Tom Schuller

Tom Schuller is director of an independent Inquiry into the Future for Lifelong Learning, sponsored by the National Institute of Adult and Continuing Education. From 2003-2008 he was Head of the Centre for Educational Research and Innovation (CERI), OECD, Paris. Formerly Dean of the Faculty of Continuing Education and Professor of Lifelong Learning at Birkbeck, University of London from 1999 to 2003, he was also co-director of the Centre for Research on the Wider Benefits of Learning.

Previous positions were at the Universities of Edinburgh, Glasgow and Warwick, at the Institute for Community Studies in London, and for four years at OECD in the 1970s. Tom is the author or editor of some 15 books, and his research history covers many areas of lifelong learning, but also fields such as employee participation, social capital and the social study of time. He has been an adviser to governments on numerous issues, especially on lifelong learning.

Major publications

  • Understanding the Social Outcomes of Learning (with Richard Desjardins, OECD 2007)
  • Evidence in Education: Linking Research and Policy (edited, with Tracey Burns, OECD 2007)
  • The Benefits of Learning: The Impact of Education on Health, Family Life and Social Capital (with John Preston et al, RoutledgeFalmer 2004)
  • International Perspectives on Lifelong Learning (edited with David Istance and Hans Schuetze, Open University Press 2002).
  • Social Capital: Critical Perspectives (edited with Stephen Baron and John Field, OUP 2000) Part-time Higher Education in Scotland (with David Raffe and others, Jessica Kingsley 1998)
  • Life After Work (with Michael Young, HarperCollins 1991).