearon and Kuusisto, 2018; Kuusisto and Gearon, 2017; Benjamin, Gearon, Kuusisto, Koirikivi, 2021).

With cognate research interests in security across all phases of education, Liam has over a decade collaboratively developed an interdisciplinary sub-field at the boundary of universities, security and intelligence studies, including research ethics in the securitised university (Gearon and Parsons, 2019). One of the defining outcomes here is Liam’s quarter of a million-word edited collection arising from the international Colloquium at Oriel College he convened in 2017, the Routledge International Handbook of Universities, Security and Intelligence Studies (Gearon, 2019). Interdisciplinary and inter-agency work in this area has included the Nuffield Foundation funded Universities and National Security: Research and Policy Collaborations 2019-2020, with a cross-disciplinary research team of 14 distinguished Co-Investigators.

With a significant Academy of Finland research grant (2018-2022) with Arniika Kuusisto (Stockholm/Helsinki/ Oxford), we oversee the research of two highly productive early career, post-doctoral researchers on radicalisation. This includes notable social and policy impacts such as the development of a national strategy around extremism through education for the Ministry of Justice in Finland (Activities | Growing up radical? | University of Helsinki). With substantial quantitative and qualitative data gathered, the project has already produced a substantial number of quality research outputs (Publications | Growing up radical? | University of Helsinki).

With a doctorate in English literature, Liam has also drawn on arts and humanities theoretical knowledge and methodological approaches to advance what are now intense cross-disciplinary debates around ‘decolonising the curriculum’ in religious education. From a series of foundational papers addressing the relationship between religious education and postcolonial theory – Gearon (2001a) ‘The Imagined Other: Postcolonial Theory and Religious Education’; Gearon (2001b) ‘A Spirituality of Dissent: Religion, Culture and Postcolonial Criticism’; Gearon (2002a) ‘Human Rights and Religious Education: Some Postcolonial Perspectives’ – he has recently led an international team (UK, Finland, Sweden, South Africa) as Guest Editor of the British Journal of Religious Education, for a high profile special issue on religion and education in postcolonial context (Gearon, Kuusisto, Matemba, Benjamin, Du Preez, Koirikivi, and Simmonds, 2020).

As Principal Investigator, Liam has led funded research projects with the Academy of Finland, the Arts and Humanities Research Council, the Brit