Honorary Professors and Fellows

A Member of Parliament since 2001, Jon Cruddas MP represents Dagenham and Rainham in East London. Between 2012 and 2015 he served as the Labour Party’s Policy Coordinator.

Before entering politics, Professor Cruddas completed a PhD in Industrial and Business Studies at the University of Warwick and since 2016 has been a Visiting Fellow at Nuffield College, University of Oxford and Visiting Professor at the University of Leicester within the Centre for Sustainable Work and Employment Futures.

In his writings and throughout his time as an MP, Jon has championed the importance of civic mindedness, flourishing communities and a strong social fabric.

He has maintained a longstanding interest in virtue ethics and the common good, with a particular focus on how work provides citizens with meaning, purpose and belonging. This was showcased in his most recent book, The Dignity of Labour, published by Polity in April 2021.

Through this appointment he will add to the Centre’s rich and ongoing work focussed upon the civic virtues and to mark this he will deliver a public lecture in 2022 in Birmingham.

Nicky Morgan, Baroness Morgan of Cotes is Chair of the Treasury Select Committee and has been a Member of Parliament since 2010. Prior to this, Nicky studied law at Oxford University.

She served as Secretary of State for Education and Minister for Women and Equalities (2014 – 16). During her time as Secretary of State for Education, Nicky delivered the 2014 Priestley Lecture at the University of Birmingham’s School of Education in which she emphasised the importance of character education.

She is the author of Taught not Caught: Educating for Character in the 21st Century, a publication that advocates for the necessity of character education in schools. You can read more about Nicky Morgan MP at her website.

Marvin Berkowitz is the inaugural Sanford N. McDonnell Endowed Professor of Character Education, and Co-Director of the Center for Character and Citizenship at the University of Missouri-St. Louis, and University of Missouri President’s Thomas Jefferson Professor. 

Marvin wrote a paper for the Jubilee Centre’s Insight Series titled ‘The Expanding Universe of Character Education: One Man’s Journey’ which offers an insight into his background and academic career.

His scholarly focus and expertise is in character education and development. He is author of You Can’t Teach Through a Rat: And Other Epiphanies for Educators (2012), Parenting for Good (2005), and is founding co-editor of the Journal of Character Education.

Dame Julia Cleverdon DCVO CBE is Vice President of Business in the Community and former Special Adviser to The Prince’s Charities. Julia is Co-founder of the #iwill Campaign, also known as Step Up To Serve, which was convened by the Prince of Wales and launched with the support of three party leaders in November 2013. She is now a trustee of Step Up To Serve, which by 2020 aims to get 60 percent of young people involved in practical action in the service of others. The Campaign works closely with the Jubilee Centre each year to recognise young ambassadors for their commitment to youth social action. She is a board member of NCS, The Careers and Enterprise Company and The UK Holocaust Memorial Foundation and chairs the HR committee of NCVO, the National Literacy Trust and Transform Society.

Through her work Julia promotes collaboration among senior leaders from business, government, education and community organisations to build a more robust civil society. You can read more about Julia’s various roles in charities on her website.

Randall Curren is a Professor, and Chair of Department, at the University of Rochester’s Department of Philosophy. He joined the University of Rochester’s faculty in 1988 after receiving his PhD from the University of Pittsburgh in 1985. He held the first joint Chair established between the Royal Institute of Philosophy (London) and the Jubilee Centre between 2013 and 2015. 

He has published numerous chapters in books, journal articles, reviews, notes, and encyclopedia entries. He is the author of Aristotle on the Necessity of Public Education (Rowman & Littlefield, 2000) and Education for Sustainable Development: A Philosophical Assessment (2009), and editor of A Companion to the Philosophy of Education (Blackwell, Ltd., 2003; 2006; 2011 in Chinese) and Philosophy of Education: An Anthology (Blackwell, 2007). He is also the Editor-in-Chief of the international journal, Theory and Research in Education (SAGE).

Blaine Fowers is Professor of Counseling Psychology at the University of Miami. He is a Fellow of the American Psychological Association. His primary scholarly interest is in exploring the moral dimension of psychology, both in research and practice.

Blaine was a Distinguished Visiting Professor at the Jubilee Centre in May, 2016 and has contributed to the Centre’s research examining the meta-virtue of phronesis. 

His current scholarly work is centered on the contributions of Aristotle’s ethics to a richer understanding of research and clinical practices in psychology and of ordinary life.  He is the author of The Evolution of Ethics, Virtue and Psychology, Beyond the Myth of Marital Happiness, and a co-author of Frailty, Suffering, and Vice: Flourishing in the Face of Human Limitations and Re-envisioning Psychology. He is the 2016 winner of the Joseph Gittler Award for Contributions to the Philosophical Foundations of Psychology.

Gary has been Headteacher at Kings Langley School for 18 years and has led two other secondary schools in Ofsted difficulties. Kings Langley School was presented with a national character award by the Secretary of State for Education in 2015 and has been a leading proponent in character education since 2006. Gary is a policy advisor to the Department for Education and has been the Chair of the national Association for Character Education (ACE) since its inception.

Gary read Physics at Nottingham University, and has taught in a wide range of both state and independent secondary schools since 1980. Gary presents regularly on a variety of aspects of Character Education and related training and together with his close colleague, Dr Tom Harrison, has assessed many schools nationally for the “character Kite mark”. Gary is working with the Jubilee Centre in the hope that his considerable experience in education will be of real benefit in producing training materials and resources for use in schools of all types.

Liam Francis Gearon is Associate Professor in Religious Education in the Department of Education at the University of Oxford. With a published doctorate in English Literature, for over two decades Liam has undertaken archival, empirical and theoretical scholarship and research at the interface of education with citizenship, human rights, literature, philosophy, political/ theology, postcolonial theory, religious studies, security and intelligence studies. 

Since December 2017, Liam has been a member of the Advisory Board for the Jubilee Centre’s The Life of the RE Teacher project and played a key role in shaping the early development of the research through to its publication in late 2019.

Liam published an edited collection from the international Colloquium at Oriel College he convened in 2017, the Routledge International Handbook of Universities, Security and Intelligence Studies (Gearon, 2019). 

Benjamin Perks, Head of Campaigns & Advocacy UNICEF, is a diplomat specializing in human rights in low and middle income countries.

Over Benjamin’s career, he has been advocating for, and advising governments on access and quality of education, child protection, health and justice sector reform.

As well asservingin Afghanistan, Kosovo, Albania, India, Georgia and Montenegro.Benjamin’shas included collaboration on introducing and measuring the impact of character education in both mainstream education reform and specialized childprotection services for those affected by adverse childhood experiences.

Professor Steve Thoma is University Research Professor at the College of Education, University of Alabama. He joined the faculty at the College of Education in 1986 shortly after he received his doctorate from the University of Minnesota.

He is internationally known for his research in moral psychology, and particularly for creating and validating different measurement strategies in the social/moral domain and showing how they can best be used.

In 2015, Steve became Chair in Moral Psychology and Psychometrics at the Jubilee Centre during which he worked on the Soldiers of Character project exploring the role of character and virtue in the British Army.

Steve is also a Fellow of the American Psychological Association and the American Education Research Association.

Rebecca Tigue is Head of School at the University of Birmingham School, with particular responsibility for Enrichment and Character Education. Rebecca has worked closely with the Jubilee Centre on the development of an effective whole-school approach to character education since the school opened in 2015.

In January 2020, Rebecca received the inaugural Ambassador of Character Education from the Centre which was presented to her by the Rt. Hon Baroness Nicky Morgan, Secretary of State for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport.

Rebecca is a graduate of the University of Newcastle-upon-Tyne, and completed her PGCE at the University of Liverpool.  She started her teaching career in Liverpool after previously working in corporate hospitality and marketing. She has had leadership roles in several schools around the country prior to her post at the University of Birmingham School.

Dan Wright has been the Headmaster of The London Oratory School since January 2018. Dan was the Jubilee Centre’s first Teaching Fellow in September – December 2014, and is lead author on the Secondary Programme of Study, produced by the Centre and used by hundreds of schools.

Dan read History at St John’s College, Cambridge and began teaching at Gordon’s School in 2000. He moved to Godalming College as Head of History in 2004, where he subsequently became Director of Faculty. He then moved to take up the role of Deputy Headmaster of St George’s College, Weybridge, a leading co-educational Catholic independent day school for 11-18 year olds, in 2015.