About Me

I am a Professor in the School of Education at the University of New South Wales, Sydney, Australia. My research interests include educational leadership, the principalship, equity and social justice, and continental philosophy. In particular, my research focus is to use critical perspectives in educational leadership to examine the work of school principals in disadvantaged schools and how they can work towards achieving more socially just outcomes. I have published my research in a range of books, book chapters, and peer-reviewed journals. I regularly deliver key notes, seminars and conference papers in these research areas. I serve on the editorial boards of leading journals such as Critical Studies in Education, Foucault Studies and the Journal of Educational Administration and History, and regularly review for a number of other leading journals. I am a book series editor for the Educational Leadership Theory book series with Springer. I am also a Convenor of the International Collective for the study of Michel Foucault in Educational Leadership, Administration and Policy.

This website is an opportunity to share my research and thoughts on writing in the margins of a number of different areas and topics. I am interested in educational leadership and particularly the principalship but with a distinctly critical edge. I am sceptical of educational leadership research that claims to have the answer to ‘what works’, and to prescribe what ‘good leadership’ is without a nuanced and sophisticated analysis of context. By context I do not simply mean a school, region or country, but the interrelationship between the social, political, cultural, religious, economic, philosophical, and theoretical that must be acknowledged to understand leadership practices. I draw on post-structural ideas to inform my writing in what is still largely an instrumental, positivist and conservative field.

This website has been dormant for a number of years. However, I intend to publish blogs and update resources and materials more often, as of September, 2025. Please feel free to email me directly about my blog, publications or other links on this site.

Best wishes,

Richard

Email: r.niesche@unsw.edu.au