Professor Alison Fuller
Prior to joining the School of Education at Southampton, Alison Fuller held research and academic posts at the Universities of Lancaster and Leicester. She completed her doctoral research on changing patterns of adult take up of qualifications at the Institute of Education, University of London.
Alison is currently Professor of Education and Work, and Head of the Lifelong and Work-Related Learning Research Centre at the University of Southampton. She has been conducting funded research and consultancy in the fields of education – work transitions; vocational education, training and apprenticeship; patterns of adult participation in education, and workplace learning – since the mid 1980s and with the support of a variety of international, national and local funders including the ESRC, EU Leonardo programme, Equality and Human Rights Commission, the LSC, Hampshire and the Isle of Wight Lifelong Learning Network, and Southampton University Hospitals Trust. She has published widely and her most recent book, Improving Working as Learning, co-authored with Alan Felstead, Lorna Unwin and Nick Jewson, was published by Routledge in 2009. Alison is on the editorial boards of Journal of Education and Work, Education and Training and the Journal of Vocational Education and Training.
With colleagues from the Institute of Education, National Institute for Social and Economic Research and the University of Bristol, Alison has been awarded ESRC funding to develop the 'Centre for Learning and Life Chances in Knowledge Economies and Societies' (LLAKES) (2008-2013). Alison's project is part of Strand 2 of the Centre's research programme which is focusing on the role of education and training providers in enhancing life-chances in city regions.
The first research report from this study, 'Economic Regeneration, Social Cohesion, and the Welfare-to-Work Industry: Innovation, Opportunity and Compliance in the City-Region' from this study is now available.
Alison is a founding member (with Susan Halford, Pauline Leonard (School of Social Sciences) and Catherine Pope (School of Health Sciences), of the Work Futures Research Centre at the University of Southampton. The Centre has created a multi-disciplinary network of researchers from across the University and provides a forum for the development of research ideas and projects focusing on a diverse range of work, learning and employment-related issues.