Sharon Clancy is Associate Professor in Education at the University of Nottingham. From 2016 to 2019 she was Senior Research Fellow in adult education/lifelong learning on the ENLIVEN project at the University of Nottingham. She completed her PhD in 2017, examining a historic adult residential college in its political and societal context. Her writing focuses on education, class and culture, alongside cognitive and social justice issues. A voluntary sector leader before entering academia, Sharon was CEO of Mansfield Council for Voluntary Services from 2000 to 2007. She is currently Chair of the Raymond Williams Foundation and a trustee of ARVAC (Association for Research in the Voluntary and Community sector). She was Head of Community Partnerships at the University of Nottingham (2007-13), acting as the university’s strategic lead on public and community engagement with research. She is also a commissioner for the Centenary Commission, Communications Officer for SCUTREA and Co-editor of the Studies in the Education of Adults journal.
Sharon Clancy convenes, with Iain Jones, the Research Circle on Fostering Democracy, Debate and Dialogue which emerged from the Centenary Commission on Adult Education. We have led a series of nine international events from 2021 to 2023 sharing research and practice in the areas of education inequality, social justice and global citizenship and attracting eminent speakers such as Professor Sir Michael Marmot.
Sharon is also a long-standing member of the Adult Education 100 Committee, the School of Education-led steering group set up to lead the work of the Centenary Commission in Adult Education. She won the Lord Dearing award in 2025 and also a Leverhulme Research Fellowship looking at ‘Lost Spaces and Untold Stories: the Vanishing World of Experimental Adult Education‘, which runs from October 2025 to end of September 2026.
Academic Work
Sharon’s writing focuses on adult education, class, culture and social justice issues and she has a particular focus on historical adult education through a historiographic lens. A list of publications can be found on this website. She has experience with lecturing in the following areas:
- Educational Leadership and Management
- Leading Learning
- Practice Based Enquiry
- Issues in Educational Leadership