Keynote speakers confirmed for Widening Participation Conference 2012

Professor Sir David Watson and Professor Louise Morley have been confirmed as keynote speakers at the OU's Widening Participation Conference 2012, to be held on 24 and 25 April 2012. The conference which will examine and debate scholarly issues associated with inclusion and the commoditisation of higher education. It will map international perspectives of educational inclusion, report on important research findings, and develop new collaboration and joint working for the future.

Professor Watson, who is currently Principal of Green Templeton College Oxford and Visiting Professor of Higher Education at the Institute of Education, University of London, is an influential and prolific author and commentator. He has recently completed the large scale and important work with Tom Schuller Learning Through Life: Inquiry into the Future for Lifelong Learning and published The Question of Morale: managing happiness and unhappiness in university life.

Professor Morley is a Professor of Education and Director of the Centre for Higher Education and Equity Research (CHEER) at the University of Sussex, and has an international profile in the field of sociology of higher education, having given presentations and undertaken research in countries across the globe. She has recently completed an ESRC/DFID funded research project on Widening Participation in Higher Education in Ghana and Tanzania, and is currently working on the knowledge transfer of this project.