Welcome to my website and thanks for your interest in my work. I'm doing my best to keep information up to date, but it's not easy, so please bear with me!
I am aware that the information has been significantly out of date for a while. I have now (October 2026) done a quick update of this introduction page, the CV page and the journal articles page.
If you are looking for a copy of one of my publications, feel free to send me an email, ideally via my address at Maynooth University (gert.biesta@mu.ie). Another option is to identify the publication on ResearchGate and send me a request there.
Since May 2026 I am Faculty Professor of Education in the Faculty of Education of the University of Melbourne, Australia, and Adjunct Professor of Education at Western Norway University of Applied Sciences. I am Emeritus Professor of Public Education in the Centre for Public Education and Pedagogy, Maynooth University, Ireland, and used to be Professor of Educational Theory and Pedagogy at the Moray House School of Education and Sport, University of Edinburgh, UK, but this employment has come to and end in the summer of 2025. In January 2023 I started a four-year term as ordinary member ('kroonlid') of the Education Council of the Netherlands (Onderwijsraad), the advisory body of the Dutch government and parliament on educational matters. Since 2024 I am an expert advisor to the Council of Europe for the establishment of the European Space for Citizenship Education.
I post regular updates about my activities via LinkedIn. You can see in the background of my LinkedIn page the words 'tireless camel' which I encountered here. I know that education is a very big field with many voices and views. With my work I try to raise the questions that are often not asked and try to explore issues that are often not explored. In all this I'm motivated by the need to ensure that education keeps understanding itself sufficiently well. How important or influential this is, is of course for others to judge, but I try to keep on going for a bit longer!
I have recently come to the end of a six-year term as co-editor of the Asia-Pacific Journal of Teacher Education. I am currently associate editor of Educational Theory, and have previously been co-editor of the British Educational Research Journal. I co-edit two book series with Routledge: Theorizing Education (with Stefano Oliverio), and New Directions in the Philosophy of Education (with Michael A. Peters, Liz Jackson and Marek Tesar).
I have a PhD from Leiden University the Netherlands (1992), a degree in Education from Leiden University (1987) and a degree in Philosophy from Erasmus University Rotterdam (1989). I am a former Spencer Post-Doctoral Fellow with the National Academy of Education, USA, and have received Honorary Doctorates from Uppsala University, Sweden; Örebro University, Sweden; and the University of Oulu, Finland.
I have worked at Universities in Scotland (University of Stirling, Edinburgh University), England (University of Exeter; Brunel University London), Ireland (Maynooth University), the Netherlands (in Utrecht, Leiden and Groningen) and Luxembourg, and have held Visiting Professorships at the University of Agder, Norway, Uniarts Helsinki, Finland, NLA University College, Norway, Örebro University, Sweden, Mälardalen University, Sweden, and ArtEZ Institute of the Arts, the Netherlands.
From 2015 until 2018 I was an associate member of the 'Onderwijsraad' (the Education Council of the Netherlands), the main government advisory body on education. From 2023 until the end of 2026 I was an appointed member of the 'Onderwijsraad.' From 2016 until the end of 2026 I have been a scientific advisor of Verus, the Association for Catholic and Christian education in the Netherlands. From 2020 until 2022 I was an appointed by member of the Scientific Curriculum Committee in the Netherlands, which was tasked with providing advise about the final stages of the reform of the national frameworks for the curriculum for primary and secondary education.
please note
* Please note that I do not work during weekends, so if you sent an e-mail on Saturday or Sunday, it is likely that it will not arrive. Please resend your message during weekdays. Due to the very large number of e-mails I receive, I am not able to reply to all messages. Thanks for your understanding.
