Rate My Professor Jane Burke

Professor Penny Jane Burke serves as Director of the Centre of Excellence for Equity in Higher Education, Global Innovation Chair of Equity, and UNESCO Chair in Equity, Social Justice and Higher Education at the University of Newcastle, Australia. She earned her PhD from the University of London in 2001 on student equity, supported by an ESRC studentship, along with a Master of Education from the University of London, a Bachelor of Arts (Honours) from Middlesex University, and a Bachelor of Education from the College of North East London. Her career includes previous roles as Professor of Education at the University of Sussex, where she led the Education submission for the Research Excellence Framework, Professor of Education and Director of the Centre for Educational Research, Equalities, Policy and Pedagogy at the University of Roehampton, and Reader in Education at the Institute of Education, University of London, where she chaired the Widening Participation Committee. Burke's research specializations encompass sociological investigations into equity in higher education, the experiences of marginalized groups, structures and relations of inequality, educational exclusion, gender-based violence, social justice frameworks, transformative equity, and whole-of-institution approaches. She has generated over $3,500,000 in research funding, supervised 16 PhD completions, and received the UK Higher Education Academy National Teaching Fellowship in 2008.

Key publications by Burke include Equity in Higher Education: Time for Social Justice Praxis (with Matt Lumb, Routledge, 2024), The Right to Higher Education: Beyond Widening Participation (2012), Accessing Education: Effectively Widening Participation (Trentham Books, 2002), Changing Pedagogical Spaces in Higher Education: Diversities, Inequalities and Misrecognition (with Crozier G and Misiaszek L, Routledge, 2017), and Evaluating Equity and Widening Participation in Higher Education (with Hayton A and Stevenson J, 2018). She leads impactful programs such as the Relational Navigator for students facing disadvantage, including refugees and gender-based violence survivors, and coordinates pathways into the Joint Medical Program. Burke has delivered keynotes including 'Mobilising higher education as a force for gender equality and social justice' at the Global Sustainable Development Congress (2024) and contributed to federal reports like the International Literature Review of Equity in Higher Education (2023). She served as an expert on the Australian Federal Government Equity in Higher Education Panel (2018-2022), is Executive Editor of Teaching in Higher Education, and co-editor of the Bloomsbury Gender and Education book series, fostering global collaborations with institutions in Ghana, the UK, South Africa, and beyond.