Rate My Professor Paul Ashwin

Paul Ashwin is Professor of Higher Education in the Department of Educational Research at Lancaster University. He earned his PhD from University College London in 2000 and an MSc (Econ) in the philosophy of the social sciences from the London School of Economics in 1994, funded by a British Academy scholarship. Before joining Lancaster in 2004, where he later served as Head of the Department of Educational Research for three terms, he was a Research Fellow for four years at the Institute for the Advancement of University Learning, University of Oxford, researching students' experiences of learning. Prior to that, he spent seven years at Newham College of Further Education implementing and researching peer learning schemes.

Ashwin's research centers on the educational role of higher education institutions, exploring how curricula can transform students' understandings of themselves and the world, the impact of international, national, and local policies on educational quality, and ways to enhance teaching and learning for greater societal equality. He has led major projects including the ESRC-funded Understanding Knowledge Student Agency initiative on undergraduate experiences in Chemistry and Chemical Engineering in England, South Africa, and the US, as well as collaborations with the University of Cape Town through the Centre for Global Higher Education, where he was Deputy Director from 2020 to 2024. With over 120 publications, key works include Transforming University Education: A Manifesto (Bloomsbury, 2020), Reflective Teaching in Higher Education, second edition (Bloomsbury, 2020), Locating Social Justice in Higher Education Research (Bloomsbury, 2020), and Quality in Undergraduate Education: How Powerful Knowledge Disrupts Inequality (Bloomsbury, 2017). He is Joint Editor-in-Chief of the journal Higher Education, co-editor of Bloomsbury's series on student experiences of higher education and enhancing reflective teaching, a Fellow of the Society for Higher Education, and was elected to Academia Europaea in 2025. Ashwin has supervised 33 PhD students to completion and delivered keynote lectures at institutions worldwide.