Critical governance and policy studies
My research explores the role of governance with a focus on schools and school trusts. A focal point of this research concerns how governance is organised to achieve specified objectives or outcomes, be it political, economic or environmental. Analytically and empirically, this means specifying the social and technical forms driving governance reforms. This includes describing how governance is mediated and assembled through structural or societal ambitions, from democracy and participation to compliance and computation.
Recent publications include:
Healey, K. & Wilkins, A.W. (2026). The post-politics turn: Using agonistic traditions to critique and transform school governance. Critical Studies in Education. [Under review]
Wilkins, A. (2023). Publics in education: Thinking with Gunter on plurality, democracy and local reasoning. In T. Fitzgerald & S.J. Courtney (eds), Critical education policy and leadership studies: The intellectual contributions of Helen M. Gunter. Springer: Cham, Switzerland, pp. 113-126.
Wilkins, A. & Gobby, B. (2022). Objects and subjects of risk: A governmentality approach to education governance. Globalisation, Societies and Education, 22(5), 915-928.
Comparative and global education
My research investigates how policy travels and is negotiated in different national and subnational contexts. This means paying close attention to the fragility of policy movement and transformation as specific configurations of power and interest. Central to these analyses is locating and describing the role of intermediating actors, networks and projects to policy diffusion and translation. A focus of this research concerns mapping policy mobility in comparative and global contexts to highlight transnational and national influences as well as the enduring role of local politics and projects.
Recent publications include:
Romualdo, V. & Wilkins, A.W. (2025). Rethinking educational federalism: Using assemblage theory to analyse policy travel and transformation in Argentina. Journal of Education Policy, iFirst.
Nicholson, P. & Wilkins, A.W. (2024). Intermediaries in local schooling landscapes: Partnership building and policy enactment during times of crisis. Journal of Education Policy, 40(1), 89–110.
Wilkins, A.W., Collet-Sabe, J., Esper, T., Gobby, B., & Grimaldi, E. (2024). Assembling New Public Management: Actors, networks and projects. In D.B. Edwards, A. Verger, K. Takayama & M. McKenzie (eds), Researching Global Education Policy: Diverse Approaches to Policy Movement. Policy Press: Bristol, pp. 253–278.
Critical histories and genealogies of education
My research traces critical histories and genealogies of educational change to describe the conditions and events for their emergence and transformation over time and space. Central to these analyses is a close reading of the strategic moves that provisionally secure different imaginings and materialities of educational change, from problem framings to the management of contradictions and failures. This invites a radical reading of educational change as open, contingent and assailable.
Recent publications include:
Wilkins, A.W., Olmedo, A., Gobby, B., & Karnovsky, S. (2025). The teacher wellbeing turn: Neuropolitics, education and the psy-complex. Critical Studies in Education, iFirst.
Tsang, K.K. & Wilkins, A.W. (2025). The politics of teacher wellbeing: ‘Sung baang’, neoliberalism and power struggles in Hong Kong. Globalisation, Societies and Education, iFirst.
Wilkins, A.W. & Mifsud, D. (2024). What is governance? Projects, objects and analytics in education. Journal of Education Policy, 39(3), 349–365.
Sociologies of digital education and AI
My research explores the role of digital and automated technology in education with a focus on Generative Artificial Intelligence (GenAI). A focus of this research are untested claims that GenAI reduces administrative workload or produces new forms of workload creep, time poverty and shifting productivity demands. These technological innovations to teaching and governance are analysed in the context of wider systemic changes and claims about labour theft, technocratic deskilling, algorithmic management, and accelerated privatisation.
Recent publications include:
Wilkins, A.W. (2027). Artificial intelligence as runaway privatization: Administrative liberation or technocratic deskilling and labour theft? In L. Cone, K. Brøgger & A. Giudici (eds), Afterstates: Paradoxes of Privatization in an Age of Geopolitical Unrest. Policy Press: London. [In development]