Maria Slowey took up the new position of Vice-President for Learning Innovation at Dublin City University in February 2004. This post holds the constitutional status of Registrar. She previously worked at the University of Glasgow where she had been Professor and Director of Adult and Continuing Education since 1992. From 1992 to 1999 she was Head of the Department of Adult and Continuing Education, and from 1993 to 1999 she was also Head of the ACE and Education Resource Planning Unit. In 1999 she was appointed Vice Dean (Research) in the newly established Faculty of Education.

Maria Slowey's research interests include equality of opportunity and widening access to lifelong learning opportunities, comparative tertiary education policy, the participation of adults in education and training, the role of the university in the community. She has written extensively on these issues and has acted as a consultant to a range of bodies, including OECD, the EC, the Council of Europe, the European Training Foundation, the European Association for Education of Adults, the Swedish National Board for Higher Education, the New Zealand Qualifications Authority, the US Advisory Council on Continuing Education.

She was a member of the Independent Committee of Inquiry on Student Finance established by the Scottish Parliament, (the Cubie Committee,1999) an academic adviser to the Scottish Parliament Committee on Lifelong Learning Inquiry on Lifelong Learning (2001/02) and member of the most recent two RAE's (UK Research Assessment Exercises) Sub-Panels on Continuing Education (1996 and 2001). She is currently a member of Research Priorities Board of the Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC), the Steering Committee of the ESRC Teaching and Learning Research Programme and is Chair of the Research and Development Committee of the SRHE

In recent years she has held visiting positions and given invited lectures at, amongst others, the Universities of Stockholm, British Columbia, California (Berkeley), Melbourne, New South Wales, University College Dublin, Dublin Institute of Technology, Ljubjana, and the Centre for Continuing Education, University of Oxford, where, in 1999, she spent time as a Visiting Fellow of Kellogg College.

She has served on many committees relating to adult and lifelong learning, including

• Universities Association for Continuing Education (UACE) Research Committee
• Objective 2 European Regional Structural Funds: Programme Monitoring Committee for the West of Scotland
• Board Member, Scottish Adult Learning Partnership (SALP)
• Steering Group, Scottish Centre for Research on Lifelong Learning
• Scottish Higher Education Funding Council (SHEFC) Working Party on the Funding of Continuing Education
• Higher Education Funding Council for England HEFC(E) Advisory Group on non-Award Bearing Continuing Education
• Higher Education Quality Council Quality Assurance Consultative Group
• HEQC Access Course Recognition Group
• Higher Education Policy Group of the National Institute for Adult and Continuing Education (NIACE)
• Board of Trustees, Women Returners' Network.

Recent publications include a ten country comparative study, Higher Education and Lifelong Learners: International Perspectives on Change edited with Hans Schuetze (2000, RoutledgeFalmer) published in Japanese translation in 2002, and Higher Education and the Lifecourse edited with David Watson (2003, SRHE/OUP).