Colin Kirkwood grew up in Caithness, Galloway and Ayrshire, Scotland. He studied at Ardrossan Academy, the universities of Glasgow and Edinburgh and the Scottish institute of Human Relations. He has been described as a Scottish generalist, with interests in literature and the arts, moral philosophy, politics, education, religion and psychoanalysis.
From the 1970s onwards, he played leading roles in adult and workers education and community action, promoting the ideas of the radical Brazilian educator, Paulo Freire. Between 1976 and 1986 he was employed by the Workers’ Educational Association (WEA) South-East Scotland District, initially as Tutor Organiser and then as District Secretary. He was heavily involved in the community newspaper and writers workshop movements. Community newspapers with which he was associated include ‘Staveley Now’, ‘Castlemilk Today’ and ‘Scottish Tenant’. He adapted and implemented the concept of action research in the fields of community action and community adult education, before use of the concept (first developed by Kurt Lewin, 1944) became fashionable in education.
He subsequently qualified as a counsellor and psychoanalytic psychotherapist and researched and edited a directory of all the counselling and psychotherapy services and trainings in Scotland (published 1989). In 1994, he became head of the Centre for Counselling Studies at the Moray House School of Education at the University of Edinburgh. Following retirement from the University, he worked for five years as Senior Psychotherapist at the Huntercombe Edinburgh Hospital, where he worked with women and girls with severe eating disorders.
He wrote and published extensively on community and adult education. His books include ‘Adult Education and the Unemployed’ (1984), ‘Vulgar Eloquence: Essays on Education, Community and Politics’ (1990), ‘Living Adult Education: Freire in Scotland' (first edition, 1989) (with Gerri Kirkwood), 'The Persons in Relation Perspective: in Counselling, Psychotherapy and Community Adult Learning' (2012) and 'Community Work and Adult Education in Staveley, North-East Derbyshire, 1969-1972' (2020). He also published poetry and literary criticism.