John Holmwood, The University of Nottingham
Neo-Liberalism and the Public University

6.30pm-8pm, Tuesday 21 January

The Old Courtroom, 118 Church Street, Brighton, BN1 1UD 



Abstract:
This talk will address neo-liberalism as a theory of knowledge as well as a theory of public policy. The relationship between the two is developed in the context of government reforms to higher education in England which associate education with a private investment in human capital and displace any wider public interests. It will be argued that what is also displaced is the relation of the University to democracy and the relation of education to social rights of citizenship.

Speaker:
John Holmwood joined the School of Sociology and Social Policy of Nottingham University as Professor in Sociology in October 2009 from the University of Birmingham where he was Professor of Sociology and Head of Department. John was an undergraduate in Social and Political Sciences at the University of Cambridge and was a Teaching Assistant in the Department of Sociology at the University of California, Los Angeles, before returning to study for a PhD at the University of Cambridge. His first post was in the newly-formed Department of Sociology at the University of Tasmania in Australia (1978-80), before joining the Department of Sociology at the University of Edinburgh where he was Director of the Graduate School in Social Sciences and Professor of Sociological Theory. In January 2000 he joined the University of Sussex where he was Professor of Sociology and Dean of the School of Social Sciences and Cultural Studies. John is President of the British Sociological Association and a fellow of the Academy of Social Sciences. John is a co-founder of the Campaign for the Public University. He is editor of A Manifesto for the Public University (Bloomsbury 2011) and blogs regularly on higher education issues for the Campaign for the Public University, Research Blogs, Open Democracy, Sociology and the Cuts, and Universities in Crisis.