Professor Reza Gholami

• BA, MA, PhD (London)
• Fellow of the Higher Education Academy

• Fully accredited by the UK Office for National Statistics (ONS)

Reza Gholami is Professor of Sociology of Education at the University of Birmingham, where he is also the founding co-director of the Birmingham Research Group on Education Policy (BREP). He earned his PhD in the Department of Anthropology and Sociology at SOAS, University of London, followed by post-doctoral research funded by the AHRC. He has since held a number of academic appointments, including visiting fellowships at the University of Wisconsin, Madison (USA), Monash University (Australia) and University College London (UK). He is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Arts and Senior Editor (Sociology of Education) at the Journal of Cogent Education. 

Professor Gholami’s research is internationally recognised and focuses on questions of belongingness, diversity, inter-communal relations and community engagement in education within the context of chronic educational disparities affecting racial, ethnic and religious minorities. He uses qualitative and quantitative methods, while working collaboratively with a range of educational stakeholders around the world to develop innovative educational resources to support local schools and foster inter-communal learning. His current project is funded by the Paul Hamlyn Foundation and explores issues of belonging among primary school children through drama-based pedagogies. He is also working on a mixed-methods Leverhulme Trust funded project that examines how young people in English secondary schools engage with freedom of expression around race and faith. 

Professor Gholami is the author of numerous books and articles in his field, including the forthcoming book Knowledges that Destroy (co-authored with Dr Danielle Tran, UCL), the monograph Secularism and Identity, and the co-edited volume Education and Extremisms: Re-Thinking Liberal Pedagogies in the Contemporary World. He also regularly appears in national and international media and advises policymakers.  

Prof. Gholami leads the UG Dissertation Module

Current students

• Abdulrahman Alghaith
• Ingrid Abrahams
• John Keech
• Gitanjali Patel
• Michelle McLardy
• Megan Whitehouse 

Please contact Prof. Gholami directly if you are interested in pursuing doctoral research under his supervision.

Current projects

• Free Expression at School? The Making of Youth Engagements with Race and Faith (with Prof. Karl Kitching) – funded by The Leverhulme Trust
• Does Birmingham Belong to Me? Arts-Based Pedagogies for Identity, Belonging and Citizenship – funded by The Paul Hamlyn Foundation
• Developing Research Leaders Focused on Belonging, Equity, Quality and Co-Production – funded by QR, UKRI
• Non-Formal Intercommunal Education (in the UK, Australia, and the US) – funded by ESRC

Selected (recent) Keynote lectures and invited talks 

Learning for Fear: How Islamophobia is Manufactured and Made Educational. Invited lecture at the Department for Educational Policy Studies, University of Wisconsin-Madison, USA, 9 October 2023. 

Destructive Knowledges: Coloniality, Decolonization and ‘Living Diversity’. Keynote lecture given at the Think Diversity event, University of Birmingham, UK, 1 June 2023. 

Breaking the Mould: A Global Re-framing of Islamophobia in Education. Invited lecture at the Faculty of Education, Monash University, Melbourne, Australia, 2 February 2023. 

Placing Communities at the Centre of Educational Theory, Research and Practice. Seminar given at the School of Education and Professional Studies, Griffith University, Brisbane, Australia, 26 January 2023. 

Race, Community and Diasporic Education: Intercultural pedagogies in/of the superdiverse city. Invited lecture at the Institute of Social Science, Religion and Philosophy, Inland Norway University of Applied Sciences, Oslo, Norway, 26 October 2022 

Barriers Facing Muslim Students in UK Higher Education. Invited talk at Community Policy Forum, 7 June 2022 

Religification and Islamophobia in the Secular University: Examining the Muslim Student Awarding Gap, invited seminar given at Edge-Hill University Faculty of Education, 28 October 2021. 

The Value of a Critical Ethnography of the Secular Today: Muslim Minorities and Secular Power, plenary lecture given at the Institute for Social Anthropology and Empirical Cultural Studies, University of Zurich, 14 December 2020 

‘City-zenship’: What does a ‘Brummie’ Education Look Like? Talk at a virtual event I organised and led for the Festival of Social Sciences, 10 November 2020

Islamophobia and Racism: The Institutional ‘work’ of Education, Secularism and Policy, Keynote Lecture given at the “Inclusivity in Education” conference at Middlesex University, London, 3 July 2019 

Racialized Humanity. Invited talkat the “Humanity under Duress” conference, University of Sheffield, 19-21 June 2019 

Diasporic Education: Challenges and Possibilities. Plenary lecture at “Diaspora and Internationalization in Higher Education” organised by BAICE at the UCL Institute of Education, 10 May 2019 

Religion, Prevent and Free Speech. Invited talk at “The Far Right and the Politics of Free Speech” SOAS, University of London, 1 March 2019 

Secularism, Policy and Education in an Age of Extremisms, invited talk by the Department of Education, Practice and Society, UCL Institute of Education, 29 November 2018 

Diasporic Living and the Secular – Lessons for Identity, Citizenship and Education, Keynote Lecture delivered at the Non-religion and Secularity Research Network conference, King’s College, London, 6 July 2018 

Selected recent conference papers

Becoming City-zens: Community-Inclusive Urban Education for Social Justice, Liveable Cities (AMPS), New York City College of Technology (CUNY), New York, USA, 14-16 June 2023 

Towards Critical Secular Studies in Education: Addressing Secular Education Formations and their Intersecting Inequalities, Critical Research on Religion Conference, Queen’s University Belfast, 10-13 June 2022. 

Non-Islamiosity – a Review of a Concept, annual conference of the European Association of Social Anthropologists, University of Lisbon, Lisbon, Portugal, 23-27 July 2020 

The Politics of Diasporic Integration, IAMCR annual conference, Madrid, Spain, 7-11 July 2019 

Cosmopolitanism as Transformative Experience: Education, Extremisms and a New Social Ethic in the Post-Truth Era, International Sociological Association, XIX World Congress of Sociology, Toronto, Canada, 15-21 July 2018 

Indicators of peer esteem

• Since 2022: Senior Editor (sociology of education) Cogent Education
• Since 2020: Fellow of the Royal Society of Arts (FRSA)
• 2019-2020: Grant application reviewer for the British Academy (the “Education and Learning in Crises” Programme)
• 2019: Grant application reviewer for Council for At-Risk Academics (CARA)
• Since 2018: Member of the Editorial Board: Educational Review (impact factor 3.605)
• Since 2017: Member of the Editorial Board: Sage Open (impact factor 2.032)
• Since 2017: Member of the Editorial Board: International Studies in Sociology of Education
• Member of the West Midlands Police & Crime Commissioner’s Academic Advisory Board