Appointed 2025

Professor Penny Jane Burke is UNESCO Chair in Equity, Social Justice and Higher Education; Global Innovation Chair of Equity; and Director of the Centre of Excellence in Equity in Higher Education at the University of Newcastle, Australia. Her sustained commitment to mobilising higher education as a force for equity, social and gender justice has led to the co-development of new frameworks as described in her recent book Equity in Higher Education: Time for Social Justice Praxis.

She has held the positions of Global Chair of Social Innovation at University of Bath, Professor of Education at the University of Sussex and University of Roehampton and Reader at the Institute of Education, University of London. She is currently an associate of the Centre for Higher Education Transformations at the University of Bristol and co-editor of the Bloomsbury Gender and Education book series. She has published widely, including 11 books, 60 journal articles, 39 chapters, with over 75 invited speeches globally. Committed to research praxis for social justice transformation, Penny has acted as a policy advisor including as an expert member of the Australian government’s Equity in Higher Education Panel (2020-2021) and Equity Research & Innovation Panel (2018-2020).