Professor Leighton Andrews

Biography

Career

Formerly Minister for Education and Skills and Minister for Public Services in the Welsh Governments from 2009-16, a Deputy Minister in the One Wales Government from 2007-9 and Assembly Member for the Rhondda from 2003-16.

Prior to his election to the National Assembly in 2003, Leighton had had a successful career in the private, public and voluntary sectors. He was the BBC's Head of Public Affairs in London from 1993-1996 during its Charter Renewal campaign He ran a number of businesses in the public relations field and set up his own business after leaving the BBC.

Qualifications

• BA Hons, English and History, University of Wales, 1978
• MA History, University of Sussex, 1980

Media contributions

Leighton has written for an extensive range of publications in both print and digital format, including the Guardian, the Irish Times, New Statesman, Times Higher Education Supplement, the Western Mail, The New European, Golwg, Agenda, ClickonWales, The Conversation, the Article, Byline Times and many others. He has broadcast regularly for a wide range of media outlets on both television and radio. Recent examples are listed on his personal website www.leightonandrews.com

Professional memberships

• FRSA
• NUJ
• PSA

Academic positions

• 2004-2016, Honorary Professor, JOMEC, Cardiff University
• 2002-2003, Lecturer in Cardiff University School of Journalism, Media and Cultural Studies (JOMEC)
• 1997 Visiting Professor, University of Westminster

Speaking engagements

• October 2019, Facebook the Media and Democracy, IT University, Copenhagen
• October 2019, Facebook, the Media and Democracy, TEDx Aberystwyth
• November 2018, Power and Politics, Public Health Wales.
• June 2018, Evidence-Based Policy-making, Public Health Wales.
• March 2018, Plenary Session on Bursting Filter Bubbles and Opening Up Echo Chambers, Political Studies Association Conference, Cardiff.
• March 2018, Governing Wales, conference paper, PSA Conference, Cardiff
• March 2018 Facebook, the Media and Democracy, International Politics Department, Aberystwyth University.
• November 2017: All Wales Continuing Improvement Conference, Swansea.
• November 2017, The role of the Minister in driving Innovation, Conference Paper, PUBSIC Conference, Oslo.
• October 2017, Facebook, the Media and Democracy, RTS Cymru Annual Lecture.
• September 2017, Evidence-based Policy making, Academic Impact conference, Swansea University.
• September 2017, The Walled Garden, the Filter Bubble and the Public Sphere, Conference Paper, Future of Journalism Conference, Cardiff.
• August 2017, Conference Paper, The BBC and the Road to Amsterdam, Media Policy and Digitization Conference, Nordic Political Science Association, Odense.
• July 2017, Conference Paper, Algorithm 'N'Blues, EGOS Conference, Copenhagen.
• May 2017, Guest lecture on The War Room, University of South Wales Global Governance MSc.
• March 2017 Central South Education Consortium
• November 2016, Velindre Hospital Trust Leadership Conference
• July 2016, Incerts annual education conference chair
• Numerous speeches and lectures as a Welsh Government Minister prior to that.

Publications

• Date
• Type
• Selected

Teaching

Leighton has taught a wide range of modules in public leadership and politics.

He developed and teaches a post-graduate politics module PLT 435 Government from the Inside: from the Minister's Viewpoint for MSc courses in Politics.

He co-developed the Executive MSc in Public Leadership and teaches the module BST652 Leading Policy into Delivery. He jointly developed and jointly delivers the BST680 module on Strategic Planning and Innovation on the Diploma in NHS Planning.

In 2019 he jointly developed and jointly delivered a module on Leadership, Innovation and Change for the Academi Wales all-Wales Graduate programme delivered through the the University of South Wales.

In 2018 and 2020 he taught on the executive leadership course for the NHS Wales Finance Academy.

From 2018-2020 he taught International Business Environment module BST448 on the MSc in International Management in Cardiff Business School.

He also contributes guest lectures to a variety of other programmes across the Arts, Humanities and Social Sciences.

Research interests

• Public Service Leadership and Innovation, including Ministerial Leadership
• Public Service Strategy, Planning, Delivery and Implementation
• Ministerial Life and Lives
• Governance Narratives and Discursive Capacity
• Governance of Devolution
• Public policy-making
• Media and Social Media Regulation and Governance

Recent journal articles and chapters include:Mortality, blame avoidance and the British state: constructing Boris Johnson’s exit strategy, chapter in Stuart Price and Ben Harbisher (ed) : Power, Media, and the Covid-19 Pandemic: framing public discourse; ‘Like any wartime government’: Covid-19, Churchillian imaginaries, and the limits of English exceptionalism, in Jo Pettit (ed), Covid-19, the Second World War, and the idea of Britishness; Performing Welsh Government 1999–2016: how insider narratives illuminate the hidden wiring and emergent cultural practices, in Contemporary British History https://doi.org/10.1080/13619462.2021.1996235; The forward march of devolution halted – and the limits of progressive unionism. In Political Quarterly https://doi.org/10.1111/1467-923X.13044; The role of Ministerial leadership - some reflections from Wales. In: Harris, Alma and Jones, Michelle (Eds) 2020 Leading and Transforming Education Systems, Springer; Reluctant Europeans: the BBC and European media policymaking 1992-1997 in the International Journal of Cultural Policy; Brexit, Cabinet Norms and the Ministerial Code: are we living in a post-Nolan era? in Political Quarterly; Algorithms, Regulation and Governance Readiness in Algorithmic Regulation, edited by Karen Yeung and Martin Lodge. Oxford: OUP; Regulating the internet intermediaries in a post-truth world: Beyond media policy? (co-written with Prof Petros Iosifidis) in International Communications Gazette, https://doi.org/10.1177/1748048519828595 ; The Regulatory Moment is Upon Us in Mair, J, Clark, T, Fowler, N, Snoddy, R, Tait R  (eds) Anti-Social Media? The impact on journalism and society, Bury St. Edmunds: Abramis Academic Publishing, 2018; Public administration, public leadership and the construction of public value in the age of the algorithm and 'big data' in Public Administration; Telling Governance Stories in PS: Political Science; How can we demonstrate the public value of evidence-based policy making when government ministers declare that the people ‘have had enough of experts’? in Palgrave Communications.

Books by Leighton:

Wales Says Yes (Seren, 1999)

Ministering to Education (Parthian, 2014).

Facebook, the Media and Democracy, (Routledge, 2019).

Leighton has presented papers to a range of academic conferences in politics, public leadership and the media. He was a keynote speaker at the 2018 Political Studies Association conference in Cardiff in 2018.

Supervision

I am interested in supervising in the following areas:

• public service leadership and innovation
• government ministerial life at UK and Welsh levels
• public sector narratives
• evolution of Welsh Government
• regulation of Facebook and Google. 

Past projects