Jill Blackmore, professor in the department of education at the Deakin University in Austrailia, will talk about her examination of the gendered restructuring of higher education in Australia on Thursday.

The lecture, part of a series of brown bag lectures sponsored by the Higher Education Collaborative, will be held at noon in room 242 of the Education building. The Higher Education Collaborative is the University’s interdepartmental, cross-disciplinary affiliation of individuals with teaching, scholarly research and other professional interests in higher learning in the U.S. and around the globe.

Blackmore, who received her doctorate at Stanford University, specializes in educational leadership. She said she will address issues based on various fields of research she has covered as a professor and student, including current extensive research in gender and education specifically. The lecture will draw from her book, which examines and compares how the university sector in the U.S., U.K. and Australia have impacted middle management leadership.

“Leadership is seen to be critical, as the policy mixes that undertake this reconstructive work, both within the managerial and academic fields, often in contradictory and paradoxical ways, frame it,” Blackmore said. She added that higher education is under reconstruction to meet the needs of knowledge economies, as a form of academic capitalism, or both.

Silas McCormick, graduate student and former manager of the College of Education Collaborative website, said the lecture is a great way for people across campus to get involved.

“The topics that the Higher Education Collaborative puts on have varied greatly in the past,” McCormick said in a phone interview. “Also, we have featured some big names in the field before, so this lecture should promise to be just as good.”

McCormick said the first hour would be dedicated to the speaker, and that there would be about thirty minutes for the audience to ask questions.

Susan A. Fowler, dean of the College of Education, said the brown bag lecture is one of many opportunities to show people what exactly the college is, what they are accomplishing and where it’s headed.