Research degrees in progress

We have over 100 current postgraduate researchers at the Education and Social Research Institute. On this page, you can meet some of our community and find out more about their research.

Abdullah Alghamdi

• Leading school improvement in Saudia Arabia: Investigating total quality management practices

Fatima Zohra Amouri

• Models of blended learning in an Algerian university: Exploring the attitudes of EFL university students and teachers

Charlotte Arculus

• More than words: Reconceptualising young children’s communication and language through improvisation and the temporal arts

Carrie Birkett

• Stepping out of the system: Constructing a grounded theory on the process of becoming a home educator

Karin Boyle

• A multiple case study of reading comprehension: How do teachers teach and understand their teaching of reading comprehension?

Catherine Brady

• From language learners to language users: How using online video calling can support spoken language in MFL classroom - a longitudinal study

Michael Chesterman 

• Investigating the potential of collaborative intergenerational game making

Memory Fungai Chiororo

• A critical analysis of the university primary education goal with special reference to how disadvantaged children, particularly girls, are and might be engaged in Zimbabwe

Ruth Churchill Dower

• Spaces of difference – attuning through immersive dance with children who sometimes don’t speak

Mark Thomas Craig

• Power and ideology in the Co-operative Group 1970-2015

Usama Darwish

• An investigation of the impact that engaging teachers in research activity has for teacher voice, identity and empowerment. 

Jedde De Vries

• Measuring physical playfulness in adolescents

Natalie Diddams

• A material feminist study of women-led comedy as a site for gender disruption within Fourth Wave Feminism(s)

Claudia Ferreira

• Bilingual language on the move

Hannah Guy

• An examination of the role of images in the spread of disinformation on social media

Lizabeth Jane Hannaford 

• Unicorns, rock stars and nerds: Learning, identity and participation amongst UK data journalists

Georgia Louise Hindle

• A study on the changing role of the mentor in school-led teacher education

Rania Maklad 

• An exploration of the distinctive skills and knowledge of multilingual student teachers in higher education

Heidi Mapley

• Playing at inclusion: Disability, toys, and early childhood education in the UK

Karen Meanwell

• The changing landscape of teacher training: How partnerships are re-made in times of change

Michelle Murray

• Developing participant engagement within a multi-academy trust to empower senior leaders within the schools and across the trust

Katherine O’Brien

• A fluctuating, intermediate warp: Technologies of creativity and learning in mathematics education

Steve Pool

• Residency as method - a process approach to artistic ways of knowing

Catharine Quirk-Marku

• Influences on learning to teach: A longitudinal study of early career teachers’ developing professionalism

Richard Remelie

• Why does education matter? Exploring the motivations and reflexivity of students in a modern university

Helen Ryan-Atkin

• Accountability, governance and identity within multi-academy trusts

David Ben Shannon

• Affect and neuroqueer learning in the early years: Sonic and electric as relational pedagogy

Yvonne Sinclair

• Teaching and learning about British slavery in two post-colonial contexts, England and Jamaica: Secondary history teachers and their pupils’ perspectives

Gillian Mary Smith

• On not being able to read: Exploring the figured world of emergent literacies

Ange Tyler

• A study of how senior leaders in one large multi-academy trust balance performativity and social justice

Master of Philosophy (MPhil)

Hind Abdulrahman R Alowin

• A study of perceptions of leadership and its role in educational transformation in girls’ secondary schools in Saudi Arabia

Joanne Caldwell

• Them and Us: To what extent is the identity of professional services staff shaped by their relationship with their academic colleagues? A case study of an academic school

Jacqueline Cash

• The lifeworld of the nursing associate

Kevin Dalton-Johnson

• Improving inclusive practices in education through the power of Blackness, art and the emancipation of Black teaching professionals

Robert Gardiner

• Value in music education: Assimilation and contradiction

Emily Haddock

• Good practice in autism

Clare Halfpenny

• Quality in higher education: A comparison of commercial and traditional undergraduate programmes

Deborah Jane Hallworth

• Challenging behaviour: How is the problem constructed in primary schools in North West England?

Louise Hayes

• An exploration of unconscious bias within secondary school computing teacher education

Jeremy Bruce Hopper

• Engaging students in learning in higher education: A critique of current approaches and a consideration of alternatives

Rachel Kelly

• A place for textiles

Kamal Uddin Khan

• An examination of the common inspection framework and its impact on independent Muslim schools in the UK

Fiona Jane Liddy

• The experience of othering and construction of identity of eastern European children in schools

Nicola Ruth Martins

• Art and design learning journey: Interactions between learners and materials

Lisa Bernadette O’Connor

• Adult perceptions of the importance of addressing the self-esteem of learners

Clare Pheasey 

• Another brick in the wall? Evolving notions of undergraduate experience and satisfaction, and their (re)positioning within UK higher education

Alison Ramsay

• Expanding approaches to reflective practice in university-based initial teacher education (ITE)

Lindsay Schofield

• Ecologies of touch

Calum Thomson

• Threshold concepts of identity in third space industry-academics

Chloe Turnbull

• How does policy and practice affect autonomy and agency of a child in the classroom?

Karen Ann Tuzylak-Maguire

• Investigating the transition from trainee teacher to newly qualified teacher

Craig David Veevers

• Is the predominance of liberal values in education contributing to student radicalisation?

Emily Webb

• An exploratory study of the introduction of MOOCs in a university context

Karen Williams

• A question of identity - being and becoming a lecturer: An exploration of how early years professionals from a range of practice backgrounds are authoring themselves as university lecturers

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