Paul Ashwin

Registration Booking to attend the conference is now open! The delegate rate to attend the conference is £95 early bird (until 31st October), or £105 standard rate after that. Please use the following link to r…

Registration for #SocMedHE25 is now open! The early bird rate is £95, available until 31st October, before the standard rate of £105. We hope to see you in Lancaster! Start your registration here: socmedhe25.wordpress.com/2025/10/03/r...

Call for session proposals This year, we are delighted to host the 11th international Social Media for Learning in Higher Education conference at Lancaster University, co-chaired by Dr Katy Jordan and Dr Kathy Chandler. The …

This year, #socmedhe25 will be coming to Lancaster University, on 16th December! The call for papers/session proposals is now open at socmedhe25.wordpress.com/2025/07/16/c... - please submit abstracts by *24th October*
Hope you can join us - see you in December!

TEF changes could lead to ‘more university mergers or closures’ Warnings revised TEF rules could damage universities with a widening participation agenda and fail to weed out bad actors

TEF is “a completely inadequate measure of teaching excellence as it is, so the idea that [it] could now be used for some other purpose is seriously concerning”. Views from @tom-richmond.com @paulashwin.bsky.social et al www.timeshighereducation.com/news/tef-cha... via @julietterowsell.bsky.social

Back to the future for the TEF? Back to school for OfS? OfS is again flirting with the idea of linking tuition fees to TEF outcomes – a proposal that, as Paul Ashwin argues, is as unworkable now as it was a decade ago. OfS is again flirting with the idea o...

A @wonkhe.bsky.social blog on the OfS idea to link tuition fees to TEF results. It's unworkable as it was when it was first muted 10 years ago. It suggests that the OfS doesn't understand how the TEF works or the impact on the sector of making such ill-founded suggestions wonkhe.com/blogs/back-t...

Interesting start to the academic year (okay, actually day 2!) with a lecture from @paulashwin.bsky.social on the role of theories in educational research. Food for thought!

Fees for Scotland? Best not to This piece appeared in the Summer 2025 edition of the Royal Scottish Geographical Society’s “The Geographer”, and is replicated here with their kind permission. The spectre of fees for domestic stu…

I was asked by the editor of The Geographer, the @royalscotgeosoc.bsky.social magazine, to comment on the discussion around imposing domestic student fees in Scotland.

This is an online accessible version of my piece.
ddubdrahcir.wordpress.com/2025/09/03/f...
#academicsky #studentfees #highered

🚨Vital conversations about violence against women are being hijacked by an anti-migrant agenda.

We've joined 200 organisations to urge the Government to address this dangerous weaponisation of VAWG.

Read more: mirror.co.uk/news/politic...

Rights of Women 50th anniversary logo

This International Women's Day, Rights of Women is celebrating its 50th anniversary

Find out more about how we are reflecting on progress to #AccelerateAction since 1975 and how you can join our ongoing work to increase women's access to justice

www.rightsofwomen.org.uk/about-us/rig...

#IWD2025

Life Beyond the Long Grass – Where HE is Heading We’ve arrived in the long grass. (Description, a view of heathland and long grass with mountains in the distance.) I’ve not blogged in ages, I’ve not had the head space for a whil…

I've written a blog on the entirely expected (and predicted) crisis that (UK) HE is in and where it's going, with three broad predictions:
- Increasing Elitism
- Soaring Precarity
- Poorer Student Experiences

Do you agree? What have I missed?
#academicsky
ddubdrahcir.wordpress.com/2025/08/27/l...

Opening of the Academic Year 2025 2026 You are cordially invited to the Opening of the Academic Year 2025-2026 on Monday, 1 September in the UvA's Aula.

I am delighted and honoured to be giving a speech at the Opening of the Academic Year at the University of Amsterdam on 1st September about 'What is special about a university education?'
student.uva.nl/en/events/20...

Thanks Richard, so glad you managed to find such a flattering angle for my chins.

Charles Clarke and Paul Ashwin stitting at a table, talking towards a room of people.

Fascinating insights on connecting policy and research with @paulashwin.bsky.social and Charles Clarke as part of our @edreslancaster.bsky.social summer school.

Researchers must be clear and concise, representing their bodies of knowledge, providing concrete steps that policy makers can take.

Jayne Osgood talking to a room of people in rows.

Hugely insightful walk behind the curtain of the review and journal editing process from @profjayneosgood.bsky.social as part of our @edreslancaster.bsky.social Summer School. Particularly taken with the explicit approach of a feminist ethic of care in writing reviews - no room for Reviewer 2!!!

Delighted this open access article with Laura Cordes Felby is now out.

@brettbligh.bsky.social, the Programme Director, will be hosting a webinar re our mainly online, part-time PhD in TEL between 5pm-6pm on 29/7 via Zoom.

If you'd like to take this opportunity to find out more about our programme, please register to join, the link is below.

If you're interested in studying a fully online, part-time PhD in Higher Education, why don't you join me next Tuesday morning (UK time) for a chat? 👇 👇 👇 👇 👇

Thanks Liz, I enjoyed reading it.

Pecking away at UK universities Is there a problem of relevance in UK universities? Liz Morrish considers the idea that acquiring a body of knowledge is redundant in the age of AI. Maybe universities should just concentrate on te…

I agree with you about content-less HE, so here's my response to Peck et al's HEPI paper. @paulashwin.bsky.social
academicirregularities.wordpress.com/2025/06/22/p...

Photo of the Chinese translation of the book

Excited to have received copies of the Chinese translation of ‘Transforming University Education: A Manifesto’

How should higher education respond to calls to be relevant? - HEPI Higher education’s true value lies not in skills or facts, but in transformative access to structured bodies of knowledge.

New @hepi-news.bsky.social blog on how higher education should respond to calls to be relevant: www.hepi.ac.uk/2025/06/16/h...

Many congratulations to James Chircop who successfully defended his thesis on 29/4. He completed a #PhDinHEREE and was supervised by @janmcarthur.bsky.social. Many thanks to the Examiners @paulashwin.bsky.social and @profmattoleary.bsky.social‬. @centreforhere.bsky.social

If your interested in studying for a part-time, fully online, PhD in Higher Education, then why don't you join me to find out more about our Doctoral Programme in Higher Education Research, Evaluation and Enhancement? 👇👇👇👇👇

@brettbligh.bsky.social, the Programme Director, will be hosting a webinar re our mainly online, part-time PhD in TEL between 9am-10am on 23/6 via Zoom.

If you'd like to take this opportunity to find out more about our programme, please register to join, the link is below.

Our final online #EdResSeminar of this academic year will take place at 12.30pm(BST) on 11/6, and will be presented by Funda Karapehlivan. Her seminar is entitled "Academic Resistance and Solidarity: Imagining Alternative Futures for Higher Education in Turkey". www.lancaster.ac.uk/educational-...

That’s kind Danielle.

Enjoying greatly and being inspired by the University of Warwick’s Education conference. Also it was a plus not having the travel to Lancaster to listen and be inspired by
@paulashwin.bsky.social

'If we're going to realise our educational vision - we need to understand why the knowledge we create and teach is powerful and how it changes our students and their understanding of the world.'

Paraphrasing @paulashwin.bsky.social 's inspirational conclusions there!

This week: online @edreslancaster.bsky.social seminar on Wednesday (4th of June) at 12:30.

M. Oluwatobiloba Odetoyinbo will be talking about academic motherhood and career trajectories in Nigeria.
#academicsky #highered

All are welcome. Details/registration at: www.lancaster.ac.uk/educational-...

Students’ changing accounts of chemical engineering: a longitudinal study in three countries In this article we examine how students’ accounts of chemical engineering change during their undergraduate degrees and whether these changes were related to the educational intentions of their deg...

Delighted that this Open Access article, with Ashish Agrawal, Mags Blackie, @janmcarthur.bsky.social, Nicole Pitterson and Renee Smit, on students' accounts of chemical engineering is now out. It's from our @cghe.bsky.social project. www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10....

Professor Paul Ashwin elected as a member of Academia Europaea - Lancaster University Paul, a Professor of Higher Education in Lancaster’s Department of Educational Research, has been elected into the Academy’s Governance, Institutions and Policies section.

I am honoured to have been elected as a member of Academia Europaea

www.lancaster.ac.uk/educational-...