Dr Alison Wood
BA AdvDipMus AKC PGCertHE MRes MA PHD
Fellow; Academic Director, Homerton Changemakers
Alison's work focuses on the possibilities of higher education: of personhood and system-change; on what universities are really for in a time of climate collapse and seismic change in political systems; and the ways that biophillic, whole-system thriving can be nurtured through relational, wise pedagogy.
She is a seasoned academic leader, administrator and coach with 25 years experience building cross-sector & cross-disciplinary university-level initiatives (from healthy ageing to nineteenth-century studies and research leadership) combined with a scholarly career in the history and function of intellectual institutions. More recently she has crafted a strong interest in psychodynamic, ecological approaches to education and organisations, and is in demand as a facilitator, teacher, mentor and host.
Alison is currently founding Director of Homerton Changemakers, a co-curricular, pioneering programme begun in 2018 that helps Cambridge students weave academic strength with the capacity for wise action amidst challenge and uncertainty. She's also the co-founder of the Cambridge Centre for Better Futures, serves as Chair of the Westminster Abbey Institute Council of Fellows, is a member of Homerton College's Council, and supervises students in the Faculty of Education.
Alison has held post-doctoral posts at Cambridge: as Mellon/Newton Interdisciplinary Post-Doctoral Research Fellow at CRASSH (Centre for Research in Arts, Social Sciences and Humanities (2013-2018)); and as a Research Associate in the Faculties of English and Divinity (2011-2013). She read English and History at the University of Adelaide, writing a research masters on opera and poetry; and completed doctoral work at King's College London on how ideas such as Darwinism became normal in nineteenth-century Britain. She's served on numerous committees focused on researcher development & research leadership, including committees at Cambridge, and the Arts and Humanities Research Council (UK) Research Careers and Training Advisory Group; has led leadership development programmes for Cambridge post-doctoral researchers and Homerton Fellows; and has collaborated with colleagues across Cambridge on leadership and coaching for early career academics. She's also a keen singer, following a 10-year career as a musician in Australia.
Current teaching and writing projects include:
- creativity, spirituality and regenerative leadership
- 're-wilding' universities? Re-enchantment, nature and the global education machine
- power and love at work, especially in high stakes and demanding contexts
- crafting elite education towards ecological mindsets
Alison’s writing and collaborations cross scholarly & popular domains, focused on how universities and their eco-systems of research and teaching function. Increasingly she is turning that focus to the work of universities in the era of climate collapse, and the interplay of personal and public narratives that informs that work.
In 2023 she co-founded the Cambridge Centre for Better Futures, a programme offering sophisticated leaders a year-long immersive experience at Cambridge to transition towards more meaningful ways of being and working.
Previous initiatives include a British Academy ‘Rising Star’ research network on Critical University Studies http://www.crassh.cam.ac.uk/programmes/critical-university-studies-an-early-career-researcher-network-2018 and projects on modernity, neo-liberalism & educated selfhood; ecological mindsets & education; emerging educational forms; sustainability & the future of education; University keywords; academic citizenship; the history of English as a discipline; British intellectual and scientific culture in the C19th; the function of doubt; and religion in C19th Cambridge University.
Her recent invited talks, chairing & consulting have taken her to Santa Barbara, CERN, Cardiff, Exeter, Berlin, London, Manchester, Hawaii, Venice, Prague and New York, along with many gatherings in Cambridge.
Writing
Alison occasionally writes for the Guardian & TLS & is currently working up a book-length exploration of disciplines, university systems, & adaptive, progessive education Essays on Being Educated.
Published
‘Coping with Covid: Daily Prompts’. with Melanie Keene. A 12-part series for bolstering inner life and fortitude, particularly in covid-related isolation. October 2020 https://www.homerton.cam.ac.uk/copingwithcovid19
'Postgraduate courses must cultivate emotional and organisational traits too’. The Guardian 22 Jan 2019 https://www.theguardian.com/education/2019/jan/22/postgrad-courses-must-cultivate-emotional-and-organisational-traits-too
‘The End of Universities?’ ‘Critical University Studies’, CRASSH blog (2018) http://www.crassh.cam.ac.uk/blog/post/on-critical-university-studies
‘Secularism and the Uses of Literature: English at Cambridge, 1890-1920’. Modern Language Quarterly 75.2 (2014): 259-277.
‘Darwinism, Biology, & Mythology in the ‘Today & Tomorrow’ series, 1923-1929’. Interdisciplinary Science Reviews. 34.1 March (2009): 22-31.
‘Operatic Narratives: Textual Transformations in Gwen Harwood and Larry Sitsky’s Golem and Lenz.’ Journal of the Association for the Study of Australian Literature. 5 (2006): 179-191.
Special issue a/b: Auto/Biography Studies ‘The Work of Life-Writing’ 25.2 (Winter 2010). Introduced and edited with Clare Brant.
Working paper: ‘The Post-Doctoral System: Core Issues and Plausible Ambitions’. A paper for the University of Cambridge, May 2015.
Reviews & shorter pieces published in the Guardian, Times Literary Supplement, Viewpoint (Newsletter of the British Society for the History of Science), Proceedings of the Torquay Natural History Society, & Australian Literary Studies.
Homerton Changemakers
