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University of Glasgow

Glasgow, Scotland

For a location map and website link details, please see the University of Glasgow PASCAL member entry.

The base for the PASCAL Centre in Europe is the University of Glasgow (UoG) within its Centre for Research and Development in Adult and Lifelong Learning (CR&DALL) in its School of Education

The University of Glasgow

The University of Glasgow is a research-intensive institution established in 1451with a strong local commitment to its city, which suffers from some of the most significant social challenges with regard to health and well-being, and educational attainment in the UK. The university places a premium in shaping research and teaching to address these challenges thorough a strong place-based commitment and through a focus on community-engaged research.

This is reflected in a number of the inter-disciplinary research themes of the College of Social Sciences (Addressing Inequalities, Sustainable Development and Challenges in Changing Cities). These themes are also played out in the university's central Advanced Research Centre (ARC), housed in a new £137m building that concentrates inter-disciplinary research, and which through its Open Lab is creating a space for engagement with local communities, and which also houses a major research theme on Global Sustainable Development.

UoG School of Education

The School of Education at the University of Glasgow is committed to social justice in and through education, and to education research and practice of the highest quality. It aspires to be a world leader in addressing the contemporary educational issues of our times and to making a difference for society’s most vulnerable and educationally disadvantaged. The School over the past 5 years has been ranked on at least one occasion 1st in the UK on three league tables: the Times Good University Guide, the Complete University Guide and by the National Student Survey.    

The School of Education is organized through four research and teaching groups (RTGs) and centres and with staff allocated to these on the basis of their research interests. These are:  

• Culture, Literacies, Inclusion and Pedagogy

• Educational Leadership and Policy

• Pedagogy, Praxis and Faith

• People Place and Social Change

Highlighted themes of its research are: urban and place-based learning; adult learning and youth transitions; migration and refugee education; collaborative schooling for change; and ethics, religion and values in education. 

The RTGs host specialist research centres, networks and hubs, which attract members from across the School and beyond. The Centre for Research and Development in Adult and Lifelong Learning (CR&DALL), the Robert Owen Centre for Educational Change and the Centre for Computing Science Education promote high-quality, policy-relevant research within their thematic domains.  The school is also the locus for the work in education of centres and hubs funded by UK Research and Innovation (UKRI): Centre for Sustainable, Healthy and Learning Cities and Neighbourhoods (SHLC); Migration for Development and Equality (MIDEQ) (the South-South Migration, Inequality and Development Hub; and Urban Big Data Centre.   

Two key university-wide networks draw leadership from the School: the Glasgow Refugee, Asylum and Migration Network (GRAMNet) and Sustainable Futures in Africa.  The School also hosts two externally facing networks in addition to the European Centre of PASCAL: the St Andrew’s Foundation for Catholic Teacher Education and the University of Glasgow Educational Assessment Network (UGEAN)/International Educational Assessment Network (IEAN). It also hosts the UNESCO Chair Refugee Integration through Languages and the Arts. 

Directorate at UoG 

Centre Associates at UoG 

Associate Centres, Associate Directors 

Centre Director: Professor Michael Osborne

Michael Osborne is Professor of Adult and Lifelong Learning at the University of Glasgow, and Director of the Centre for Research and Development in Adult and Lifelong Learning within the School of Education. He is also the European Director of the PASCAL Observatory on Place Management, Social Capital and Lifelong Learning and one of the core members of the Lower to Middle Income Countries research group at the university. His main interests in research are: the role of education in international development, urban big data, universities’ engagement with communities, widening participation to higher education, teaching and learning in higher education, the VET/HE interface and the development of learning cities and regions. He is a Co-I within the ESRC funded Urban Big Data Centre within which he has worked on projects concerned with education, place and disadvantage, and on learning city metrics. He has been PI of the British Academy GCRF funded Strengthening Urban Engagement of Universities in Africa and Asia project. He is also Co-I within the UKRI GCRF funded Centre for Sustainable, Healthy Learning Cities and Neighbourhoods. 

He has worked closely with UNESCO’s Institute for Lifelong Learning (UIL) and its International Institute for Educational Planning (IIEP). With UIL he has been an adviser in the development of their Global Network of Learning Cities. He produced the main Briefing Paper for the 2019 4^th International Conference on Learning Cities in Medellin and has also produced one of the three Briefing Papers for its 5^th conference in Korea in 2021 on Education, Health and Resilience in cites post-COVID-19. With IIEP he is working within a project that considers how education and lifelong learning contributes to urban planning - the Cities and Education 2030: Local challenges, global imperatives programme.

 He is Co-Chair of the International Advisory Board of the Asia Pacific Learning Cities Alliance in the Republic of Korea.  He is a convenor of the Asia Europe Meeting Lifelong Learning (ASEM LLL) Hub’s research network on Lifelong Learning policies.

Deputy Director: Professor Catherine Lido 

Catherine Lido is Professor of Psychology and Adult Learning, in the School of Education at the University of Glasgow.  She is Associate Director at Urban Big Data Centre (UBDC) leading novel research in Educational Disadvantage and Place, with Professor Mike Osborne, which includes expertise in capturing lifewide learning with UNESCO's Learnings Cities metrics. She is a Co-I on UBDC Phase 2 and their data service extension grant, where she helped deliver, and promotes the use of, the integrated Multi-media City Data project open data source (iMCD) data accessible. She is the former Programme Leader for the MSc Psychological Studies, and teaches mainly face to face and online topics, including Psychology of Adult Learning and Cognitive Psychology at the Masters' level.

Catherine has published widely in the area of Learning Cities and Lifewide Learning capture. She has been in involved in many research projects in recent years, including in the area of novel methodologies to address education inequalities, including Co-I on the EPSRC-funded VisNET project and GCRF on Gendered Journeys. Completed projects include the British Council Impact Study and the Eat Well Age Well partnership project on food insecurity in older adults with Food Train.

Catherine delivers keynotes around the world, such as to the RSE-Ministry of Science and Technology on Big Data in Taiwan, to UNESCO-UIL expert panel on Learning Cities in Singapore and for the UNESCO Learning Cities conferences (Medellin and Mexico City). Catherine remains an active member of the British Psychological Society, sitting on the board of the Political Section), as well as the European Association of Social Psychologists, delivering a symposia on gendered inequalities.

Catherine maintains a regular media presence on BBC radio, TV and appeared on the June cover of The Psychologist Magazine on Big Data in the Big City 

Roberta Piazza, Associate Director Europe, University of Catania, Italy

Roberta Piazza holds a PhD in Education, and is full professor in Education at the University of Catania and Reader in Adult Education. She Associate Director of PASCAL Europe for the Meditteranean countries.

She is director of the University Research Centre on Community Engagement - CURE (Community University Research Engagement). She was vice-Rector for continuing education and lifelong learning (2017-2019) and she is member of the board of the Italian University Network on Continuing Education (RUIAP).

She has been associate director in Europe ofthe  PASCAL Observatory since 2014. She is also European network coordinator of the Research Network 4 "National Strategies for Lifelong Learning" of the ASEM Education and Research Hub for Lifelong Learning (ASEM LLL Hub),  and a member of the scientific committee of UNESCO Lucca Learning City.  

She has participated in several EU-funded projects on learning cities, lifelong learning, lifelong guidance, recognition of prior learning, apprenticeship and teacher training.

She has been appointed as quality assurance evaluator on a national level in Italy for undergraduate and post graduate programs by the National Agency of University Evaluation, and she is external expert for the European Commission's Horizon Europe programme. She was external examiner for the Postgraduate Diploma in Education (Professional and Vocational programme) (2018-2020, 2020-2022) of the Education University di Hong Kong.

She has been visiting professor at the University of Glasgow, Scotland; University of East China Normal University, China; Normal University of Manila, Philippines; University of Santander, Spain.

Balazs Nemeth, Associate Director Europe, University of Pecs, Hungary

Dr. habil Balázs Németh is a researcher on European adult and lifelong learning policy development and comparative adult education. He is an associate professor and reader in Adult Learning and Education at the University of Pécs and a founding member of the Hungarian Universities Lifelong Learning Network (MELLearN). His other research foci are: Politics and Adult Education; Comparative Adult Education; History of Modern European Adult Education and Learning City-Region Developments in association with the global network of learning cities programme (GNLC) of UNESCO Institute for Lifelong Learning.

Balázs Németh was a member of Steering Committee ofthe European Universities Continuing Education Network (EUCEN) from 2015 to 2019, being responsible for policy affairs and external presentations, and was its President until 2023. He is Associate Director of PASCAL International Observatory for Central-East Europe, President of MELLearN and the current president of the Adult Education Sub-Commission of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences. Also, he is member of Executive Boards of EAEA (European Association for the Education of Adults) and of PIMA (Promoting, Interrogating and Mobilising Adult Learning and Education). He is the Senior Advisor of the UNESCO Global Learning City Programme in Pécs, as joint project in between municipality, university and several stakeholders and CSOs. Dr. Németh is the member of the International Adult and Continuing Education Hall of Fame (2017-induction).

Dr. Németh has participated several European Erasmus, Grundtvig and recent Erasmus+ projects to deal with the professional development of adult education and provided surveys on adult learning and education in Central-East Europe for the European Commission on Quality in the Adult Learning Sector, Policy Developments in Adult Education. Currently, he is collaborating with EBSN (European Basic Skills Network) in the Professional Development Series for Basic Skills Teachers based on MOOCs.

Ilpo Laitinen, Associate Director Europe, City of Helsinki, Finland

The Focus of the European Centre

The European Centre of PASCAL contributes to all aspects of the observatory’s work, but takes a particular leadership role in relation to the themes of Learning Cities and Regions, and the engagement of universities with their communities, within which it has played a leading role in Europe and beyond for two decades. This has been made concrete within a number of projects within which PASCAL directors have been involved, some examples of which are shown below. It oversees PASCAL’s Learning Cities Networks.

Relevant Projects at the bases of the European Centre

• The University role in the Creation and Development of Learning and Creative Cities (2023-2024) - Leverhulme Visiting Professorship awarded to Professor Nematollah Azizi.
• Strengthening Urban Engagement of universities in Asia and Africa (2017-2019) – a completed project funded by British Academy with 6 partners in global south as part of Global Challenges Research Fund 
• Centre for Sustainable Healthy, Learning Cities and Neighborhoods (2017-2022) Large scale completed ESRC-funded centre (over £7m) with 7 developing country partners – part of Global Challenges Research Fund (GCRF)
• Urban Big Data Centre (2014 – ongoing) Large scale ESRC-funded centre (over €12m) within which there is a significant education component focusing on educational disadvantage and place, and learning cities.
• Pascal Universities Regional Engagement (PURE) (2008-2013) - a completed major international study in 4 continents, which has extended and developed previous work of the OECD on universities and regional engagement to a series of new regions, and develops PASCAL International themes through applied consultancy. Nineteen regions were involved in the first cohort from 2009 to 2011. The central purpose of PURE is to improve what happens in regions, continuing and sustaining good practices.
• DISCUSS - European Platform for Communities of Practice in Lifelong Learning (2013-2016) - a completed project funded within the EC's LLP KA4 programme. DISCUSS brings together stakeholders, experts and practitioners in lifelong learning in order to jointly find answers and identify solutions to the most urging issues and to improve the problem-solving capacities of local networks for lifelong learning.
• EUROlocal - European storehouse on the local and regional dimension of Lifelong Learning (2011-2013) – a completed project funded by the EC that established a storehouse of support material for learning cities and regions.
• Quality Framework for Learning Regions (R3L+) (2009 – 2011) - a completed project of the EC LLP Grundtwig programme that has developed a common set of quality methods and instruments to ensure the development, assurance and improvement of quality of learning networks in compliance with the Common Quality Assurance Framework.
• PASCAL European Network of Regions of LifeLong Learning (PENR3L) (2006-2008) – an EC- funded Grundtwig project to set up a sustainable network of learning regions in Europe. 
• Learning in Local and Regional Authorities (LILARA (Lilara) (2005-2007) is an EC-funded Grundtwig project concerned with the development and testing an online learning needs audit tool with local authority staff in selected councils across Europe.
• Audit Tools for Stakeholders within Learning Regions (Indicators project) (2002-2004) funded under the EC’s Network of Learning Regions (R3L) programme) that set up indicators related to the contribution of five types of stakeholder to learning region development.