Professor Ruth Bridgstock ALTF PFHEA leads institution-wide education transformation focused on embedding future and change capabilities across curriculum, partnering with industry and community and providing senior leadership around educational governance, change readiness, capability uplift, and evaluation.

She recently led the institution to achieve Moonshot 1 of its Horizon 2025 strategic plan - 'every learner gets a work experience', by working with educators across the institution to embed a fully scaffolded progression of work integrated learning into the curriculum of all undergraduate courses. For this collaborative achievement, Swinburne was awarded a 2024 Australian Financial Review Higher Education Award for Employabiilty. 

Ruth has also led work at Swinburne to offer personalised student support and learning opportunities based on sophisticated AI-based predictive models and data analytics. One program fosters student retention and success within and beyond the curriculum through integrated support, and another uses data and insights to foster student career capabilities, senses of belonging and purpose, engagement, success and graduate outcomes. Ruth and Swinburne colleagues won the 2025 NAGCAS Award for Career Development Practice for the latter work.

Ruth is an internationally recognised researcher in education for the future of life and work, and authentic curriculum and pedagogy. Her particular research expertise and interests relate to fostering future-capability – that is, how students, educators and educational institutions can learn and adapt to rapid and ongoing digital, social, and environmental changes. Ruth's current research interests are focussed on future-capable curriculum, learning and identity development through social networks, interdisciplinary pedagogies, and fostering effective learning partnerships with industry and community.

Ruth is Principal Fellow of the Higher Education Academy, TEQSA Expert, AAUT Award winner, and Australian National Senior Teaching Fellow for Graduate Employability 2.0. Her success in Australian competitive grants (including ARC schemes), industry and public sector funding has translated into more than 70 educational research outputs, with more than 6,000 citations. Her latest books include 'Higher Education and the Future of Graduate Employability' (Edward Elgar), and 'Creative Graduate Pathways Within and Beyond the Creative Industries' (Routledge). She authored the second-most read and cited article in Australia's Q1 Higher Education journal Higher Education Research and Development, 'The Graduate Attributes We've Overlooked: Enhancing Graduate Employability Through Career Management Skills'.