Roger Hopkins

Roger Hopkins

Born in 1943, Roger Hopkins was educated at the Rhondda County Grammar School and University College Bangor where he read History. He obtained a BA in 1965 and qualified as a teacher in 1966. He has spent the bulk of his working life as a development worker in the voluntary sector and as a tutor in further and higher education institutions teaching community education and development. He was head of the Community Initiatives Unit at the Wales Council for Voluntary Action (WCVA) from 1979 to 1990 after spells teaching adult education at both the Rhondda and Newport Colleges of Further Education. During his time at WCVA he helped communities across South Wales develop strategies to collectively challenge the economic policies of successive neo-liberal orientated governments - a role he maintained when, in 1997, he set up the Higher Education Diploma in Community Development Studies at the University of Glamorgan and, concurrently, for the Department of Lifelong Learning, established a range of community action courses for delivery to active citizens in local communities. This experience, together with the ideas he collected while visiting community initiatives in the USA in 1990, on a German Marshall Fellowship, provided the knowledge and information necessary to publish a range of papers for WCVA, the University of Glamorgan and other educational and voluntary organisations. He retired from academia in 2007 but is still active in the community as a teacher and consultant. He lives in Pontypridd, South Wales, UK.

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