Mark is an anthropologist by training.  He has carried out research into religious conversion to Islam, and Anglican Christianity, in Mexico, which informs his teaching in the Anthropology of Religion.  He is experienced in action research and has expertise in practitioner enquiry.  His research interests in Education focus on Learning for Sustainability, social justice, and global citizenship.  His research explores the relationship between place and pedagogy within education.  Mark also has an interest in law, which he has pursued academically, recently presenting at a conference on Land and Property Beyond the Centenary (2025).

Mark's most recent work includes a co-authored peer-reviewed feature article in Education in the North on adaptations to UHI's full-time PGDE programmes based on Arctic Pedagogy (2025), for which he was lead author.  He has also produced a peer-reviewed article in the Oxford Encylopedia of Religion on Islamic tourism in Mexico (2025), as well as a co-authored article on the role of language in place-attentiveness in Teacher Education (2025).  In early 2026, he presented a conference paper on Halal tourism in Mexico, and beyond, as well as a joint presentation on the research interests of the Education Team at UHI.  He presented conference papers (2024 and 2025) on the influence of Arctic Pedagogy on changes to the PGDE programmes at UHI, and wrote a chapter (2022) in the Routledge Handbook of Islam in the West, about 'Islam in Mexico and Central America'.  Before that, he was a researcher on the Scottish Attainment Challenge project for UHI, where he was investigating rural early career teachers' use of school-based evidence for improving the attainment of pupils from deciles 1 and 2 of the Scottish Index of Multiple Deprivation in literacy, numeracy and health and well being.  In 2023, he presented a paper on having a passion for Anthropology in Education (https://www.bera.ac.uk/wp-content/uploads/2022/11/Mark-Lindley-Highfield-1-1.pdf).  In 2019, Mark presented a conference paper focused on the notion of equity in Scottish education and its relation to the 2030 Sustainable Development Goals (https://nomadit.co.uk/conference/asa19/paper/51198). 

Mark is also interested in genealogical research and local history.  In 2023, he published an article in The Greenwood Tree, the journal of the Somerset & Dorset Family History Society, and in 2025 he had an article published in The Doncaster Ancestor, the journal of the Doncaster and District Family History Society.  In 2026, an article was published in Record: Journal of the Montgomeryshire Genealogical Society.

His 2015 work The Politics of Religious Conversion is a helpful text for any student or scholar wishing to think about religious conversion or the politics of the same.

Mark qualified as a Teacher at the University of Edinburgh and taught in Primary Schools in Aberdeen City and Aberdeenshire.  He has also taught Religious Studies, Geography, and Anthropology at Secondary level.

Mark is Programme Leader for the new BA (Hons) Moral and Philosophical Studies with Religious Education, which enables students to become a Secondary Teacher of RE (Religious Education), RME (Religious and Moral Education) and RMPS (Religious, Moral and Philosophical Studies) in Scotland.  UHI's undergraduate degrees in Education have been ranked 1st in Scotland and 3rd in the UK by the Guardian University Guide 2026.  He also teaches on the PGDE programme as well as being the Programme Leader for the degree of Master of Education (MEd) in Critical Enquiry.  He has designed several degree modules for UHI, including: Anthropology of Religion, Through the Looking Glass (introducing ethnography and anthropology, now known as Studying People in the Social Sciences), and Thinking and Writing for Study, Work and Life (using philosophical skills to develop academic writing).  He teaches on the BSc (Hons) Psychology degree and presently works on the BA (Hons) Philosophy degree in addition to Teacher Education.  Mark was also seconded for part of his time to the University of Dundee to teach on the Rural Learn To Teach programme.

Mark has assessment expertise, having been the Principal Examiner for the Cambridge Research Qualification at Cambridge Assessment International Examinations (University of Cambridge) and Principal Examiner for the Anthropology A Level Project paper (AQA).  He is a Chartered Educational Assessor.

Mark was educated at the universities of Oxford, Aberdeen, Edinburgh, and the Open University, gaining three First-class honours degrees (BA 2003, MA 2004 and LLB 2024) and a Master's degree with distinction (MRes 2005), before moving on to postgraduate research (MPhil 2012) and further study (MEd 2010, BSc 2015 and MA Ed 2015). For his undergraduate performance at the University of Aberdeen, Mark was awarded the Lumsden & Sachs Fellowship and received ESRC funding to carry out his fieldwork in Mexico.  He also holds the Certificate in History of Family and Genealogical Methods with First Class Honours from the University of Limerick, Ireland, for which he received a commemorative clock for being top of his cohort.