Cilla Ross
Position
Reader
Qualifications
- D Phil and MA, Sussex
- BA, York
Background/Career
Cilla left school at 15 and worked in factories, offices and shops. As a bakery worker she became active in her workplace and this resulted in her trade union supporting her to go to Coleg Harlech to study politics. After her Doctorate Cilla went to work at Northern College, Barnsley and the Workers' Educational Association from where she went on to develop a number of innovative trade union and university partnerships with UNISON. PCS and MSF/UNITE. Cilla originally trained as a historian and worked extensively across mining, textile and steel communities developing social, political and oral history initiatives with communities of miners, women, minority ethnic workers, steelworkers and weavers. She also worked with the WEA nationally on curriculum development. Her interests were and remain learning and organising globally for active democratic citizenship, radical history, radical popular education and the ways in which technology and change is theorised and understood by individuals and society. She is particularly drawn to exploring the impact of technology and technical change on work, culture and communities in old industrial regions and new ‘host’ communities.
During the time that Cilla worked at the Universities of Sheffield and Leeds as a Lecturer, Senior Lecturer and Senior Teaching Fellow she developed an educational interest in workplace and union learning and deepened her political concerns around globalisation, work and international solidarities. She pioneered a number of globalisation and union elearning initiatives and worked with and supervised trade union and other students right through from those 'returning to learn' to those writing their Doctorates. Cilla was involved in working with the very first ULF funded ULR project with MSF.
Since leaving Leeds, Cilla has acted as a national and international evaluator for agencies such as the WEA, the Union Learning Fund, UNISON, AMICUS and the ILO and has worked on developing lifelong learning, global labour and capacity building programmes with UK trade unions as well as international development work with the Co-operative College. As a Co-operative College Associate Cilla has delivered programmes for Twin Trading in Ghana and Tanzania as well as co-managed a number of projects in East Africa. Cilla contributes to the ILOs Reading Committee for Africa and has recently conducted educational auditing work in Ethiopia. She also co-developed the Africa Matters learning programme for AMICUS.
Cilla currently works half time with Working Lives and is involved in developing and delivering the CPD in Union Learning, the Professional Doctorate in Researching Work as well as working on a number of workplace and union learning research initiatives with UK trade unions including PCS and Unite. In the other half of her working life Cilla continues working on active citizenship initiatives with migrant workers in the UK and developing political education and educational materials around international development and international solidarities for a number of other agencies. Cilla is also writing a history of EUROCOOP, the first ‘Brussels’ NGO.
Cilla is an SA8000 trained social auditor.
Research and Writing Interests
Cilla has published extensively on adult and union learning and
co-operation, globalisation and international development. Her learning
materials and reports have been published and used internationally.
Cilla is currently researching and writing around workplace and union
learning and is also exploring accessing funding to develop new writing
on globalisation and work.
