SHORT BIOGRAPHICAL NOTE
Professor Chris Holligan is a multidisciplinary academic with expertise in psychology, education, sociology, history, and criminology. His studies took place at prestigious institutions, including York, St. Andrews, Edinburgh, Cambridge, and Aberdeen. Initially a schoolteacher of English, he shifted to research, earning a Master’s in Psychology and a PhD in cognitive psychology at St. Andrews.
He worked as a Research Officer at the Scottish Council for Research in Education, publishing on classroom discipline. Seeking stability, he became a university lecturer, continuing research on various education-related topics. His publications include practitioner books on nursery education, and he has lectured internationally in China, Hong Kong, and Jordan.
Holding multiple postgraduate qualifications, he recently specialized in Cognitive Behavioural Therapy (CBT) and has practiced as a BABCP-accredited therapist. His academic contributions are widely published and accessible through the University of the West of Scotland’s research portal.
Professor Chris Holligan - Biography
The academic-intellectual that I am was formed from various life experiences, intriguing individual teachers at college, those I met when undertaking job roles in many settings, my friends, their trajectories (e.g. to Cambridge University) made them examples of what I might venture to do. These backgrounds informed my choice of pre-university qualifications, English, History, Sociology and Economics. Critical incidents (an accident in the French Alps) meant I had to re-think my future. Universities were a strong shaping influence on how I thought and perceived society. I studied in the UK at the Universities of York, St. Andrews, Edinburgh, Cambridge and Aberdeen. I am a Chartered Psychologist (BPS) and an Associate Fellow (BPS).
Each one was different and special in its own ways. Qualifying as a schoolteacher of English let me work for a period of 4 years in different schools. I learnt that schools were like family social systems that students not English literary classics had to guide my ways of teaching. But the regimentation and routines of school life were not a good fit for me and I moved onto a funded Masters in Psychology at Aberdeen University, followed by a Medical Research Council award to undertake a PhD in cognitive psychology in the School of Psychology, University of St. Andrews where I attended every weekly seminar, did experiments and undertook my field work in schools.
It was fortunate that I managed to gain a single study room in an old building with views over the old buildings of St. Andrews town. Having space to plan my days of study suited me. Solitary study was combined with the teaching of academic English and night class teaching at Madras College to members of the local area. After graduating I gained the position of Research Officer with the Scottish Council for Research in Education, Edinburgh. I conducted contract research on discipline in Scottish schools looking at what teachers did to get the class to work well. That post led to my first journal publication in the 1990s in the British Journal of Education Research. I have held many collaborative research grants on a range of education related subjects.
Not wanting to support my family on precarious contract research I secured a permanent post as a university lecturer at what was a teacher training institution. Its name and status were to change over the next decades. Besides continuing to publish my research on a wide range of topics and through the disciplines of psychology, education, sociology, history and criminology I publish two practitioner books (values in nursery education) I sold throughout the UK as tools for partnerships with parents and professional training. Throughout this period, I lectured in psychology, research and education in China, Hong Kong and the Middle East (Jordan). I have many post-graduate certificates/diplomas, a BA in Philosophy and English and more recently a PG diploma in historical research from Edinburgh University. My most recent qualification (PG Dip CBT) is clinically oriented towards the treatment of mental health issues (depression / anxiety / panic / OCD and other disorders. I have delivered clinical sessions as a BABCP accredited Cognitive Behavioural Therapist for several years. My current and past academic publication output is accessed through the following web address: https://research-portal.uws.ac.uk/en/persons/christopher-holligan.