User:NeilBallantyne

I'm the Director of Learning Designs a company based in Wellington, New Zealand offering educational research, consultancy and development services with a focus on improving learning for people working in the human services. My family and I migrated to New Zealand from our hometown in Glasgow, Scotland in 2009.



For most of my working life – almost twenty years – I worked in higher education in the UK. Latterly, I was a Reader in Social Work at the University of Strathclyde, and Acting Director of IRISS (Institute for Research & Innovation in Social Services). At IRISS I led a team committed to the use of innovative methods and new technologies to improve the capability of the social services workforce. I am now a Visiting Senior Research Fellow at the Glasgow School of Social Work, a Fellow of the Higher Education Academy, and a board member of HUSITA.

When I'm not working I can often be found walking Wellington's City to Sea Walkway with Luca my flatcoated retriever. Sometimes, I like to capture light. My current fiction writer obsession (there's always one....a necessary way of switching off from those dry academic tomes) is focused on the Culture series of science-fiction novels by Iain Banks (highly recommended).