John Holford is Robert Peers Professor of Adult Education and Director of the Centre for Research in Higher, Adult & Vocational Education. A Sociologist who has spent most of his career in adult education, his research has focussed chiefly on the role of lifelong education in the formation of citizens, communities and social movements. His main current research interests are in adult learning of citizenship, especially in Europe, and in the history of adult education and citizenship in Britain. His earlier work covered learning in trade unions and social movements, lifelong learning in South East Asia, the history of adult education in the British colonies, as well as historical sociology of labour.

His books include Patterns of Lifelong Learning: Policy & Practice in an Expanding Europe (with Sheila Riddell, Elisabet Weedon, Judith Litjens & Guy Hannan; LitVerlag, 2008), The Theory and Practice of Learning (with Peter Jarvis & Colin Griffin; 1998, 2nd edition, Routledge 2003), Union Education in Britain (Nottingham University 1994), and Reshaping Labour (Routledge 1988). His edited work includes International Perspectives on Lifelong Learning (with Peter Jarvis & Colin Griffin; Kogan Page 1998), and Citizenship, Democracy and Lifelong Learning, a special issue of the International Journal of Lifelong Education (2003) and (with Rachel Brooks) a special issue of Citizenship Studies on Citizenship, Learning and Education.

He is Editor of the International Journal of Lifelong Education (Routledge), and a member of the Editorial Boards of the Adult Education Quarterly (Sage/American Association for Adult and Continuing Education) and of the Canadian Journal for the Study of Adult Education.

He chairs the Universities' Association for Lifelong Learning (UALL) Research Committee, and is joint Convenor of the European Society (ESREA) for Network on Policy Studies in Adult Education (www.esrea.org/policy_studies?l=en).

He is an Honorary Professor at the University of Hong Kong (www.hku.hk/), a Governor of West Notts College, Mansfield (www.wnc.ac.uk/), and an Honorary Consultant to the Lee Chi Tat Memorial and Tsang Mui Millennium Schools, Hong Kong (http://www.lctms.edu.hk/).

Before taking up the Robert Peers Chair of Adult Education in 2007, he was successively Head of Law & Politics, Head of Department of Politics, and Head of the Department of Educational Studies at the University of Surrey. He also served on Surrey University's Council, Senate, and many other committees, and was Chair of its Academic Assembly (1999-2003). Before joining Surrey he worked at the University of Hong Kong's School of Professional and Continuing Education and for the Workers' Educational Association.

You can find more information about John Holford, and some of his publications, on his acaemia.edu profile: http://nottingham.academia.edu/JohnHolford/about