Dr Liam Gearon

Liam Francis Gearon (BA, Hons, MA, MPhil, Cert He, PhD, FHEA, FRSA, Docent) is Associate Professor at the Department of Education, Senior Research Fellow at Harris Manchester College, University of Oxford; Docent, University of Helsinki, Finland; Honorary; Conjoint Professor at Newcastle University, Australia; Visiting Professor at the Irish Centre for Catholic Studies, MIC, Limerick, Ireland; Extraordinary Professor, North-West University, South Africa. 

With a published doctorate in English literature (University of Calgary Press, 2002), he is the author or editor of thirty (30) academic books, ten (10) education textbooks, including a curriculum book series for Macmillan Caribbean, and approaching one hundred (100) articles and chapters, as well as guest editorship of nine (9) book-length special issues of international journals. With a thirty-year university teaching and research career delineated by a path-defining interdisciplinarity, one which has built original and significant conceptual and theoretical bridges between the arts, humanities, social sciences and education, with core interests at the interface of religion and education, culminating in the major edited collection, lead edited with Professor Arniika Kuusisto, University of Helsinki, the Oxford Handbook of Religion and Education, in press, to be published March 2025 by Oxford University Press.

Formerly Reader and Professor of Education at the University of  Surrey, Roehampton, and Roehampton University, and Research Professor at Plymouth University, as Principal Investigator, Liam has led funded multidisciplinary research projects across the arts, humanities, social sciences and education with the Academy of Finland, the Arts and Humanities Research Council, the British Academy, the Leverhulme Trust, the Nuffield Foundation, the Philosophy of Education Society of Great Britain, and the Society for Educational Studies, a career total of funding approaching £6,000,000, including a £4.5 million grant to establish a landmark UK University Centre for Citizenship and Human Rights at the University of Surrey Roehampton.

Founder-Convenor of the Philosophy, Religion and Education Research Group this is a conduit for forging theoretical and empirical interconnections between the arts, humanities, philosophy and the social sciences through the common focus of education. Contributions of this research group have been made to matters such as: theories of research policy and impact; the cultural value of research in the arts and humanities; research ethics; the intersection of epistemological and ethical domains in research in schools; religion, radicalisation and counter-terrorism in schools and universities; and the creation of distinctive sub-field of study at the interface of education, security and intelligence studies.

With cognate research interests in security across all phases of education, from early years to higher education, Liam has for over the past decade collaboratively developed an interdisciplinary sub-field at the boundary of universities, security and intelligence studies, including research ethics in the securitised university (Gearon and Parsons, 2019). One of the defining outcomes here is Liam’s quarter of a million-word edited collection arising from the international Colloquium at Oriel College he convened in 2017, the Routledge International Handbook of Universities, Security and Intelligence Studies (Gearon, 2019). Interdisciplinary and inter-agency work in this area has included the Nuffield Foundation funded Universities and National Security: Research and Policy Collaborations 2019-2020, with a cross-disciplinary research team of 14 distinguished Co-Investigators. These included Professor Richard Aldrich, Politics and International Studies, Warwick; Professor Joy Carter CBE, DL, Vice-Chancellor, Winchester, Professor Quassim Cassam, Philosophy, Warwick; Professor Bill Durodie, Politics, Languages and International Studies, Bath; Professor Michael Goodman, War Studies, King’s College London; Gwilym Hughes, Oxford Intelligence Group, Nuffield College, Oxford; Professor Adrian Kendry, former Senior Defence Economist, NATO; Dan Larsen, Trinity College, Cambridge; Professor Sir David Omand GCB former Director, GCHQ; Professor Mark Phythian  History, Politics & International Relations, Leicester; Professor John Preston, Sociology, Essex; Dr Tristram Riley-Smith, Centre for Science and Policy, Cambridge; Dr Christopher Westcott, former head of BBC Monitoring and Reuters Institute of Journalism, Oxford.

Most recently, through a significant Academy of Finland research grant (2018-2023) with Professor Arniika Kuusisto (Helsinki/ Oxford), as International Co-Principal Investigator, he has overseen the research of two highly productive early career, post-doctoral researchers on radicalisation. This includes notable social and policy impacts such as the development of a national strategy around extremism through education for the Ministry of Justice in Finland (Activities | Growing up radical? | University of Helsinki). With quantitative and qualitative data, the project produced a substantial number of policy-impactful, quality research outputs (Publications | Growing up radical? | University of Helsinki).

A further, directly consecutive Academy of Finland research grant (2023-2027; 487 318 €, with c. 250,000 € from the University of Helsinki), also with Professor Arniika Kuusisto (Helsinki/ Oxford), as International Co-Principal Investigator, he is leading a team collectively totally nine researchers for the Child in Time – Existential Resilience in Early Childhood (CiTe) project, Researchers | Resilience and Well-Being in Early Childhood | University of Helsinki. This study examines children's trajectories of constructing existential resilience and well-being in early childhood, the study utilizing Constructivist Grounded Theory for building a model for understanding and supporting young children's existential resilience and well-being. The project results will provide knowledge on young children's existential resilience and well-being, to inform research, policy and practice.

Noted for the globally critical analysis of post-Enlightenment epistemological foundations of religion in education, he has contributed new insights to secularisation theory in numerous, some award-winning, monographs, such as Master Class in Religious Education (Gearon, 2013); On Holy Ground (Gearon, 2015) [2016 Society of Education Studies Book Prize]; Religious Authority and the Arts: Conversations in Political Theology (Gearon, 2015); and State Religious Education and the State of the Religious Life (Gearon and Prud’homme, 2018). The Oxford Handbook of Religion and Education (Oxford University Press, March 2025) includes significant reconsiderations of religion and education at a geopolitical turning point of nuclear war angst through Liam’s conceptualisation of ‘Enlightenment’s empire’ and ‘apocalyptic modernity’.