John Fellows is a graduate of the University of Edinburgh (MA, politics) and a winner of the Sir William Darling Memorial Prize (1997) for an outstanding contribution to the reputation for the university through project work in local schools. He was President of Edinburgh University Students' Association for 1998–99, his activities included lobbying the Scottish Parliament to set up an inquiry into student finance and campaigning against the Bank of Scotland business partnership with Pat Robertson Financial Services in the USA; other areas of interest included the promotion of widening access to university, and the adoption of ethical investment policies within the university. He is currently a co-ordinator for the Lothian Equal Access Programme for Schools, a project to widen access to higher education, based at the Heriot-Watt and Napier Universities in Edinburgh.