Appointed 2025

Gerlese Åkerlind is Professor Emerita at the Australian National University, where she was previously Director of the Centre for Educational Development and Academic Methods.  She was also previously Director of the Teaching and Learning Centre at the University of Canberra, and a long-term honorary Research Associate of the Oxford Learning Institute at Oxford University, where she was previously a member.

Gerlese was also co-editor of the journal, Higher Education Research and Development (HERD), and a member of the Editorial Boards for the journals, Educational Research Review, Learning and Teaching in Higher Education, and the International Journal of Researcher Development.

Her research focuses on the nature of academic practice, including the ways in which academics experience teaching, research, supervision, academic freedom and their own professional development.  She has particular expertise in the phenomenographic research tradition, with numerous publications on phenomenographic theory and methods.  Her books include ‘Autonomy in Social Science Research: the View from United Kingdom and Australian Universities’ (co-edited with Carole Kayrooz and Malcolm Tight), ‘Becoming an Academic’ (co-edited with Lynn McAlpine) and most recently, ‘Phenomenography in the 21st Century: A Methodology for Investigating Human Experience of the World’.