ULS CEO & Director
Dr Alan Bruce is CEO and founder of Universal Learning Systems. A sociologist who studied in Los Angeles, Galway and Amsterdam, he has lectured in universities in France, England, the U.S. and Ireland and worked in policy research for the European Commission in Brussels. He has lectured and published widely on the social construction of disability, labour market policy, equality paradigms, social inclusion, strategic change and managing diversity. He lectured for the National University of Ireland Galway in equality, diversity and systematic training. In 2014 he was appointed Associate Professor with UOC (Open University of Catalonia) in Barcelona on conflict resolution and innovative learning. A Senior Research Fellow in Education with the University of Edinburgh (2009-2014), he also lectures on the Master in European Project Management, in Florence, Italy. In 2015 he was elected Senior Fellow of EDEN (European Distance and E-Learning Network). In 2010 he became Vice-President of EDEN.
In 2016 he was International Expert for Innovative Learning with the Open University of Hong Kong and the launch of the Institute for Research in Open and Innovative Education (IROPINE). In 2016 he was appointed as Visiting Professor for Global Learning in the Changhua University of Education in Taiwan. In 2016 he was appointed as Learning Design Expert with Universidad Nacional de Educación (UNAE) in Ecuador.
He works intensively at the intersection of digital learning, inclusion strategies and innovative universal design. In 2018 he was appointed to the Steering Committee on Online Training for the European Workforce, established by the European Commission. He is Academic Coordinator for the Conflicts of Interest program validated by Queens University Belfast. He has lectured in Kosovo, Bosnia, Romania, Cyprus, Spain/Euzkadi and Northern Ireland on conflict transformation, human rights and innovative inclusive education.
He is External Expert Evaluator for the European Commission on migration policy and social inclusion. He is currently the Irish representative on various EU Erasmus + Capacity Building projects for Palestinian universities. In 2021 he was appointed to the Advisory Council of the Department of Education in GD Goenka University, Delhi, India. He is currently consulting to the Finnish Government funded innovative learning initiative in Jordan. He is an expert external consultant to the National E-learning Center in Saudi Arabia. He is a registered researcher and evaluator with MUR (Ministry of Universities and Research) in Rome, Italy.