100 Years of Adult Education

Sharon Clancy is Assistant Professor in Educational Leadership and Management. 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 for 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.

Dr Jim Crowther has been involved as a practitioner, researcher and academic in adult and community education since 1980. His PhD focussed on adult learning in and through popular protests.  He is the co-ordinator of an international popular education network (PEN) for academics and researchers in higher education.

His main research interest is in the contribution of adult education to furthering democracy and social justice, which he has written about extensively in reference to popular education, adult literacy and the politics of lifelong learning, active citizenship and social inclusion. I have also undertaken research on the educational use of information and communication technologies, and social media, in struggles for environmental justice.

100 years after the 1919 Report on Adult education, speakers were brought together around the proud history of adult education in Scotland to make collective plans for a radical future.