Our Team / Centre of Excellence for Equity in Higher Education / Institutes and centres / Research / The University of Newcastle, Australia

Professor Penny Jane Burke

Director, Centre of Excellence for Equity in Higher Education and Global Innovation Chair of Equity

Professor Penny Jane Burke has pushed the boundaries of the field of equity, arguing for praxis-based approaches that work towards transforming educational spaces and imaginaries and bringing research, theory and practice together. Her personal experience of returning to study via an Access to Higher Education program has fuelled her deep commitment to generating research with impact, firmly located in social justice methodologies.

Professor Penny Jane Burke is UNESCO Chair in Equity, Social Justice and Higher Education, Global Innovation Chair of Equity and Director of the Centre of Excellence in Equity in Higher Education at the University of Newcastle, Australia. Dedicated to developing pedagogical methodologies that enable transformative equity and social justice, she has published widely in the field of equity, including her Routledge books Equity in Higher Education: Time for Praxis (Burke & Lumb, 2024), Changing Pedagogical Spaces in Higher Education(Burke, Crozier and Misiaszek, 2017), The Right to Higher Education: Beyond widening participation (Burke, 2012) and Reconceptualising Lifelong Learning(Burke and Jackson, 2007). Penny is co-editor of the Bloomsbury Gender and Education book series and Global Chair of Social Innovation at University of Bath. She has held the position of Executive Editor of Teaching in Higher Education (2010 – 2020), received the Higher Education Academy’s National Teaching Fellowship Award (2008) and was an expert member of the Australian government’s Equity in Higher Education Panel (2020-2021) and Equity Research & Innovation Panel (2018-2020). She has held the positions of Professor of Education at the University of Sussex and University of Roehampton and Reader at the Institute of Education, University of London.