Professor Liz Thomas is Academic Lead for Retention and Success at the Higher Education Academy in the UK. She is also Professor of Higher Education in the Faculty of Education at Edge Hill University.

Liz has fifteen years’ experience of undertaking and managing applied research about widening participation, student retention and success and institutional approaches to improving the student experience. She is committed to using research to inform policy and practice at all levels, and has developed and led institutional change programmes to facilitate this.

Liz has recently completed a 3-year research and evaluation programme to improve student retention and success on behalf of the Higher Education Funding Council for England and the Paul Hamlyn Foundation. She has also explored male student engagement in academic development and pastoral support services in higher education. She has undertaken a review of widening participation strategic assessments prepared by all English higher education institutions, and contributed to similar reviews in Wales in 2009 and 2011/12.

Liz is author and editor of ten books on widening participation and enhancing the student experience, including Institutional transformation to engage a diverse student body (2011, Emerald Publications, with Malcolm Tight) and Improving student retention in higher education: The role of teaching and learning (2007, RoutledgeFalmer, with Glenda Crosling and Margaret Heagney).