Research interests: School Management, School Improvement, Education Structures and Systems in developing countries, Teacher Development, impact of Educational Policy on practice.

Mel West is a Professor of Education Leadership at Manchester University. During his career, Mel has worked with school systems in a number of countries in Europe, South America and Africa, and has developed particularly strong links with China, and over several years he held visiting professorships at Beijing Normal and East China Normal Universities, and in 2013 he spent a semester at the Centre for Education Research in Tsinghua University, teaching qualitative research methods to postgraduate social science students. He was recently appointed, within the Chinese Ministry of Education’s Visiting Foreign Expert Programme, to work with Beijing Foreign Studies University, contributing to the continuing development of the International Business School and assisting with development of a new School of Education.