Mick Healey
Full biography
Mick Healey is a HE Consultant and Researcher and Emeritus Professor at the University of Gloucestershire, UK. He obtained his bachelor and doctorate degrees in geography from the University of Sheffield and lectured at Coventry University from 1974 to 1994 before moving to Gloucestershire as Professor of Geography. Until 2010 he was director of the Centre for Active Learning (CeAL), a HEFCE-funded Centre for Excellence in Teaching and Learning, Director of the Geography Discipline Network (GDN), and Senior Advisor for Geography to The Higher Education Academy’s Subject Centre for Geography, Earth and Environmental Sciences. In 2010 he founded Healey HE Consultants Ltd.
He has written over 250 papers, chapters, books and guides on various aspects of teaching and learning in higher education. He has over 15,500 citations, half since 2018. He is lead author or co-author of many Advance HE (formerly HE Academy) publications, including:
Developing and enhancing undergraduate final year projects and dissertations;
Developing research-based curricula in college-based higher education; and
Engagement through partnership: Students as partners in learning and teaching in higher education.
He is also co-author of Improving disabled student learning in higher education: Experiences and outcomes (Routledge); and lead author of Writing about learning and teaching in higher education: Creating and contributing to public scholarly conversations across a range of genres (Center for Engaged Learning Open-Access Books, Elon University).
In 2000 he was awarded a National Teaching Fellowship (NTFS) in the first round. He has twice been awarded the Journal of Geography in Higher Education Biennial Award for Promoting Excellence in Teaching and Learning (2003 and 2007). In 2004 the Council of the Royal Geographical Society conferred on him the Taylor and Francis Award for ‘contributions to the promotion of learning and teaching in higher education’. In 2012 he was one of the first 10 people to be awarded a Principal Fellowship of the Higher Education Academy, and in 2013 he was awarded a SEDA@20 Legacy Award for Disciplinary Development. In 2015 he received the Distinguished Service Award from the International Society for the Scholarship of Teaching and Learning.
Mick is an experienced presenter. Since 1995 he has given over 500 educational workshops, seminars, keynotes and conference presentations in more than 25 countries (Australia, Austria, Belgium, Canada, China, Denmark, Finland, France, Germany, Greece, Hong Kong, Hungary, Iceland, Ireland, Luxembourg, Netherlands, New Zealand, Norway, Portugal, Saudi Arabia, Singapore, South Korea, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, United Arab Emirates, United Kingdom and United States). In the last few years, many of these presentations have been undertaken jointly with his daughter, Ruth.
He is currently Inaugural Senior Editor International Journal for Students as Partners. For the last 30 years he has been editor / editorial board / advisory board member of the Journal of Geography in Higher Education, and since 2010 he has been co-editor / editorial board member of the International Journal for Academic Development. He was the founding Joint International Editor for the Council on Undergraduate Research Quarterly until 2016, and the founding co-chair of the International Network for Learning and Teaching Geography in Higher Education (INLT). He has also been a member of the Council of The Higher Education Academy, and Regional Vice-President (Europe) of the International Society for the Scholarship of Teaching and Learning (ISSoTL). He developed the model of international collaborative writing groups with the INLT and co-adapted it for ISSoTL in 2012 and 2015. Since 2016 he has been the co-director of the International Students as Partners Institute (ISaPI) led by McMaster University.
He has advised students, academic staff, support staff, educational developers and senior management in a large number of research intensive, teaching intensive, and comprehensive higher education institutions and government bodies in UK and internationally, including the Canadian Federal Government, Higher Education Funding Council for England, HE Academy, Irish National Academy for the Integration of Research Teaching and Learning, League of European Research Universities, and QAA Scotland. He has been an evaluator / advisor to several NTFS and Australian Learning and Teaching Council / Office for Learning and Teaching funded projects. He has been an Honorary Professor at the University of Queensland, and a Visiting Professor at Edinburgh Napier University, the University of South Wales (Newport) and University College London. He has also been an adjunct Professor at Macquarie University, and Visiting Fellow at University of Queensland. As well as his emeritus professorship at the University of Gloucestershire, he is currently a Visiting Professor at the University of Westminster, The Humboldt Distinguished Scholar in Research-Based Learning at McMaster University, an International Teaching Fellow at University College Cork, and an Advance HE Accreditor and Consultant.
When not working, he may often be found playing or watching tennis, or exercising Meg and Mollie.
Mick missed the camaraderie associated with face-to-face national and international meetings during the Covid pandemic. Here he can be seen in a competition to encourage participants at the I-MELT International Conference Social in Adelaide, Australia, to dance to music from their home country. He was the only participant from the UK and chose a track from the Rolling Stones!
Google Scholar Citations: 16,000 (6,500 since 2019); h-index 50; 28 publications have each been cited over 100 times.
ORCID ID: 0000-0003-1195-0370