Birgit Spinath is Professor of Educational Psychology at the University of Heidelberg. Her research interests lie in the field of teaching and learning in schools and higher education, motivation as a prerequisite for and outcome of educational processes, teacher training as well as self-regulation in the context of learning and performance behaviour. One of her major concerns is the transfer of research findings into practice. For this reason, she is involved in numerous committees that are involved in the development of teaching and learning processes (e.g. the German Psychological Society’s commission “Study and Teaching”, scientific advisory boards, Hochschulforum Digitalisierung by Stifterverband). She is currently President of the German Psychological Society. In addition, she is editor of Psychology Learning and Teaching and a member of various editorial boards (e.g., Journal of Educational Psychology, Learning and Individual Differences).

I am Professor of Public Education at Maynooth University Ireland (0.4) and Visiting  Professor at the University of Agder, Norway.  Since April 2016 I hold the NIVOZ Professorship for Education at the University of Humanistic Studies, the Netherlands (0.2). From August 2019 onwards I will be Professorial Fellow in Educational Theory and Pedagogy (0.3) at the Moray House School of Education, University of Edinburgh.

Before this I  worked at universities in Luxembourg, Scotland (University of Stirling),  England (University of Exeter; Brunel University London), and the Netherlands (Utrecht, Leiden  and Groningen) and held Visiting Professorships at NLA University College, Norway, the University of  Orebro, Sweden, Malardalen University, Sweden, and ArtEZ Institute of  the Arts, the Netherlands.

I have a PhD from Leiden University the Netherlands (1992) and a degree in education from Leiden University and in Philosophy from Erasmus University Rotterdam. I am a former Spencer Post-Doctoral Fellow  with the National Academy of Education, USA.

In January 2015 I became an associate member of the ‘Onderwijsraad’ (the Education Council of the Netherlands) for the  period 2015-2018. This is the main government advisory  body on education (see here for more information). Since April 2016 I’m also scientific advisor to VERUS in the Netherlands.

Ines Langemeyer studied psychology (diploma) at the FU-Berlin. At the Helmut-Schmidt-University Hamburg she did her doctorate in the field of vocational and work-based education.

Since 2001 she worked as a research assistant in the field of media research (Free University of Berlin), at the Seminar for Media and Communication (University of Erfurt), at the Chair of Economic and Industrial Sociology (BTU Cottbus) and as a Postdoctoral Research Fellow at InterMedia research centre (University of Oslo).

In 2011 she was appointed to PH Ludwigsburg (at the same time to the German Institute for Adult Education, Bonn) for the Junior Professorship for Lifelong Learning. In 2012-2013, she held the deputy professorship for teaching and learning research at Karlsruhe Institute of Technology until 2013, when she took up the professorship for adult education/further education at the University of Tübingen. She has been teaching at KIT since 2014 and combines educational-psychological teaching and learning research with the fields of general education and vocational education.

Her work focuses on research-based learning in higher education and schools, the scientification of work, the development of cooperative competence, self-regulation and motivation to learn, knowledge and learning cultures and changes in the labour market in the field of highly qualified activities.

Ingrid Scharlau, Professor of Cognitive Psychology at the University of Paderborn, studied psychology, philosophy and education. She is head of the writing centre and mentoring programmes for doctoral students at the University of Paderborn.

Her work focuses on experimental psychology (attention, time perception, formal modelling), teaching in higher education (research on subject cultures, subject-sensitive teaching, psychology didactics) and writing research (theory of academic writing, qualitative research).

Edith Braun is professor at the Institute for Educational Science at the Justus Liebig University in Giessen. She has an interdisciplinary profile: After graduating in psychology, she earned her doctorate with the Berlin Evaluation Tool for Self-assessed Student Competencies (BEvaKomp); her dissertation was awarded the Ulrich Teichler Prize. From 2003 to 2010 she was at the Division of School and Teaching Research at Freie Universität Berlin, where she received her postdoctoral qualification (habilitation) in Educational Science. For four years, Edith Braun headed a junior research group at the INCHER of the University of Kassel. In addition, she has three years of experience as head of the department of higher education research at the former HIS GmbH, now DZHW. She also spent half a year doing research at the Centre for Higher Education Research and Information at the Open University in Great Britain. Her research and (inter-)national publications focus on learning gains, performance-based measurement, quality assurance and development of higher education teaching, as well as on the investigation of learning processes, learning environments and teaching attitudes in the context of higher education and teacher training.

Helmut Bremer holds the Professorship of Adult Education with a focus on political education at the Faculty of Education, University of Duisburg-Essen since 2009. After completing his training and occupation in social work, Helmut Bremer studied social sciences at the University of Hanover. From 1995 to 2003 he worked as a research assistant at the Universities of Hanover and Münster in variousresearch projects. After completing his doctorate in 2001 at the University of Hanover in the field of theoretical and empirical habitus and milieu analysis, he received his postdoctoral qualification (habilitation)  at the University of Hamburg in 2005 with the thesis “Social Milieus, Habitus and Learning”. Until his appointment at the University of Duisburg-Essen, he held Deputy Professorships of Sociology of Religion and Churches in Leipzig and of Further Education in Hamburg. His work focuses on the following areas: (Political) adult education and student research; education and social inequality; habitus, learning and socialisation; milieu and habitus analysis and their methods; social image research. Since 2006 he has been a member of the board of the German Sociological Association’s “Sociology of Education” section.

Prof. Dr. Carolin Kreber received her combined BA/BEd (specialising in History and English) from the Pädagogische Hochschule Freiburg, Germany in 1990, her master’s degree in Adult Education and Curriculum Theory from Brock University in Southern Ontario in 1993 and a doctorate (PhD) in Higher Education from the Department of Theory and Policy Studies at the Ontario Institute for Studies in Education/University of Toronto (OISE/UT), Canada, in 1997. The same year she accepted her first tenure-track academic appointment in Adult and Higher Education at the University of Alberta (Department of Educational Policy Studies), in Edmonton, Canada, where she obtained tenure and was promoted to Associate Professor in 2001.

Prior to her appointment with the University of Alberta, and while pursuing doctoral studies at OISE/UT, Prof. Dr. Carolin Kreber was a lecturer at Brock University teaching courses in adult education and research methodology. From 2005 to 2015 she was Professor of higher education at the University of Edinburgh, where from 2005-2010 she directed the Centre for Teaching, Learning and Assessment. From 2012 – 2015 she was the Director of the Higher Education Research Group (HERG). Since 2015 she is Dean, School of Education and Health at Cape Breton University in Canada. Her academic interests focus on adult and higher education, perspectives on professionalism and professional practices, and, increasingly, the application of social philosophy to education.