Career in Australia: Simon completed his PhD in theFaculty of Education at The University of Melbourne in 1996 and wasawarded the University’s Chancellor’s Prize for the outstandingthesis in the social sciences, arts and humanities that year. Afterspending 15 years as a policy research officer for four differenteducation unions including three at national level, he worked atthe Centre for the Study of Higher Education as a Senior Lecturerand Associate Professor/Reader (1993-1998), before transferring tothe Monash University Faculty of Education in 1998. At Monash hewas appointed to a Personal Professorial Chair in Education in 2000and was director of the Monash Centre for Research in InternationalEducation (1999-2006). He became a Fellow of the Australian Collegeof Education (FACE) in 1994 and a Fellow of the Academy of SocialSciences Australia (FASSA) in 2000. In 2002 he was awarded a fiveyear Australian Professorial Fellowship for 2003-2007, funded bythe Australian government on the recommendation of the AustralianResearch Council (ARC). In October 2007 he was invested as anHonorary Fellow of the Australian Council of Educational Leaders(FACEL).

International: Simon has active internationalcollaborations in North America and Mexico, UK and Europe, and Eastand Southeast Asia. He is an Honorary Fellow of the UK Society forResearch into Higher Education, and a member of El Seminario deEducacion Superior de la Universidad Nacional Autonoma de Mexico(the National University of Mexico, Mexico City) as well as severalinternational scholarly associations, including the Association forStudies in Higher Education in the USA where he chaired theInternational Forum in 2004-2005. In 2006-2007 he has/will presentkeynotes and other papers to conferences in Australia, New Zealand,Singapore, Thailand, China, USA, Canada, UK, France, Germany andPortugal. He has provided a paper on higher education andglobalisation at an OECD expert advisory meeting in Portugal, twicegiven papers to conferences of the OECD Institutional Management inHigher Education (IMHE) program, completed a paper on highereducation and globalisation for the OECD with Dutch colleagueMarijk van der Wende, and with Thomas Weko led the preparation ofthe report of the OECD’s Thematic Review of Tertiary Education inthe Netherlands. His invited paper at the Beijing Forum of November2007 concerned globalisation and the worldwide higher educationenvironment.

Scholarship. Simon Marginson’sscholarship combines conceptual and observational inquiry.Theorisation, methodology and empirical investigation are inputsinto the processes of investigation and explanation, withoutprivileging one over another on a permanent basis. He works in twodomains: higher education studies with emphasis on policy andhistory, and comparative and international education. Currently heis working largely on issues of globalisation and higher education,with reference to political theory and global sociology andpolitical economy. He is preparing three monographs, one of whichis focused on the internationalisation of Australian universitiesand another contains case studies of the global perspectives andpractices of research-intensive universities in differentcountries. Recent theory papers have mapped the global sphere inhigher education; re-examined the public/private divide and globalpublic goods in higher education; discussed the theorisations ofBourdieu, Gramsci and Habermas as contributions to ourunderstanding of higher education; and explored forms of freedom,with particular reference to academic self-determination and thecreative imagination. Several recent paper presentations haveconcerned the formation of a worldwide market in higher education,including issues and problems in relation to university rankings.Longer term he is shaping a monograph on the research-intensiveuniversity as an institution. Other projects include twocollaborative books containing country chapters on the strategiesof governments and higher education institutions in theAsia-Pacific region, and on university autonomy in the neo-liberalperiod. He has also written on problems of the political economy ofeducation, and education policy especially in Australia, and haspublished two books in the history of Australian education.

Current research projects. From January2008 onwards Simon is working on two new Australian ResearchCouncil (ARC) Discovery Grant projects, on the global strategies ofresearch-intensive universities in the Asia-Pacific region(2008-2011), and on boundaries and strategies in the field ofknowledge forming organizations, including research universities(with Mark Considine, Dean of the Faculty of Arts at the Universityof Melbourne, 2008-2010). Both of these project proposals wereranked in the top third of successful projects by the ARC Social,Behavioural and Economic Sciences Panel. Projects at the writing upstage include an ARC Discovery Grant project on the institutionalcharacter of the globally networked university, including the roleof higher education in forming social capital (2003-2007), and anARC Discovery Grant project on international student security inthe global education market. Simon was a member of the CSHE teamthat conducted the 2006 Universities Australia (UA, formerly AVCC)survey of student finances in Australia, and is working on theFaculty of Education Strategic Research Initiative on ‘The emergingeducational needs of knowledge economies in the Asia-Pacificregion’. Simon has supervised ten PhD and EdD graduates tocompletion and is currently supervising six more doctoral students,most of whom are working on international aspects of highereducation.

Publications. Simon’s most recent bookis the edited collection Prospects of Higher Education:Globalization, market competition, public goods and the future ofthe university, Sense Publishers, Rotterdam (2007). He haspublished five self-authored books, one jointly authored book andtwo edited collections, and more than 100 journal articles, reviewessays and book chapters as well as other publications (see below).He chaired the Editorial Board of Australian UniversitiesReview from 1995 to 2000, edited the Australian Journal ofEducation from 2001 to 2005 and currently sits on the boardsof Higher Education, Higher Education Policy, Higher EducationQuarterly, Journal of Education and Work, Critical Studies inEducation, Journal of Southeast Asian Education, andAustralian Universities Review. He is a CommissioningEditor of Thesis Eleven.

Higher education policy. Simon is afrequent public and media commentator on higher education,especially national policy in Australia. He has also conducted manyeducation policy studies, basic and applied, including commissionedreports for the Australian and Victorian government, OECD and theMalaysian government; and from time to time he contributes togovernment and international agency committees, inquiries andmeetings. Recent policy-related papers include work on universitygovernance, implications of globalisation for higher education,global university rankings, federal-state relations in Australianeducation, policy on and regulation of international education inAustralia, and the implications of the 2007 OECD comparisons inEducation at a Glance with special reference toAustralia.

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