Joanna Williams

Joanna Williams is a Visiting Fellow at MCC. She began her career teaching English in secondary schools before joining the University of Kent as lecturer in Higher Education and Academic Practice in 2007. She was the director of the University’s Centre for the Study of Higher Education until 2016. Joanna left academia to become Head of Education and Culture at Policy Exchange. Most recently, she has set up her own think tank, Cieo, which has a particular focus on democracy, education and citizenship.
Joanna is the author of How Woke Won (2022); Women vs Feminism (2017); Academic Freedom in an Age of Conformity (2016) and Consuming Higher Education, Why Learning Can't Be Bought (2012). She co-edited and contributed to Why Academic Freedom Matters (2017) and has written numerous academic journal articles and book chapters exploring the marketization of higher education, the student as consumer and education as a public good. Joanna is a columnist for the online magazine Spiked and writes regularly for The Times, The Telegraph and The Spectator.