About
Jonathan Leader is a Principal Teaching Fellow and Director of Programmes (Academic Practice) in the Centre for Higher Education Practice (CHEP), Faculty of Social Sciences. He is also part of CHEP's Senior Leadership Team.
Jonathan holds a Senior Fellowship of Advance HE (SFHEA).
Research
Current research
I am currently researching into areas of critical thinking, argumentation, and strategies for encouraging student engagement with ideas and theories.
I am also particularly interested at the present time in relational thinking as a way of helping students to work out and articulate their own positions in respect to any given topic or problem.
Teaching
My teaching is informed by my pedagogical and scholarly research interests, which revolve around:
- the contextual, cultural and epistemological aspects of criticality, critical thinking and argumentation
- strategies for expressing one's voice in lines of reasoning
- critical self-reflection
- the life and work of Hannah Arendt
I have written book reviews for Bloomsbury Publishing and Sage Publications and in 2020 was an editorial advisory panel member for Oxford University Press for a book about critical thinking.
External roles and responsibilities
Biography
A Principal Teaching Fellow, I am Director of Programmes (Academic Practice) and a member of the Senior Leadership Team in the Centre for Higher Education Practice (CHEP), Faculty of Social Sciences. Part of my role requires Quality Assurance oversight of our Postgraduate Certificate in Academic Practice programme (PGCAP) and the Professional Recognition of Educator Practice framework (PREP) both accredited by Advance HE, as well as the Centre's portfolio of CPD provision. Previously, I have been In-sessional Director in the Academic Centre for International Students (ACIS), Faculty of Arts and Humanities, where for a number of years I was also Programme Lead of the Pre-Masters programme and Module Lead for Critical and Contextual Thinking for Master's Study.
I have achieved Senior Fellowship of Advance HE (SFHEA) and am a PREP Mentor as well as a regular Panel Reviewer.
I was awarded my BA(Hons) in Philosophy by the University of Lancaster in 1982 after which I studied for my MA in Philosophy at the University of Warwick (1983). I moved to London in early 1984 where, initially, I was a volunteer with West London Cyrenians, a charity caring for otherwise homeless adults. After that, I worked for over a decade in the voluntary sector, much of the time with the then Mental Aftercare Association as a senior residential social worker caring for adults recovering from psychiatric illness. During this period, I conducted part-time research at the LSE and completed my teacher training at Goldsmiths', University of London.
I have held Senior Lectureships at the University of East London and the University of the Arts, London, where, until 2011 I was Course Leader for the Personal and Professional Development programme in the Faculty of Media.
I was awarded my PhD from the University of Southampton in 2010 for my research on the German Jewish polemicist and political thinker, Hannah Arendt and I am currently preparing a proposal for an introductory book on Arendt's life.