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Speaker Biographies

Speaker biographies (in alphabetical order):

Professor Chris Duke

is Secretary-General of the third sector and virtual-community Pascal International Observatory. He was recently Director of Community and Regional Partnerships for RMIT University Melbourne and for Higher Education of NIACE in the UK, also Deputy Chair of the Council of the Tavistock Institute. He is currently visiting professor at RMIT and honorary professor at Leicester and Stirling. He has worked in and professed continuing education and lifelong learning in five universities in the UK, Australia and New Zealand, and was President of the subsequently amalgamated University of Western Sydney Nepean. He has undertaken assignments and provided leadership since the 1970s for international governmental and nongovernmental bodies involved in lifelong learning, including ASPBAE, the EU, ICAE, OECD and UNESCO, mainly on issues of participatory empowerment and the reduction of poverty by means of non-formal education for development, recurrent education and lifelong learning.

Professor David McKitterick

is Wren Librarian and Fellow of Trinity College, Cambridge, and a Fellow of the British Academy. He is author of the three volume History of Cambridge University Press, a definitive history of the oldest press in the world from its origins in a royal charter of Henry VIII to provide for printers who would be able to work outside London and serve the University, to its present international organisation with authors and customers across the world. His Print, Manuscript and the Search for Order, 1450-1830, 2003 re-examined fundamental aspects of the 'printing revolution' of the early modern period, re-evaluating modern myths and misconceptions surrounding the emergence of print and invites readers to work forward from the past, rather than backwards into it.

Professor Rosemary O'Day

holds a personal chair in the Department of History at the Open University. She is also Director of the Charles Booth Centre. She taught previously at Birmingham University. Within history her interests range from social and religious history in early modern Britain, Europe and the USA to late nineteenth-century British social and urban history. Her publications include: Retrieved Riches: The History of Social Investigation in Britain, 1995 [co-authored with Dr. David Englander], The Family and Family Relationships in England, France and the USA, 1995, The Professions in Early Modern England: Servants of the Commonweal, 2000, Women's Agency in Early Modern Britain and the American Colonies (Longman) 2007 and Cassandra Brydges (1670-1735) First Duchess of Chandos (Boydell and Brewer) 2007.

Dr. Sandra Raban

is Emeritus Fellow of Trinity Hall, and historian of medieval English administration and land tenure. She was for many years a Syndic for the University of Cambridge Local Examinations Syndicate, now Cambridge Assessment, and is editor of the volume Examining the World: A History of the University of Cambridge Local Examinations Syndicate, 2008. Examinations are deeply embedded in our culture and the University of Cambridge Local Examinations Syndicate, established in 1858, was at the forefront of introducing public examinations for schools with the aim of raising standards in education. From its base as a department of the University, the organisation has proved outstandingly adaptable in the face of the immense changes that have taken place in examining in the UK and the wider world during the past century and a half.

Sir David Watson

is Professor of Higher Education Management, at the University of London Institute of Education. His interests include Higher education and civic engagement. A major research study has been a cross-national study of higher education and civic engagement, which includes empirical studies based in the UK, USA, Australia and South Africa, as well as an historical and theoretical review of the issues. His recent book Managing Civic and Community Engagement (McGraw-Hill and Open University Press 2007) offers an historical survey of the 'founding' intentions of universities and colleges in different eras and various countries followed by case studies of successful recent projects, and argues that genuine engagement, with the community and with civil society, plays an essential role in managing today's higher education institutions.