Professor Leon Tikly is Director of Research at the Graduate School of Education of the University of Bristol.

A key focus of Prof. Tikly’s work is quality education in low income countries and in particular countries of sub-Saharan Africa. He recently directed projects on piloting language supportive textbooks and pedagogy in Rwanda and on developing the Ministry of Education in Rwanda (MINEDUC) into a hub for innovation. Prior to that, he led a DfID-funded Research Programme Consortium (RPC) on Implementing Education Quality in Low Income Countries (EdQual).

Although his work is practical in orientation and has been impactful on policy and practice, it is underpinned by theoretical questions. These include how to conceptualise education as an aspect of the 'postcolonial condition', the impact of globalisation on the low income, world and how to understand the relationship between education, inequality and social justice.

Prof. Tikly started his career as a science teacher first in London comprehensives and then in a school for South African refugees in Morogoro, Tanzania. He completed his postgraduate studies at the University of Glasgow. His PhD thesis is on Education Policy in South Africa since 1947. Leon worked as a policy researcher at the Education Policy Unit, University of the Witwatersrand during the transition period between apartheid and democracy in South Africa where he helped to formulate education policy for the new provincial and national governments. On returning to the UK he took up a lectureship in International and Comparative Education at the University of Birmingham. Since moving to Bristol he has worked as a lecturer and then as a senior lecturer before being given a chair in 2006.