Dr. Keri Facer is a Professor at the Education and Social Research Institute, Manchester Metropolitan University, where she directs the Create research group. She specializes in the relationship between socio-technical and educational change. Her latest book Learning Cultures: Education, Technology and Social Change (Routledge, 2011) maps out a range of future scenarios for education and their implications for social justice.

From 2002-2008, Dr. Facer was Research Director at Futurelab where she initiated and directed over £6m of research projects relating to innovation in education, in particular with new technologies, across formal and informal learning settings. Projects included the mixed reality game for education, Savannah, the curriculum project “Enquiring Minds” and a raft of prototypes ranging from the development of programmable fountains for schools to dynamic public sculptures for public learning. From 2007 to 2009 she directed the strategic foresight project “Beyond Current Horizons” for the UK government which brought together researchers, practitioners, industry figures and policy makers across areas as diverse as computing, childhood studies, neuroscience, aging and economics to identify a set of strategic long-term challenges for education. She acts as advisor and collaborator with a range of organizations including TDA, (formerly) BECTA, The Royal Society, the RSA, the WWF, Baltic Contemporary Arts Gallery, the ESRC/EPSRC TEL program and as reviewer for the European Union, the ESRC and journals ranging from Mind, Culture and Society to the Cambridge Journal of Education. Dr. Facer is currently writing on a range of curriculum issues, including the relationship between school and community in curriculum design, the history and development of co-operative education, and the relationship between education, democracy and research. Ongoing projects include partnerships with the BBC around the stimulation of socially oriented programming activities in schools, and the development of learning maps to ensure democratic ownership of educational data in rich data environments.