School of Education

Critical Policy Studies in Education Group

The Critical Policy Studies in Education Group is an emerging collective of policy-oriented scholars within the University of Glasgow’s School of Education; it seeks to advance theoretical and empirical contributions to the field, and to forge and enhance connections with scholars within the UK and beyond.

The group is united by a core interest in the critical study of education policy – including how education systems re/produce inequality; emergent trends in policy (e.g. datafication, AI); critical consideration of the framing and effects of education ‘reform’; implications for public education and democracy; as well as critical stances towards the onto-epistemological, methodological and ethical positions deployed in policy research.

Our research is strongly interdisciplinary, drawing on sociology, political science, philosophy, public administration and cognate fields of enquiry. We draw on a wide range of concepts and intellectual fields, such as socio-materialism, practice theory, international development, Frankfurt school, cultural political economy, and actor network theory, with a strong emphasis on applying such theories to forms of educational practice.

Our recently published work includes a focus on topics such as international student mobility, the role of the European Union, juridification and education, widening participation, schooling, and teacher’s work.

The group is convened by Mark Murphy, Stephen Parker, and Tore Bernt Sørensen.

Current members:

Recent Events

Beyond Impact Agendas: Critical perspectives on policy engagement and academic work.

Beyond Impact Agendas: Critical perspectives on policy engagement and academic work.

3rd February 2026

This online event extended discussions held at the Critical Policy Studies in Education group’s inaugural event in July 2025. Critical Policy Scholarship and Policy Engagement: Bridging the Gap. That event addressed the sometimes fraught relationship between academic policy research and (government) policy making, exploring the affordances and limitations of policy engagement by critical scholars.

This session brought together Gemma Moss from UCL and Dr Ono Olmedo from the University of Gibraltar.

Gemma Moss is a Professor of Literacy at University College London. Gemma has a longstanding interest in the interactions between research, policy and practice. She is the Director of the ESRC Education Research Programme 2021-2026, which is committed to asking new questions about how research, policy and practice can come together to empower educators and create meaningful change.

Dr Olmedo, co-editor of the Journal of Education Policy, brings a more Foucauldian-inspired stance to think through academic work and engagement with policy makers.

Back to the Future – Academic freedom of sociology students and academics under an illiberal regime

Back to the Future – Academic freedom of sociology students and academics under an illiberal regime

12th February 2026

Rita Hordósy – University of Nottingham (in collaboration with Gergely Kováts – Corvinus University of Budapest)

Abstract:

Academic freedom is central to knowledge production, allowing scholars to pursue critical inquiry without fear of retaliation. In hybrid or illiberal political regimes that combine elements of democratic procedure with significant autocratic practices, academic freedom faces distinct challenges. Since 2010, Hungary’s higher education system has undergone sweeping reforms, including centralisation and erosion of institutional autonomy. This talk examines how sociology students and academics perceive and navigate these academic freedom infringements. Drawing on 38 semi-structured interviews with students (n=17) and academics (n=21), we use a novel conceptual framework to argue that disciplinary characteristics shape the forms, intensity, and visibility of restrictions. These include deteriorating funding and employment conditions, neoliberal managerial reforms, direct curricular interventions (e.g., banning gender studies), creation of parallel institutions, and growing constraints on public engagement. We document responses noting the operation of chilling effects and self-censorship to subtle and overt resistance. Given global trends of autocratisation and large-scale assaults on academic freedom and university self-governance, these findings extend beyond Hungarian sociology.

Bio:

Rita Hordósy is an Associate Professor in Education at the University of Nottingham. Her research interests revolve around social justice issues in education and post-compulsory education trajectories, with her current work focusing on the research / teaching nexus compared across European universities.

Bringing Ideology Back into Education Policy Studies

Bringing Ideology Back into Education Policy Studies

27th November 2025

Tuomas Tervasmäki, Tampere University, Finland

The Leading Edge: How competition catalyzed innovation and set the stage for the collapse of American higher education

The Leading Edge: How competition catalyzed innovation and set the stage for the collapse of American higher education

24th October 2025

Joshua Travis Brown, Johns Hopkins University and the University of Oxford

Critical Policy Studies Group Inaugural Event: Critical Policy Scholarship and Policy Engagement: Bridging the Gap.

Critical Policy Studies Group Inaugural Event: Critical Policy Scholarship and Policy Engagement: Bridging the Gap.

Speakers:

Richard Watermeyer (Centre for Higher Education Transformations, University of Bristol) Pivotal or picayune: Counting the contribution and cost of academics’ policy engagement

Glenn Savage (University of Melbourne). Critical Pragmatism and the Design of ‘Problem-Solving Publics’

Research and Engagement

Selected Publications

Selected Publications:

Bravo, P., Valiente, O., Hurrell, S., & Capsada-Munsech, Q. (2024). Private-led policy transfer: the adoption of sector skills councils in Chile. Compare: A Journal of Comparative and International Education, 54(6): 896-913. (doi: https://doi.org/10.1080/03057925.2022.2133535).

Bergh, A., Murphy, M., & Nylund, M. (2025). The rise of law in education – exploring three drivers of juridification in the context of a changing welfare state. Journal of Education Policy, 40(6), 1062–1080. (doi: 10.1080/02680939.2025.2517683)

Greany, T., Cowhitt, T., Noyes, A., Gripton, C., & Hudson, G. (2025). Local learning landscapes: conceptualising place-based professional learning by teachers and schools in decentralised education systems. Journal of Educational Change, 26(1), 1–28. (doi:10.1007/s10833-024-09508-x)  

Dumay, X., Sorensen, T.B. & Paine, L. (Eds.) (2024). World Yearbook of Education 2025: The Teaching Profession in a Globalizing World: Governance, Career, Learning. Routledge. (doi: 10.4324/9781003441731)

Fontdevila, C., Zancajo, A., & Verger, A. (2024). Catholic schools in the marketplace: changing and enduring religious identities. Peabody Journal of Education, 99(4): 464-481. (doi: 10.1080/0161956X.2024.2381393)

Lee, J.T., Lo, W.Y.W., & Abdrasheva, D. (2021). Institutional logic meets global imagining: Kazakhstan’s engagement with China’s Belt and Road Initiative. Higher Education, 82(2): 237-253. (doi: 10.1007/s10734-020-00634-y)

Mulvey, B. (2025). Securitising the university: lessons from China in the Xi Jinping era. Critical Studies in Education. (doi: 10.1080/17508487.2025.2547596)

Mulvey, B. (2023). Mapping International Student Mobility Between Africa and China. Springer. (doi: 10.1007/978-981-99-8509-8)

Murphy, M. (2025). The contradictions of legitimation strategies and the welfaring of education. Cambridge Journal of Education, 55(2), 189–204. (doi: 10.1080/0305764X.2025.2480571)

Nesterova, Y. (2024). Colonial legacies and the barriers to educational justice for Indigenous peoples in Taiwan. Comparative Education, 60(2): 315-333. (doi: 10.1080/03050068.2023.2185355)

Nicholson, P.M., & Wilkins, A.W. (2024). Intermediaries in local schooling landscapes: policy enactment and partnership building during times of crisis Journal of Education Policy, 40(1), 89–110. (doi: 10.1080/02680939.2024.2346140)

Parker, S., & Knight, E. (2025). Problematizing the use of interview data in research for educational policy and practice: beyond incorrigibility and ideology. In: D. Wyse, V. Baumfield, N. Mockler, Nicole & R.M. Reardon, R. (Eds.), The BERA SAGE Handbook of Research Informed Education Practice and Policy (pp. 361-380). SAGE.

Parker, S., Gulson, K.N., & Gale, T. (Eds.), (2017). Policy and Inequality in Education. Springer. (doi: 10.1007/978-981-10-4039-9)

Proudfoot, K. (2025). Mētis: a framework for understanding tactics of resistance. Journal of Education Policy, 40(1): 1-18. (doi: 10.1080/02680939.2024.2394972)

Sorensen, T.B., & Dumay, X. (2024). The European Union’s governance of teachers and the evolution of a bridging issue field since the mid-2000s. European Educational Research Journal, 23(2): 237-260. (doi: 10.1177/14749041241234695)

Spicksley, K. (2022). Hard work / workload: discursive constructions of teacher work in policy and practice. Teachers and Teaching, 28(5), 517–532. (doi: 10.1080/13540602.2022.2062741)

Unsworth, R. (2024). A new mode of control: an actor–network theory account of effects of power and agency in establishing education policy. Journal of Educational Administration and History, 56(1), 54–68. (doi: 10.1080/00220620.2023.2258827)

Vanderhoven, E. (2023). Unpacking the global apprenticeship agenda: a comparative synthesis of literature from international organisations in the education policy field. Globalisation, Societies and Education, (doi: 10.1080/14767724.2023.2252358)

Member Affiliations

Member Affiliations:

Mark Murphy:

 

Stephen Parker:

 

Tore Bernt Sørensen:

 

Ben Mulvey:

 

Phil Nicholson:

 

Kathryn Spicksley:

 

Kevin Proudfoot:

 

Oscar Valiente

 

Ruth Unsworth:

 

Ellen Vanderhoven: