Professor Lorna Unwin

Lorna’s research interests lie in how people develop occupational expertise (of all types) and how it is afforded recognition, workplaces as learning environments, and the history of further education and training in the UK and its relationship with economic development. In 2018, she co-authored (with Professor Ruth Lupton) a report for the Greater Manchester Independent Prosperity Review, entitled ‘A New Approach to Education, Training and Skills in Greater Manchester: Building Capacity for Individual, Workplace and Civic Prosperity’. Since 1994, when she was a lead researcher in the national evaluation of the first Modern Apprenticeship programme, she has carried out many studies of apprenticeship training and workforce development practices in the UK and recently collaborated with colleagues at the University of Cologne on a comparative study of aerospace engineering apprentices in England and Germany. She continues to argue that the UK needs to pay much more attention to the variable capacity of its workplaces to both develop and utilise expertise rather than pursuing ‘one size fits all’ policies. Her most recent book is the Wiley Handbook of Vocational Education and Training (co-edited with Professor David Guile). Her book chapter (co-authored with Professor Alison Fuller), ‘Expanding skills and workplace capacity: a relational approach to industrial strategy’, will be published by Agenda Publishing in February 2021 in The Political Economy of Industrial Strategy in the UK, edited by Craig Berry, Julie Froud and Tom Baker. Lorna was awarded a Fellowship of the City and Guilds of London Institute in 2005 and an OBE in 2014, both for services to vocational education and training. She is a Fellow of the Academy of Social Sciences.

Lorna Unwin is Professor Emerita (Vocational Education) and and Honorary Professor in the ESRC-funded LLAKES Research Centre at the UCL Institute of Education, London. She is also Honorary Professorial Research Fellow at the School of Environment, Education and Development, University of Manchester, and a Governor of Oldham College. She has been a Governor of Niesr since 2009 and was a member of the Council of Management from 2015 to 2020. Her association with NIESR began in 2008 when she and Professor Andy Green invited Martin Weale and other colleagues to be partners in a bid to establish an ESRC-funded Research Centre.

Professor Lorna Unwin FAcSS

• Professor Emerita (Vocational Education) UCL Institute of Education, London
• Honorary Professor, ESRC-funded LLAKES Research Centre (www.llakes.ac.uk)
• Honorary Professorial Research Fellow, School of Environment, Education and Development, University of Manchester
• Trustee and Governor, now Honorary Fellow at National Institute of Economic and Social Research
• Governor, Oldham College

Unwin, L. (2022) “Sustainability of what and for whom?: unlocking the educational, democratic, and disruptive potential of VET.” Keynote Lecture for the 8th Austrian VET Research Conference in Klagenfurt, Austria.

Unwin, L. (2022) “(Re)valuing VET as a route to expertise in disruptive times”. Keynote Lecture for the 7th International Swiss VET Congress. Held online.

Keep, E., Unwin, L. and Randhawa, A. (2022) “Before Incorporation: A timeline of key initiatives and policies shaping Further Education in England prior to 1992.” Thematic Review Paper. London: Edge Foundation.

Fuller, A. and Unwin, L. (2021) “(RE)Searching for ‘quality’ in English Apprenticeship: reflections on the past, present and future of a vulnerable model of learning.” In: Dernbach-Stolz, S., Eigenmann, P., Kamm, C. and Kessler, S. (eds) Transformationen von arbeit, beruf und bildung in internationaler betrachtung. (pp. 257-276). Springer VS: Wiesbaden.

Fuller, A. and Unwin, L. (2021) “Expanding skills and workplace capacity: a relational approach to industrial strategy.” In: Berry, C., Froud, J. and Barker, T. (eds) The political economy of industrial strategy
in the UK. Agenda Publishing: Newcastle-upon-Tyne.

Book: The Wiley Handbook on Vocational Education and Training