Richard Reed

Richard is a Research Fellow in the Social Inclusion unit at Macquarie University in Sydney, where he is currently conducting research into the impact of the University’s outreach and student support services. Richard previously worked in Belfast, Northern Ireland, where he researched the transition from conflict to peace made by individual former combatants, paramilitary organisations and the low-socioeconomic communities directly involved in the conflict. During this time, he initiated a number of school engagement activities as part of broader efforts to build peace by combating the conflict's legacy of enduring social division and exclusion. The direct experience of the transformative potential of education has reinforced his commitment to advancing educational opportunities for all, to championing impact-focused academic research and to establishing effective links between the academic and community sectors as tools for effecting social change and tackling social injustice.