He is currently working at Mount Saint Vincent University as a consultant postgraduate studies professor.
He was originally trained as an educational philosopher at the University of Canterbury, with interests in political and moral philosophy.
[2] In the course of his doctoral studies he became interested in a conception of freedom as liberation developed by the Brazilian educator Paulo Freire.
This interest evolved into his first book on literacy (Lankshear 1987), which explored reading and writing in relation to schooling and revolutionary change.
In the 1990s, Lankshear collaborated with James Paul Gee and Glynda Hull to develop an account of literacy and fast capitalism within "the new work order."