Professor Jacky Lumby's main interests are in educational leadership and management, particularly focused on how some learners and staff may be excluded. This has led her to engage with issues of diversity, gender and power. She is concerned to explore how leaders can be supported to lead people, systems and processes which offer success to all learners and staff in the context of living a life they value. Her work encompasses a range of perspectives, including critical theory and comparative and international perspectives. She is interested in challenging the assumption of the appropriateness of Western-derived concepts, theories and suggested practice in different cultures and in an increasingly diverse UK culture. She has researched and published widely on the leadership and management of schools and colleges in the UK, Ireland, China, Hong Kong and South Africa.
Her most recent book (with Professor Fenwick English) explores the use of metaphors in the language of education and its links to the ways we think about and develop education. She has also published books on diversity and leadership (with Dr Marianne Coleman) and on 14-19 education (with Professor Nick Foskett).
Professor Lumby entered higher education after a long and varied involvement with education, having taught and led in secondary schools, adult and community and further education She also worked in a Training and Enterprise Council with responsibility for the development of managers in both business and education, managing a network which allowed the cross-fertilisation of skills and experience from education into business and vice versa.
She is co editor of two international handbooks on leader preparation and development.
Awards and Memberships
Research Advisory Panel - Leadership Foundation for Higher Education
Expert Group member - European Policy Network on School Leadership
Expert Group member - Diversity in HE Leadership, funded by the Leadership Foundation for Higher Education
Consultant - The Cyprus Council of Educational Evaluation Accreditation
