Alex is lecturer in educational leadership at the Manchester Institute of Education of the University of Manchester UK. The University was recently ranked as number one in the world on sustainability and impact by The Times. Alex is programme director and developer of the innovative and sustainable MA Educational Leadership in Practice blended degree, awarded best humanities programme of the year for 2021. Alex is currently chief editor of a Special Issue at the journal Globalisation Societies and Education on the International Baccalaureate and making the world a better place. 

Alex researches and publishes on international education, its leadership and policy. Before joining Manchester, he was senior lecturer in leadership and acting Dean of the Royal Military Academy Sandhurst, and prior to that a middle manager and teacher in an IB world school. His work reflects an emancipatory approach to knowledge generation, his doctorate research supervised by Tony Bush at the University of Nottingham explored directors and leadership in world-leading IB schools in Austria, Germany and Switzerland. His work seeks to better understand power in education, particularly in the international and autonomous contexts. A sociologist of international educational leadership , his most current projects include research on professional/private power-relations in international schools, far right populism and educational leadership and a Routledge book about educational leadership and the global crises of climate, knowledge and inequity with a forward by the director of Greenpeace International Jennifer Morgan and afterword by Professor Helen Gunter.

Alex is founding convenor of the Comparative and International Research Interest Group of the British Educational Leadership Administration Society (BELMAS), and is a regular invited external speaker and key-note presenter, most recently in Australia, Canada, Hong Kong, Switzerland, KSA and the UAE. Alex is also visiting professor in educational leadership at Franz Keplar University Linz, Austria, and external programmes assessor for the Open University UK and the University of Coventry.