Aisling joined Wilton Park as Programme Director in January 2023. She has worked leading and developing international partnerships and programmes for almost twenty years within government, universities and the charitable sector. At Wilton Park Aisling will convene dialogues on trade, diplomacy and education themes.
Aisling was the first ever Higher Education Specialist in the UK Department for International Trade (now the Department for Business and Trade) for almost five years until 2021, promoting UK higher education exports and strategy, and leading UK government trade missions and participating in trade talks and global and bilateral forums. Prior to this, Aisling was International Partnerships Director at the University of Greenwich with oversight for transnational education and global mobility, overseeing one of the largest portfolios for transnational education in the UK. Aisling is a founding member of Education Investor’s Business Women in Education Network.
Her previous roles included leading on international partnerships Strathclyde Business School, as an Educational Adviser at the US-UK Fulbright Commission and managing the fellowship programme at the John Smith Trust with a focus on Eastern Europe and Central Asia. She studied Politics and History at the University of Strathclyde in Scotland and spent an undergraduate exchange year at Penn State University in the USA and received her MA degree in Comparative History from Central Michigan University, USA. She also taught US and Michigan History to undergraduate students as a Graduate Teaching Assistant. Her studies focused largely on women’s and civil rights and social movements in the US, Europe and Africa.
Aisling is a Fellow of the Royal Society for the encouragement of Arts, Manufactures and Commerce (RSA), a member of Chevening reading panels and Fulbright summer institutes panel member. She volunteers in London with Migrateful, an award-winning UK charity with a mission to support migrants, refugees and asylum seekers in their journey to integration.