Professor Paul Ashwin
Paul Ashwin is Professor of Higher Education, Department of Educational Research, Lancaster University. Paul’s research is focused on the educational role of higher education. His book, ‘Transforming University Education: A Manifesto’ (2020), argues for a focus on the educational, rather than economic, purposes of university degrees in order to understand their transformational impact on students and societies. He is also the lead author on Reflective Teaching in Higher Education (2015, 2020) written by an international team to support the development of research-informed university teaching.
Professor Elizabeth Chapman Hoult
Professor Elizabeth Hoult is a Professor of Education at Northumbria University in the UK. Her research interests include the application of literary theory and literary analysis to social research; resilience in education, and adult and community education as ways of nurturing hopeful futures.
Her research has been described as methodologically groundbreaking, stemming from her doctoral monograph ‘Hoult, E.C. (2012) Adult Learning and La Recherche Féminine: Reading Resilience and Hélène Cixous New York: Palgrave Macmillan, in the way that it juxtaposes literary analysis and qualitative data in order to read social issues. She continues to think about the way that deep engagement with texts allows individuals and communities to imagine alternative futures. To this end she is interested in the civic university as a source of social renewal. Her recent writing has explored the uses of science fiction as a container for speculative and contemplative conversations about hopeful futures. She is committed to an academic life which supports teaching, research and knowledge exchange as equally important and interrelated endeavours.