Professor Richard Taylor - Professor of Continuing Education and Lifelong Learning and Director of the Institute of Continuing Education at the University of Cambridge

Richard Taylor is Professor of Continuing Education and Lifelong Learning and Director of the Institute of Continuing Education at the University of Cambridge. He was, from 1991 to 2004, Professor of Continuing Education at the University of Leeds, where he was head of the School and, from 1999 to 2003, Dean of the Faculty of Business, Law, Education and Social Sciences.

He has had a long involvement in community education and, with others at Leeds, developed the 'Pioneer Work' programmes with unwaged people and ethnic minority communities, etc. in West Yorkshire in the 1980s. He published, with Kevin Ward, a book about 'Pioneer Work' in 1986: Adult Education and the Working Class: Education for the Missing Millions. He has been secretary of the Universities Association for Continuing Education (UACE) and is currently chair of the National Institute of Adult Continuing Education (NIACE).

His research interests are in the policy, politics and historical context of adult education, lifelong learning and higher education both in the UK and worldwide. He is the author or co-author of 12 books, the most recent being (with David Watson) Lifelong Learning and the University: a post Dearing agenda; and (with Jean Barr and Tom Steele) For a Radical Higher Education: after Postmodernism, and numerous journal articles.

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