Our People

Prof Catherine Montgomery

Visiting Fellow

Visiting Fellow Department of Education

Department of Education

Catherine Montgomery is Professor of Education and Deputy Executive Dean Global in the Faculty of Social Sciences and Health at the University of Durham.

Catherine’s research focuses on mobilities and immobilities in higher education and the internationalisation and decolonisation of curriculum and knowledge. She is also interested in the flows of international students and what this can tell us about the changing landscapes of global higher education. She has published widely in these areas. Catherine is currently focusing on the impact, development and history of doctoral research as knowledge mobility. Since 2018 she has been working closely with the British Library in London, exploring the EThOS collection, a digital repository of more than 637,000 doctorates which date back to 1650. Catherine has been leading a team of researchers who have developed the prototype of a new Artificial Intelligence tool which will speed up and facilitate analysis of the under-used research in the EThOS collection. She has recently begun to explore the history of the doctorate and how it is intertwined with the development of education in India.

Catherine’s Faculty role as Deputy Executive Dean at Durham has involved her in developing, implementing and coordinating university and faculty strategies and policies around internationalisation across eight different disciplinary areas. Prior to joining Durham in September 2019, Catherine held professorial posts at the University of Bath and the University of Hull, both with a focus on international higher education. At the University of Bath, Catherine was also Academic Director for International Partnerships, leading the university’s strategic development, coordination and delivery of worldwide partnerships and identifying, developing and maintaining research, teaching and staff and student exchange links with institutions overseas.

Catherine has also worked on international and comparative research projects in Denmark, Mexico and Vietnam including a British Council project focusing on Internationalisation strategy in Vietnam and an ESRC funded project looking at autonomy and democracy in education entitled Freedom to Learn. Catherine has also worked closely with Tec de Monterrey in Mexico on a British Council project researching the role of dialogic STEM education in addressing social and cultural disadvantage in Mexico and the UK. She also has active collaborative research links with high profile universities in China, Hong Kong, Australia, Vietnam, Mexico and Europe. Catherine is the Editor of a successful journal: Compare: a Journal of International and Comparative Education.

Catherine holds a visiting professorship at the Centre for Higher Education Internationalisation at the Universita Cattolica del Sacro Cuore in Milan, Italy; she is an affiliated international expert for Monash University’s China Research Network; she is an invited Fellow of the Royal Society of Arts (FRSA 2018) and she was awarded a UK National Teaching Fellowship in 2010.