Professor Richard Hall

Job: Professor of Education and Technology

Faculty: Health and Life Sciences

School/department: School of Applied Social Sciences

Research group(s): Centre for Urban Research on Austerity, Centre for Computing and Social Responsibility

Address: De Montfort University, The Gateway, Leicester, LE1 9BH, United Kingdom

T: +44 (0)116 207 8254

E: rhall1@dmu.ac.uk

W: http://richard-hall.org

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Personal profile

Richard Hall is Professor of Education and Technology, based in the Division of Education in the School of Applied Social Sciences. Richard contributes to teaching on evidence-based education and educational leadership, as well as supervising Masters and PhD students. His research focuses on higher education policy and pedagogy, co-operative and alternative forms of higher education, academic labour and alienation, and neoliberalism and education.

Richard is an HEA National Teaching Fellow, awarded in 2009, and a fellow of the HEA.

Richard is Director of the Institute for Research in Criminology, Community, Education and Social Justice. He is also a member of the Centre for Urban Research on Austerity and a Research Associate in the Centre for Computing and Social Responsibility at DMU.

Richard is the editor for Palgrave Macmillan’s Marxism and Education series, and also for DMU’s re-launched education and pedagogic research Journal, Gateway Papers.

Richard has been involved in a range of voluntary, educational activities, including the Social Science Centre in Lincoln, and Leicester Vaughan College. He is a trustee of the Open Library of Humanities, a member of the Management Committee of the Leicester Primary Pupil Referral Unit, and an independent visitor for a looked-after child.

Richard holds PRINCE2 and Managing Successful Programmes Practitioner status. He has worked extensively on research projects and with MA/PhD research students.

Research group affiliations

Institute for Research in Criminology, Education and Social Justice
Centre for Urban Research on Austerity
Centre for Computing and Social Responsibility

Publications and outputs

Scoping a Muslim friendly Universities audit: DMU Interim Report
dc.title: Scoping a Muslim friendly Universities audit: DMU Interim Report dc.contributor.author: Hall, Richard; Ansley, Lucy; Loonat, Sumeya; Nemouchi, Lamia dc.description.abstract: The De Montfort University (DMU), Muslim-Friendly Universities audit focuses upon the student experience of British Muslim, first-year undergraduate students. It situates this experience against those students’ conceptions of their faith, and also in relation to ethnicity, gender and disability. The primary intention is to understand how these students experience their Muslimness in HE. A secondary intention is that this research will materially impact the ways in which universities can recognise intersectional and faith-based complexities in the undergraduate student experience. We intend to understand these experiences, in order to define a co-created action plan to ensure that HE is as inclusive for British Muslim students as their non-Muslim/religious peers. Our starting point for this is through partnerships with students, facilitated with support, advice and guidance from the Aziz Foundation. dc.description: This project is a partnership between De Montfort University and The Aziz Foundation, as part of the latter's Muslim-Friendly Universities Programme.
Disciplinary guide: Decolonial Studies
dc.title: Disciplinary guide: Decolonial Studies dc.contributor.author: Loonat, Sumeya; Hall, Richard dc.description.abstract: n/a dc.description: Research with international students is an interdisciplinary field and there are a wide range of research disciplines which can add to our thinking about this subject. This series brings together global experts to present different research disciplines and their application to this research topic with the aim of encouraging more interdisciplinary thinking. This guide focuses upon the experiences of international students and applying a decolonial lens.
Decolonising DMU Progress Report: March 2024
dc.title: Decolonising DMU Progress Report: March 2024 dc.contributor.author: Ansley, Lucy; Hall, Richard dc.description: This report serves as an update on the work of the Decolonising DMU project. Building on the Decolonising DMU: Interim Report (Hall et al., 2022), it details the project’s change in emphasis, from work streams to themed commitments. The decision to restructure the project's work came about as part of its transition to business as usual inside the University. As the funded element of the project closed, it was important to map the institution’s Race Equality Charter (REC) action plan across our decolonising work, whilst also considering the new institutional strategy “The Empowering University”. Here we present the focus of our work over the last 22 months, organized under four commitments. • Equity in Education and Research • Progression, Talent and Representation • Governance and Accountability • Raising Awareness, Changing Culture and Behaviour
Generative AI and re-weaving a pedagogical horizon of social possibility
dc.title: Generative AI and re-weaving a pedagogical horizon of social possibility dc.contributor.author: Hall, Richard dc.description.abstract: This article situates the potential for intellectual work to be renewed through an enriched engagement with the relationship between indigenous protocols and artificial intelligence (AI). It situates this through a dialectical storytelling of the contradictions that emerge from the relationships between humans and capitalist technologies, played out within higher education. It argues that these have ramifications for our conceptions of AI, and its ways of knowing, doing and being within wider ecosystems. In thinking about how technology reinforces social production inside capitalist institutions like universities, the article seeks to refocus our storytelling around mass intellectuality and generative possibilities for transcending alienating social relations. In so doing, the focus shifts to the potential for weaving new protocols, from existing material and historical experiences of technology, which unfold structurally, culturally and practically within communities. At the heart of this lies the question, what does it mean to live? In a world described against polycrisis, is it possible to tell new social science fictions, as departures towards a new mode of higher learning and intellectual work that seeks to negate, abolish and transcend the world as-is? dc.description: open access article
Beyond the Limits of Solidarity in the Post-Pandemic University
dc.title: Beyond the Limits of Solidarity in the Post-Pandemic University dc.contributor.author: Hall, Richard dc.description.abstract: This article challenges a liberal analysis of HE inside an integrated system of economic production, and instead critiques: first, how UK policymakers sought to re-engineer English HE during and after the pandemic, through governance, regulation and funding changes predicated upon accelerating a discourse of value-for-money; second, the institutional labour reorganisation look followed, and which placed complete class fractions of academic labour in a permanent state of being at-risk; and third, how in continually demonstrating that it cannot fulfil the desires of those who labour within it for a meaningful work-life, the University must be transcended. In addressing the entanglement of precarity and privilege, it argues that, if the University is unable to contribute to ways of knowing, being and doing that address socio-economic, socio-environmental or intersectional ruptures, then it must go. dc.description: open access article
Marxism and Education, Series Editor’s Foreword: In, Against and Beyond Capital in Higher Education
dc.title: Marxism and Education, Series Editor’s Foreword: In, Against and Beyond Capital in Higher Education dc.contributor.author: Hall, Richard dc.description.abstract: n/a
Series Editor’s Afterword: weaving other worlds with, against and beyond Marx
dc.title: Series Editor’s Afterword: weaving other worlds with, against and beyond Marx dc.contributor.author: Hall, Richard dc.description.abstract: This Afterword reflects upon the Palgrave International Handbook of Marxism and Education’s challenge for us to think inside, against and beyond Marxist traditions. It reflects upon how thy offer us conceptual, psychological and social maps for how we might weave our concrete histories and ways of knowing the world with people, place, philosophy, values, communities, axiologies, cosmologies, in order to generate ‘relational accountability’. This pushes us to remember and reconsider Marx’s (ethnographic) work in light of the thinking of numerous intellectuals, teachers, elders and activists who have sought to synthesize and distil, weave and unwind, compost and mulch, our rich, differential experiences of capitalism. In relating these experiences to global emergencies, this work pushes us to remember how to use storytelling to connect, precisely because in sitting with those stories points us towards a poetry of positive transcendence of capitalist social relations, and the ability to tell out communism. They offer a consensus that our ontological, epistemological and methodological horizons must push against the law of value. Yet they also unfold myriad ways of analyzing with Marx how we might move through intellectual work in society, such that a new form of becoming accepts and shapes the individual as a many-sided being (in dialogue with other, many-sided beings).
Marx, Materialism and Education
dc.title: Marx, Materialism and Education dc.contributor.author: Hall, Richard dc.description.abstract: This chapter wrestles with Marx’s re-centering of the materialist, rational kernel, at the heart of the historical development of society. It aims to understand how dialectical materialism helps us to analyze the social, historical unfolding of knowing, doing and being, in the world. It highlights the tensions and contradictions between identity and non-identity, and how this is reproduced educationally and pedagogically in historically-contingent ways. Such contingency connects to the lived experiences of individuals, communities and ecosystems, suffering at the intersection of political economic, socio-cultural, and ecological catastrophes. It focuses upon entanglements between subjects and objects, in understanding educational structures, cultures and practices. In so-doing, it connects idealism, materialism and storytelling, to show how humanism might emerge from the ways in which lived experiences condition the imposition of the universe of value.
Introduction: the relevance of Marxism to Education.
dc.title: Introduction: the relevance of Marxism to Education. dc.contributor.author: Hall, Richard; Szadkowski, Krystian; Accioly, Inny dc.description.abstract: This chapter situates the handbook against the ways in which education has been colonized by capital for-value, and the generation of suprpluses on a global scale. It asks a set of questions that guide much of the volume. What is the role of education in the reproduction of the world? What is its role in capitalism’s valorisation process? How do educational structures, cultures and practices reproduce the ways in which capitalism mediates everyday life for-value? The chapter analyzes previous work that draws on Marxist praxis in educational contexts, and sits this in relation to Marx’s writing. It does this in order to highlight a tripartite structure for the Handbook as a whole: first, In: Marxist modes and characteristics of analysis in education; second, Against: Emerging currents in Marxism and education; and third, Beyond: Marxism, education and alternatives. Through this structure, we ask readers to consider how they might contribute to imagining the world otherwise.
The Palgrave International Handbook of Marxism and Education.
dc.title: The Palgrave International Handbook of Marxism and Education. dc.contributor.author: Hall, Richard; Szadkowski, Krystian; Accioly, Inny dc.description.abstract: The Palgrave International Handbook of Marxism and Education is an international and interdisciplinary volume, which provides a thorough and precise engagement with emergent developments in Marxist theory in both the global South and North. Drawing on the work of authoritative scholars and practitioners, the Handbook explicitly shows how these developments enable a rich historical and material understanding of the full range of education sectors and contexts. In this, it develops a dialectical understanding of the interactions between the following. • The importance of Marx’s dialectical method in critiquing education. • Transnational and national governance, regulation and funding of education. • Histories and geographies of educational development and change, for instance in relation to corporate forms, the binaries of public/private education, issues of marketisation and commodification. • The structures, cultures and practices of formal and informal educational organisations. • The lived experiences of education by centring a range of intersectional analyses. • The educational role of new social and political movements, like decolonising, indigenous rights, Black Lives Matter and Rhodes must Fall. • The web of life and ecological readings of education. The Handbook proceeds in a spirit of openness and dialogue within and between various conceptions and traditions of Marxism, and brings those conceptions into dialogue with their critics and other anti-capitalist traditions. As such, it contributes to the development of Marxist analyses that push beyond established limits, by engaging with fresh perspectives and views that disrupt established perspectives. In this it attempts to new modes of being, doing and knowing education, as a movement of dignity.

Click here to view a full listing of Richard Hall's publications and outputs.

Key research outputs

Decolonising DMU

Radical Pedagogies, Macpherson: 20 Years On

Digilit Leicester Project

Electro Acoustic Resource 2 (EARS 2): Implementing sound-based music, technology and education

Open to Change Project

Deliberative User Approach in a Living Lab Project

Connecting Transitions and Independent Learning Project

e-Learning Pathfinder Project on Web 2.0 cultures

Mobilising Remote Student Engagement Project

Research interests/expertise

The idea of the University and radical alternatives to it
Higher education governance, regulation and funding
Academic labour and alienation
Pedagogy and critical social theory
Higher education and mental health
Neoliberalism and Primary Education

Areas of teaching

The sociology of education
Politics of education
Critical pedagogy
Contemporary and historical issues in education
Evidence-based education
Postgraduate Certificate in Higher Education
Education Practice
Assessment and Feedback in Higher Education
Philosophy of History

Qualifications

B.A. Hons
M.A.
Ph.D.

Courses taught

Ph.D. supervision
M.A. Education Practice, including project supervision
B.A. Education Studies: EDUC1110: Historical and Contmporary Issues in Education; EDUC1145: Evidenced-based teaching and learning; EDUC2229: Researching Education; EDUC2248: Politics of Education; EDUC3346: Dissertation.

Honours and awards

Director of the Institute for Research in Criminology, Education and Social Justice, March 2021
Co-director of the Institute for Education Futures, 2016-18, De Montfort University.
Professor of Education and Technology, 2013.
The Digital Literacy Framework Project won the Reclaim Open Learning Challenge, an international contest sponsored by the MacArthur Foundation, the Digital Media and Learning Hub, and MIT Media Lab.
Higher Education Academy, National Teaching Fellowship, 2009.
Readership in Education and Technology, June 2010, De Montfort University.

Membership of external committees

Trustee, Open Library of Humanities (since 2015).
Board member, Leicester Vaughan College (2017-19).
Teaching Scholar at the Cooperative Institute for Transnational Studies (since 2015).
The Association for Learning Technology, OER17 Conference Committee (2016-17).
Critical Theory Research Network (since 2016).
Beyond the Neoliberal University: Critical Pedagogy and Activism, Organising Committee (a symposium hosted by Coventry University UCU in 2015).
European Conference on e-Learning (since 2005).
European Conference on Social Media (since 2013).
The Association for Learning Technology Conference, Programme Committee (since 2013).

Professional licences and certificates

Fellow of The Higher Education Academy
PRINCE2, Practitioner
Managing Successful Programmes, Practitioner

Projects

A full list of projects is available at: http://www.richard-hall.org/research-projects/

Forthcoming events

Hall, R. (2021). Decolonising and institutional co-optation. Decolonising Critical Thought Workshop, Critical Theory in Hard Times Network, Manchester.

Ansley, L., Connolly, P., Crofts, M., Hall, C., Hall, R. and Patel, K. (2021). Decolonising DMU: Towards the Anti-Racist University. AdvanceHE Equality Diversity and Inclusion Conference 2020: Courageous conversations and adventurous approaches: creative thinking in tackling inequality, Edinburgh.

Hall, R. and Themelis, S. (2021). Critical Reflections on the Language of Neoliberalism in Education. Education Research Seminar, De Montfort University.

Hall, R., Loonat, S., Marfu, C., and Prescod, M. (2021). Building engagement with decolonising inside the pandemic University. Festival of Teaching, De Montfort University.

Hall, R. (2021). Invited panel member. The Digital Divide: Why we need to support young people now. De Montfort University and Leicestershire Cares.

Conference attendance

A full list of papers is available at: http://www.richard-hall.org/conference-papers/

All presentations are available at: http://www.slideshare.net/RichardHall

Recent presentations include the following.

Hall, R., Marfu, C. and Sofowora, T. (2021). Decolonising and responsible futures, online workshop. Students Organising for Sustainability.

Hall, R. (2020). Covid-19 and the idea of the University. Documentary Media Centre newsroom on The Future of Higher Education.

Patel, K. and Hall, R. (2020). Decolonising DMU: Becoming an Anti-Racist University. Decolonising Bradford, University of Bradford.

Hall, R. (2020). For humanism and against the methodological University. British Educational Research Association annual conference, University of Liverpool.

Recent research outputs

Hall, R. (2021, forthcoming). The Hopeless University: Intellectual Work at the End of the End of History. Leicester: Mayfly Books.

Hall, R. (2021). Immiseration. In Critical Reflections on the Language of Neoliberalism in Education: Dangerous Words and Discourses of Possibility, ed. Themelis, S, pp. 47-53. London: Routledge. https://dora.dmu.ac.uk/handle/2086/20359

Hall, R. (2021). Managerialism. In Critical Reflections on the Language of Neoliberalism in Education: Dangerous Words and Discourses of Possibility, ed. Themelis, S, pp. 93-99. London: Routledge. https://dora.dmu.ac.uk/handle/2086/20356

Hall, R. (2021). Alternative Education. In Critical Reflections on the Language of Neoliberalism in Education: Dangerous Words and Discourses of Possibility, ed. Themelis, S, pp. 168-73. London: Routledge. https://dora.dmu.ac.uk/handle/2086/20360

Hall, R. (2020). Another world is possible: The possibilities for a transformative post-capitalist education. In The Routledge Handbook of Transformative Global Studies, eds Hosseini Faradonbeh S.A., Goodman, J., Motta, S., and Gills, B.K., pp. 84-96. London: Routledge. https://dora.dmu.ac.uk/handle/2086/19513

Hall, R. (2020). Platform Discontent Against the University. In The Digital Age and its Discontents: Critical Reflections in Education, ed. M. Stocchetti, pp. 123-40. Helsinki: Helsinki University Press. https://doi.org/10.33134/HUP-4 and https://dora.dmu.ac.uk/handle/2086/19697

Hall, R. (2020). The Hopeless University: Intellectual Work at the end of The End of History. Postdigital Science and Education, 2(3), 830-48. DOI: 10.1007/s42438-020-00158-9. https://dora.dmu.ac.uk/handle/2086/20001

Hall., R. (2019). On authoritarian neoliberalism and poetic epistemology. Social Epistemology: A Journal of Knowledge, Culture and Policy, 33(4), 298-308. http://hdl.handle.net/2086/17412

Key articles information

Hall, R. (2021, forthcoming). The Hopeless University: Intellectual Work at the End of the End of History. Leicester: Mayfly Books.

Hall., R. (2019). On authoritarian neoliberalism and poetic epistemology. Social Epistemology: A Journal of Knowledge, Culture and Policy, 33(4), 298-308. http://hdl.handle.net/2086/17412

Hall, R. (2018). The Alienated Academic: the struggle for autonomy inside the University. London: Palgrave Macmillan. http://hdl.handle.net/2086/16381

Hall., R. (2018). On the alienation of academic labour and the possibilities for mass intellectuality. tripleC: Communication, Capitalism & Critique, 16(1), 97-113.

Hall, R., and Winn, J. (eds). (2017). Mass Intellectuality and Democratic Leadership in Higher Education. London: Bloomsbury Academic. http://bit.ly/2dYsEkD and http://hdl.handle.net/2086/12714

Hall, R., and Smyth, K. (2016). Dismantling the Curriculum in Higher Education. Open Library of the Humanities. 2(1), p.e11. DOI: http://doi.org/10.16995/olh.66

Hall, R., and Bowles, K. (2016). Re-engineering higher education: the subsumption of academic labour and the exploitation of anxiety. Workplace: A Journal of Academic Labour, 28, 30-47. http://hdl.handle.net/2086/12709

Hall, R. (2015). The University and the Secular Crisis. Open Library of the Humanities, 1(1). DOI: http://doi.org/10.16995/olh.15

Consultancy work

I am a reviewer for the Independent Social Research Foundation (since 2018)

As an NTF mentor, I have supported successful internal and external applications.

I am a Trustee of the Open Library of Humanities (since 2015).

I am a Teaching Scholar at the Cooperative Institute for Transnational Studies (since 2015)

I am a member of the Centre for Transformational Learning and Culture (since 2016)

I have examined seven external M.Phil./Ph.D. candidates, 12 internal Ph.D. candidates, and a Masters by Research at DMU.

Between 2008-13, I was External Assessor on the Post-Graduate Certificate in Learning and Teaching at Glasgow Caledonian University.

I was a consultant on the University of Surrey’s VLE Review (2010).

I reviewed the use of technology in post-graduate teaching and learning curricula at Buckingham New University (2010).

I advised the British Council with Moscow Bauman State Technical University on the development of a Masters in Design Innovation (2006, 2011 and 2012).

I advised Te Wānanga o Aotearoa University in New Zealand in developing technology solutions for distance learners (2008).

I was consulted as part of the UK JISC Mobile and Wireless Technologies Review (2010).

Current research students

Nikki Welyczko, Ph.D. on nurse education, professional practice and resilience (1st supervisor).

Angela Sibley-White, Ph.D. on the lived experience of primary school communities under neoliberal governance and policy (1st supervisor).

Kim Sadique, Ph.D. on Learning from and Preventing Genocide and Crimes of the State: The Role of Religion and Education (1st supervisor).

Ally Ackbarally, Ph.D. on human factors and non-technical skills for Senior First Assistants in clinical settings (1st supervisor)

Sumeya Loonat, Ph.D. on the intersectionality of race and language in the construction and context of minority students within UK Higher Education (1st supervisor).

Camille London-Miyo, Ph.D. on Black Lives Matter Education - Black Educators Navigating the Dynamics of Racism in Leicester Schools (2nd supervisor)

Abena Addo, Ph.D. on heuristic research to inform holistic pedagogical practices in health professional education and research (2nd supervisor).

Jonathan Gration, Ph.D. on Digital anastylosis; exploring the future of public engagement with digital historic interiors (2nd supervisor).

Jennifer Wilkinson, Ph.D. on the historical context for functional skills' development in English Further Education (Advisor)

Externally funded research grants information

Courseware for History Implementation Consortium project, HEFCE TLTP3, 1999 – 2002, PI

e-Learning Capital Investment funding, HEFCE, 2005-2006, PI

e-Learning Benchmarking project, Higher Education Academy, 2006 – 07, PI.

e-Learning Pathfinder Project on Web 2.0 cultures, Higher Education Academy, 2007 – 08, PI

Connecting Transitions and Independent Learning, Higher Education Academy, e-Learning Research Observatory, 2008 – 09, PI

Mobilising Remote Student Engagement, JISC, eLearing Curriculum Delivery Project, 2008-2010, PI, Kingston University

Deliberative User Approach in a Living Lab project, JISC Greening IT Project, 2010 – 11, CI

Sickle Cell Open: Online Topics and Educational Resources project, JISC Open Educational Resources programme, 2010 – 2011, CI

New Dimensions of Security in Europe project, European Commission, Lifelong Learning Programme, 2009 – 10, Project evaluator

Open to Change project, JISC, Greening ICT programme: technical development, 2010-11, CI

HE Leadership Foundation-funded, Changing the Learning Landscape project, 2013-14, PI.

Using a value-added metric and an inclusive curriculum framework to address the black and minority ethnic attainment gap, HEFCE Catalyst Fund, 2017-19, CI

Internally funded research project information

Building capacity to impact on policy and practice project, Revolving Investment Fund for Research Round 2, 2010-2011, CI

EARS II Pedagogical Project, HEIF5, 2012-13, CI

Knowledge Exchange Digital Literacy Framework Project, HEIF5, 2012-14, PI, Leicester City Council.

Towards Equitable Engagement: the Impact of UDL on Student Perceptions of Learning, Teaching Innovation Project Fund, 2016-17, PI

Leading Change for Sustainability: developing a Social Learning approach within a DMU course, 2016-17, Teaching Innovation Project Fund, CI

Transformative learning for the public good – an integrative approach to sustainable community development, 2016-17, HEIF, CI

Mapping Learning City Infrastructures Under Austerity Governance, CURA, 2017-18

Professional esteem indicators

I am the editor for Palgrave Macmillan’s Marxism and Education series.

I am a Trustee of the Open Library of Humanities.

I am a member of the Review Boards for: Journal for Critical Education Policy Studies; Research in Learning Technology (formerly ALT-J); TripleC: Communication, Capitalism & Critique; Teaching in Higher Education; Postdigital Science and Education.

I am a reviewer for: Teaching in Higher Education (since 2016); the Journal for Critical Education Policy Studies (since 2014); the Higher Education Research and Development journal (since 2016); the Journal of Learning, Media, and Technology (since 2010); the Interactive Learning Environments journal (since 2010); Computers and Education (since 2010); the Open Library of Humanities journal (since 2015); Philosophies (since 2020); and the Electronic Journal of e-Learning (since 2005).

I am Editor for the DMU education and pedagogic research journal, Gateway Papers.