My background is in Youth and Community work, and my first degree was in Informal and Community Education (YMCA George Williams College). Having worked in a variety of youth and community settings, I moved on to Adult Education including working with Age Concern and volunteers and staff at the Methodist Church Connexional Team (headquarters). During this time I gained my Masters in Philosophy and Religion at Heythrop College (UCL). I gained my PhD at York St John University in 2019, and later became a Senior Fellow of the Higher Education Academy.
In 2004, I started work as a freelance writer for a variety of charities and agencies including Christian Aid and the Department for International Development. I also offered freelance staff training and taught craft in community settings.
Throughout my career I have had a strong interest in social justice and democracy and this is evident in my writing, teaching and research. More recently I have been developing Democratic Methodologies in Educational Research, and have particular interests in the trend towards populism and the current culture wars in education. Much of my work is around working with young people to carry out their own research to then take action to improve situations relevant to them, the main project I have been leading on in this regard has been Toilet Talk.
I am a Senior Fellow in the Higher Education Academy.
I teach on the undergraduate suite in Children Young People and Education. Specifically I teach the research and dissertation modules across all three degrees, as well as supervise dissertation students.
I teach and supervise students on the Masters in Education, and am module lead for Contemporary Issues, National, Global and Local.
I teach on a range of modules on the EdD professional doctorate, especially regarding discourse analysis and ethical research.
My specialist areas are:
- Research methodologies
- Research ethics
- Education policy
- Social theory
- Global perspectives,
- Inequalities and families.
My PhD ('Unpicking the neoliberal noose: working towards democratic parent engagement in a primary school.') was completed in 2019 and I am now researching a variety of education issues that promote democratic voice in local, national and global settings. My current research includes working with children and young people to research and improve problems with their school toilet policy and practice (Toilet Talk), authoritarian behaviour policies in schools and democratic research methodologies. This involves taking an intersectional, feminist, and political approach.
Having used action research and critical discourse analytics in my doctoral research, I have a strong interest in participatory research, innovative research methodologies and feminist research. This is reflected in the wide range of doctoral candidates that I supervise.
Doctoral supervision
- Queering the Spectacle: a participatory study of the Legacy of Section 28 in Primary Schools.
- Participatory Research with Autistic Adults.
- Ethnographic study of intercultural education.
- Autoethnographic action research study of community activism in Liverpool.
- Case study of academic tutoring in a Higher Education setting.
- Ethnographic and participatory study of bullying and banter in PE in a secondary school.
- A decolonial policy analysis of development education.
- A qualitative study of employability agendas in Higher Education.
- Developing young people as researchers (A critical case study exploration of voice recognition).
- Populism in education.
For further information see: Google Scholar Profile
Recent publications
I am the Chair of School Ethics Committee, School of Education, Language and Psychology, and also a Co-convener of Participatory Enquiry, Action Research and Democratic Methodologies Research Group, Institute of Social Justice, York St John.
Until recently I was the Chair of Governors for a primary school for 6 years and was a governor for 14 years in total.
I am the editor of the John Macmurray Seminar newsletter.
I am an external examiner at Staffordshire University.
