Mrs Margaret Hart

Director of TILL

Tel: 0114 222 7072

Room: B5, 1st floor, 9 Northumberland Road

Margaret took up post as Director of the Institute for Lifelong Learning in November 2012. Her early career was in local authority social work and as a voluntary sector manager at regional and national level, including as Corporate Director of one of Britain’s largest children’s charities. Alongside these roles, she acted as a part time tutor of students on the professional Diploma in Social Work qualification and this introduced her to higher education. She moved to work in higher education on a full time basis ten years ago, developing a specialism in widening participation with mature and part time students. These apparently disparate career strands are held together by the common themes of social justice and creating opportunity for people who live in challenging and disadvantaged circumstances.

Professional Activities

Before coming to The University of Sheffield, Margaret was Head of Widening Participation at The Open University, leading on policy and practice in widening participation through the changing environment for part time students following the Browne Review. She led the development of a new Widening Access and Success Strategy for The Open University, set up a national Community Partnerships Outreach Programme, was responsible for an Offender Learning Programme offering higher education opportunities to 1500 students in prison and developed a new Access to Success Programme providing a low risk route into higher education in the high fees environment.

The breadth of Margaret’s career experience has brought insights which will be valuable for developing the University of Sheffield’s civic engagement agenda and the role of the Institute for Lifelong Learning within that. These include an understanding of the external environment, working in partnership with external organisations to achieve common objectives and create opportunity across organisational boundaries, and the participation of service users/students in planning and delivery.

Margaret holds an MA in Geography from Oxford University, an MA (Econ) in Social Work and Social Administration and Certificate of Qualification in Social Work from Manchester University and a Professional Diploma in Management from The Open University. She is a Fellow of the Higher Education Academy. Margaret is a member of the HEFCE Widening Participation Reference Group and the Action on Access Advisory Group and is trustee of a youth and community organisation.

She has presented widely at conferences on widening participation and has published:-

“Institutional transformation to engage a diverse student body at The Open University”, Hart, M. and O’Shea-Poon, T. in “Institutional Transformation to Engage a Diverse Student Body”, International Perspectives on Higher Education Research Volume 6, Thomas, L. and Tight, M. (Ed), 2011
“2010 a turning point in widening participation?” Hart, M. in “Widening Participation and Lifelong Learning”, Volume 12, November 2010