ASEM LLL Hub Chair:

Dr. Séamus Ó Tuama is the Director of ACE (Adult Continuing Education), University College Cork, Ireland, which has over 100 programmes and approximately 3,000 students. He was appointed as Chair of the ASEM-Lifelong Learning Hub in May 2019.

He is a member of the board/steering committee of several organisations including eucen (European University Continuing Education Network); Cork UNESCO learning city, which hosted the 3rd UNESCO Conference on Learning Cities; Cork Learning Neighbourhoods; Cork Lifelong Learning Festival; Skellig Centre for Research and Innovation; HELLIN (Higher Education Lifelong Learning Ireland Network); HERC (Higher Education Research Centre) hosted by Dublin City University. He is eucen Ambassador to the AAACE (American Association for Adult & Continuing Education). He is also active in ESREA; AAACE and PASCAL international.

He is part of the Cork based team that has led two global online learning projects for UNESCO Institute for Lifelong Learning. He has been an expert evaluator for the European Commission since the 1990s. He has also served as an external evaluator for Polish, Norwegian, Cypriot and Romanian governmental education agencies. Themes within his research include adult education, identity, social and human capital, respect, dignity, and intergenerational learning. He has published, delivered papers and workshops on these and related topics internationally, including a UNESCO mission to Egypt and high level invitations to UNAM in México, Asia, Australasia, North America and Europe.

His doctoral research was on human rights under the Irish constitution, on which he has published and delivered workshops internationally. He trained as a journalist and has had a weekly column in the Irish Examiner for more than 30 years. He previously held the role of Manager of the Centre for European Social Research (CESR) and was a senior lecturer in the Department of Government & Politics at UCC. His current appointment is at professor level, with an academic link to the Department of Government & Politics.