Andrew Wilkins is Reader in Education in the Cass School of Education and Communities at the University of East London. Andrew joined the University of East London in 2015. Prior to this he was Research Fellow at the University of Roehampton. Andrew completed his undergraduate degree at the University of Leeds in 2003 and postgraduate degree at Goldsmiths in 2005 before obtaining his PhD in Social Policy at the Open University in 2009.
Andrew has research interests in areas of sociology of governance and sociology of education with a focus on risk, bureaucracy, democracy and technocratic cultures and their influence on education structures and processes. He adopts an interdisciplinary approach to research that makes use of various conceptual frameworks and theoretical perspectives.
Between 2012 and 2015 Andrew was principal investigator on an ESRC-funded Future Research Leader’s project looking at school governance in England. The project generated significant impact along with a number of outputs including a sole-authored book published by Routledge in 2016 called Modernising School Governance: Corporate Planning and Expert Handling in State Education. The book was awarded joint-second prize by the Society for Educational Studies for books published in 2016. Andrew’s forthcoming book is called Education Governance and Social Theory: Interdisciplinary Approaches to Research. Co-edited with Antonio Olmedo, the book is due to be published by Bloomsbury in 2018.
Andrew runs two undergraduate modules in the Cass School of Education and Communities at the University of East London: Independent Research Project (ED6000) and Dissertation (ED6015). He also supervises various doctoral students and undergraduate dissertation students, teaches on the EdD Professional Doctorate in Education programme and is external examiner for the Sociology of Education Umbrella Board at UCL IOE.
Andrew is a member of several editorial boards including Critical Studies in Education, Journal for Critical Education Policy Studies, British Journal of Sociology of Education, and Journal of Applied Social Theory. He also co-convenes the BERA Social Theory and Education special interest group (SIG) with Mark Murphy and is a member of several international research groups including the European Network on Neoliberal Education Policy (ENNEP), the International Centre for Public Pedagogy (ICPUP) and the Robert Owen Centre for Educational Change.
Andrew has been invited to peer review for 28 journals as well as published in various international peer-reviewed journals including Journal of Education Policy, Critical Social Policy, Critical Policy Studies, Discourse: Studies in the Cultural Politics of Education, and Journal of Educational Administration and History.
In addition to writing for various independent news commentary websites and blogs, namely Education Uncovered, The Conversation and Democratic Audit, Andrew engages in ‘public scholarship’ by way of external collaborations and partnerships with different stakeholders and charities. In recent years Andrew has worked with school governors, education advisers and training and support services to rethink and challenge dominant approaches to school governance. Andrew is a strong advocate of critical learning (learning through self-transformation) and public education (education for the commons).
