James Arthur received his doctorate from Oriel College, University of Oxford in 1992. He is currently Professor of Education and founding Director of the Jubilee Centre for Character in the University of Birmingham (2012-2020). Previously he was Head of the School of Education (2010-2015) and Deputy Pro Vice Chancellor (2015-2019). He was personally made an Officer of the British Empire by the Queen in 2018 for services to education. He holds numerous academic honours and fellowships including Visiting Professor of the University of Glasgow, Honorary Research Fellow of the University of Oxford and Honorary Senior Fellow at West Point Military Academy. He is Chair of Britain’s Society for Educational Studies, was editor of the British Journal of Educational Studies for ten years, and has sat on numerous government committees and groups in education. He was inducted as the first Director of the National Institute for Christian Education Research (2005-2009) by the Archbishop of Canterbury in 2005. He has written widely on virtues, character and education and his recent publications include: The Formation of Character in Education: From Aristotle to the 21st Century (2020), Virtues in the Public Sphere: Citizenship, Civic Friendship and Duty, (2019), and Policy Entrepreneurship in Education: Engagement, Influence and Impact (2018). He is currently writing a book on the Christian Virtues and the Formation of Character (forthcoming 2021) and is Visiting Scholar in the Thomistic Institute at the Angelicum University in Rome for the autumn term 2020.

The Jubilee Centre for Character and Virtues is a pioneering interdisciplinary research centre focussing on character, virtues and values in the interest of human flourishing founded by James Arthur in 2012. The Centre promotes a moral concept of character in order to explore the importance of virtue for public and professional life. The Centre is a leading informant on policy and practice in this area and through its extensive range of research projects contributes to a renewal of character virtues in both individuals and societies. The particular project for which this award has been given is Teaching Character Virtues – A Neo-Aristotelian Approach which captures the amalgam of teaching programmes initiated by James in the Centre from the internationally recognised and influential Framework for Character Education in Schools to the world’s first distance Master’s degree in character education which has also been internationally praised. James has promoted a Neo-Aristotelian approach to virtue and character formation in the academic programmes within the Jubilee Centre and together with the Centre’s staff continues to design award winning and successful academic programmes in character virtues.