Mike Osborne is Professor Of Lifelong Education at the University of Stirling where he teaches on a range of Lifelong Learning courses at postgraduate and undergraduate level. Together with Jim Gallacher of Glasgow Caledonian University he is co-director of the Centre for Research in Lifelong Learning. This centre has established a substantial infrastructure to support research in Lifelong Learning in Scotland. He also co-ordinates the European node of the PASCAL observatory on place management, social capital and learning.

He has been undertaking research work in widening access to F/HE since the mid 1980s, and has particular interests in performance of mature students in F/HE, work-based access, particularly from SMEs, the access curriculum in Science and Technology and comparative policy in access to HE. He has completed a range of research projects on mature student participation for the DfEE and the Scottish Executive including a comparative study of widening access involving partners in France, Finland, Canada and Australia.

He is a principal investigator within the ESRC TLRP project, Social and Organisational Mediation of University Learning. He is active in a number of European networks, particularly the European Universities Continuing Education Network (EUCEN), the Socrates Thematic Network (EULearn) and the European Access Network. He co-ordinated the Leonardo project, European Learning in Smaller Companies (ELISC) with partners at the universities of Barcelona, Bari and Lappenraanta.

He has recently completed a project with in the framework of the EU's European Networks of Learning Regions, which has developed and tested indicators for monitoring and measuring stakeholder organisations in Learning Cities and Regions. That has been followed by the Lilara Project on learning in local and regional authorities and the PENR3L project to establish a European Network of learning regions.

For a list of his recent publications go to http://www.ioe.stir.ac.uk/research/publications/osborne.php