Staff Profile

Trained as a primary school teacher, he worked in Glasgow in Play, Community Sports and Homelessness before moving to Nottingham in the mid-1980s where he worked as a Community Development Worker for the local authority. He then went on to work for the government's City Challenge initiative and developed community-based learning within further education colleges, returning to Glasgow in the late 1990s to establish a project which worked with long-term unemployed people, training them to become community development workers.

Over the past 13 years he has worked at the University of Glasgow, where he currently manage postgraduate programmes in Community Development. He has recently co-authored a book on Popular Education for Youth and Community Work and is currently working on an international study of approaches to Community Organising and social change.

In order to keep a broad national and international perspective, he is a board member on both the Federation for Community Development Learning and the International Association for Community Development.

His present research interests include: Community Development, Higher Education and Social Capital; Community Leadership and Social Change; Widening Participation in Higher Education; and Community Organising and Social Change. He is also interested in how the theories of Freire and Gramsci can act as an explanatory framework for the context of Community Development practice and provide insights into empowering practice for social change. Finally he is interested in how the concept of Social Capital is understood and used by policy makers, Community Development practitioners and local people, and how this concept can be used to ensure the development of strongly bonded communities which are able to analyse and transform their social situations.

Selected Publications: 

Beck, D. (2016) Re-seeing and re-naming the world: community development and prefigurative democratic work. Radical Community Work Journal, 2(1)

Beck, D. and Purcell, R. (2015) Editorial [Inaugural Issue]. Radical Community Work Journal, 1(1),

Beck, D. and Purcell, R. (2015) Everyday experience and community development practice. Radical Community Work Journal, 1(1),

Beck, D. and Purcell, R. (2013) Developing generative themes for community action. In: Curran, S., Harrison, R. and Mackinnon, D.(eds.) Working with Young People [2nd ed.]. Sage: Los Angeles, C.A., USA. ISBN 9781446273272

Beck, D. and Purcell, R. (2013) International Community Organising: Taking Power, Making Change. Policy Press: Bristol. ISBN 9781847429766

Beck, D. (2012) A community of strangers: supporting drug recovery through community development and Freirean pedagogy. Journal of Progressive Human Services, 23(2), pp. 110-126. (doi:10.1080/10428232.2012.666725)

Beck, D (2012) Community of Strangers: Supporting Drug Recovery through Community Development and Freirean Pedagogy, Journal of Progressive Human Services (in press)

Beck, D and Purcell, R (2012) International community organising: Taking power, making change, Bristol, Policy Press

Beck, D. and Purcell, R (2010) Popular Education Practice for Youth and Community Development Work, Exeter, Learning Matters

Beck, D. (2008) Co-investigation of Social Capital In: Doyle, L., Adams, D., Tibbitt, J., and Welsh, P. (2008) Building Stronger Communities: connecting research, policy and practice,  Leicester, NIACE

Beck D (2007) Adding Some Glue to the Pot: Community Development, Education and the Development of Social Capital Learning Communities. International Journal of Learning in Social Contexts,  pp. 78-108

Beck, D. (2006) Together for Change: A Partnership Approach to Individual and Community Learning.  In Chapman, Cartwright, McGilp (2006) Lifelong learning, participation and equity, Dordrecht: Springer,  pp.105 – 121

Beck, D. (2004) Under The Influence: an arts based approach to alcohol misuse, Glasgow, Greater Govan Drugs Forum 2004