Christine Nightingale (PhD, M.Ed) has worked in three higher education institutions in the UK, since 1988. Her research and publications have focussed on inequalities in public services including healthcare, transport and education, experiences of disabled people at work, curriculum design and educational approaches to improve and promote self esteem and confidence. One of Christine’s projects a ‘prescription for learning’ service from GPs for people with mental health conditions living in areas of social deprivation, won a Department of Health award in 2003.
In 2007 Christine, whilst working for the National Institute of Adult Continuing Education (NIACE), created and managed the Commission for Disabled Staff in Lifelong Learning, a major investigation into the unequal treatment of disabled staff in further and higher education. The report, From Compliance to Culture Change (2008) provided the first evidence of its kind on the treatment of disabled staff by employers, colleagues and students, across the whole lifelong learning sector in Britain. Later, Christine was a partner in the Equality Challenge Unit and Leadership Foundation funded follow-on project on Enabling Equality for disabled staff in higher education (2011). In 2013 she won a research tender to explore the ways in which equality expertise could be developed in academic staff. She has an interest in leadership and the factors, skills and qualities that enable leaders to influence their institutions on the equality agenda.
In 2013/14 Christine was a member of the University’s REF Individual Circumstances Committee, and was appointed as an Equality Challenge Unit nominated representative on the HEFCE, REF Equality and Diversity Advisory Panel in 2011 to its completion in 2014.
