Dave Hill (professor)

Dave Hill
Brighton Borough Councillor
In office 1975–1976
In office 1979–1983
East Sussex County Councillor
In office 1977–1989
Personal details
Born	1945 (age 68–69) London, England
Political party	Respect
Other political affiliations	Labour party (1961-2005)
Occupation	University teacher

Dave Hill (born 10 October 1945) is a Marxist political and educational activist. He is Research Professor in Education at Anglia Ruskin University, Chelmsford, England, and also Visiting Professor at the University of Limerick, Ireland, the Kapodistrian and National University of Athens, Greece, at Middlesex University, London.^[1] He was an elected Labour Party councillor for East Sussex and Brighton in the 1970s and 1980s, and contested in national and European elections.

Early life

David Hill was brought up in a working-class family from the East End of London. His mother was a dressmaker and his father, a cabinet maker and carpenter.^{[citation needed]} Hill became the first in his family to go to a grammar school; he attended Westlain Grammar School in Brighton.^[2]

Hill studied Politics and Modern History at Manchester University and subsequently gained a master degrees in politics and in education at the University of Sussex and a PhD at the London University Institute of Education under the supervision of Geoff Whitty. During the late 1970s and the early 1980s, he worked as a part-time photo-journalist for some of the Left Press in Britain, covering elections in Portugal, Spain and France for New Socialist, Labour Weekly and Tribune.

Politics

In 1961, Dave Hill joined the Labour Party and became Chair of Brighton Young Socialists. In 2005, after 44 years of active membership,^[3] he left the Labour Party and joined the International Socialist Group (which later merged into Socialist Resistance) and the Respect Party. He is active in TUSC, the Trade Unionist and Socialist Coalition, for whom he has fought local and parliamentary elections,^[4][5] and in Left Unity.

Local politics

As a Labour Party member, Hill was an elected East Sussex County Councillor during 1977–1989 and in the mid-1980s, became Labour Group Leader on East Sussex County Council. He was also a Brighton Borough Councillor during 1975–76 and again during 1979–83. During the Thatcher years Hill became more radicalised and opposed what he saw as the increasingly rightward drift in the local and national Labour Party. In 1988, Hill announced he was leaving Labour electoral politics.^[6]

National and European elections

In the 1979 and 1987 parliamentary elections, he contested as Labour candidate for Brighton Pavilion Constituency, but was defeated both times by Julian Amery, the Conservative Member of Parliament. During the 1979 local elections he scored the highest vote ever recorded for a Labour candidate in Brighton".^[6] Hill contested the 2010 General Election as the candidate for the Trade Unionist and Socialist Coalition^[7] in the Brighton Kemptown Constituency.

Hill contested in the 2009 European election for the left-wing electoral alliance, No to EU – Yes to Democracy as candidate for the South East Region of England.^[8][9]

Teaching and scholarship

Between 1967 and 1969, Hill taught at Stockwell Manor Comprehensive School.^[1] From 1972, he taught in higher education, Bognor Regis College of Education which became part of West Sussex Institute of Higher Education (now the University of Chichester), mainly part-time because of his responsibilities as trade union representative and an elected councillor. He also taught prisoners, adult education tutors, youth workers, and in Thorney Island Refugee Camp for Vietnamese boat people. After subsequently developing and leading for five years the Crawley Bachelor of Education Degree for mature and nonstandard entry students.j^[10][11]

In his long career he has taught in London's East End, at Tower Hamlets College in 1996-1997, and after that at the University of Northampton in 2007, where he was Professor of Education Policy. From 2012 on he has been Professor at Anglia Ruskin University, Chelmsford, England, and pays regular visits to Athens, Greece, and Limerick, Ireland. He is Visiting Professor of Education at the National, and the Kapodistrian University of Athens, Visiting Professor of Education at the University of Middlesex, and Visiting Professor of Critical Education Policy and Equality Studies at the University of Limerick.

Educational activism

In 1989, Hill set up the independent-left research unit, the Institute for Education Policy Studies and co-founded and chaired the Hillcole Group of Radical Left Educators.^[12] Affiliated writers and academics sustained Marxist and socialist educational analysis and policy formulation in Britain, through its publications of two books and thirteen booklets, published by Tufnell Press between 1990 and 2002.^[13] It included Caroline Benn and some activists from the Socialist Teachers Alliance.^[14][15]

In March 2003, Hill founded the Journal of Critical Education Policy Studies a free online refereed international journal, which he coedits with Peter McLaren. It has become one of the widest circulation English language online refereed education policy journals, with almost a million downloads (as of Nov 20, 2013) since 2003.^[16] He is also series editor for Routledge for the academic book series: Neoliberalism and Education. He has cowritten or co-edited a number of books and articles with Mike Cole, Glenn Rikowski and Peter McLaren, and, more recently, with Deb Kelsh and Sheila Macrine, and was Chair and then Program Chair of the Marxist Analysis of Schools and Society (MASSES) Special Interest Group of the American Educational Research Association.

In 2010 Hill set up the annual ICCE conference, the International Conference on Critical Education, with Kostas Skordoulis of Athens University. These have been held at the University of Athens in 2011^[17] and in 2012^[18] and at Ankara University, Turkey in 2013. The 2014 conference will be held in June 2014 at the University of Thessaloniki, Greece.^[19]

Hill lectures worldwide to academic, trade union and activist groups and conferences on the politics of education, and locations of his speaking engagements have included Taiwan, Australia ^[20] and elsewhere.

In his writing Hill writes from a classical Marxist perspective, focusing on issues of social class,^[21] the relationship between social class and `race', neoliberalism,^[22] socialist education,^[23] and Marxist critiques of New Labour policy on schooling and teacher education.^[24]

Selected publications

• Hill, D. (2013) Marxist Essays on Education: Class and `Race’, Neoliberalism and Capitalism. Brighton: The Institute for Education Policy Studies.
• Hill, D. (ed.) (2013) Immiseration Capitalism and Education: Austerity, Resistance and Revolt. Brighton: Institute for Education Policy Studies.
• Kelsh, D., Hill, D. and Macrine, S. (eds.) (2010) Class in Education: Knowledge, Pedagogy, Subjectivity. London: Routledge.
• Macrine, S., McLaren, P. and Hill, D. (eds.) (2010) Revolutionizing Pedagogy: Education for Social Justice Within and Beyond Global Neo-Liberalism. London: Palgrave Macmillan.
• Hill, D. and Robertson, L. Helavaara (eds.) (2009) Equality in the Primary School: Promoting good practice across the curriculum. London: Continuum.
• Hill, D. (ed.) (2009) Contesting Neoliberal Education: Public Resistance and Collective Advance. New York: Routledge.
• Hill, D. (ed.) (2009) The Rich World and the Impoverishment of Education: Diminishing Democracy, Equity and Workers’ Rights. New York: Routledge.
• Hill, D; McLaren, P., Cole, M., and Rikowski, G. (eds.) (2002) Marxism Against Postmodernism in Educational Theory, Lanham, MD, USA: Lexington Books. American Education Studies Association (AESA) Critics Choice Award-Winner.
• Hill, D. and Cole, M. (eds.) (2001) Schooling and Equality: Fact, Concept and Policy. London: Kogan Page.
• Cole, M., Hill, D.; McLaren, P., and Rikowski G. (2001) Red Chalk: On Schooling, Capitalism and Politics. Brighton: Institute for Education Policy Studies. (84pp.) Online at http://www.ieps.org.uk.cwc.net/redchalk.pdf
• Hessari, R. and Hill, D. (1989) Practical Ideas for Multi-cultural Learning and Teaching in the Primary Classroom, London: Routledge.

External links

• Journal of Critical Education Policy Studies
• The Institute for Education Policy Studies
• The Rouge Forum
• Leaving Labour after 44 years
• Brief Autobiography of a Bolshie Dismissed’
• International Socialist group
• The Great Education Debate: How 11-plus divided twin brothers with same IQ’
• The Hillcole Group
• Socialist Educatorsand Socialist Education, Socialist Outlook

References