Dr. John Vorhaus

Dr. John Vorhaus is Co-Director of the National Research and Development Centre in Adult Literacy and Numeracy (NRDC) and Co-Director of the Centre for Education in the Criminal Justice System, both at the Institute of Education (IOE) in London. He is a senior member of the Childhood Wellbeing Research Centre, and was formerly the Director of the Centre for Research on the Wider Benefits of Learning, at the Institute of Education. He is a Reader in Human Rights in Education. 

John has directed numerous projects on the personal and social outcomes of learning, and on adult literacy, language and numeracy. Many of these focused on disadvantaged groups such as ethnic minority groups and people who are not in education, training or employment. 

He has written extensively on social capital, and on the wider benefits of learning for offenders, adult learners and marginalized young people. On-going research is taken up with conceptions of equality and whether a capability approach to equality in education is equipped to model the needs and claims of persons with profound and multiple learning difficulties and disabilities.  

John has taught philosophy at the University of Bristol, the University of London, in prison and adult and further education. He continues to publish in the areas of political and social philosophy and in the philosophy of education.