Career

I am a Senior Lecturer in Sociology of Education, specialising in the field of Higher Education research. I joined the University of Glasgow in December 2018; however, before this I worked as a lecturer at Lancaster University (2015-2018), Edge Hill University (2013-2015), and Teesside University (2009-2013). I have worked both in Sociology and Social Science departments, and research centres and Schools of Education. My teaching is often in fields related to educational theory, youth studies, and the sociology of policy and educational inequalities. Equally, my research is interdisciplinary, operating at the intersection of sociology, geography and education.

My qualifications include a  ESRC funded PhD in Sociology from the University of Manchester (2010), an MA in Social Research Methods from the University of Leeds (2004) and a BA in Sociology from the University of Newcastle (UK) (2003).

Responsibilities 

I am Programme Director for the online/distance Doctorate of Education here in the school of Education. Please get in tough if you have questions regarding the EdD. 

My research focuses on the everyday practices, personal relationships and mobilities of students and graduates in higher education. My work considers how feelings of belonging, enactments of various modes of citizenship, and personal wellbeing are negotiated in and through student mobilities at various scales and within diverse spaces. I work at the intersection of sociology and geography, foregrounding space and place-making for students in higher education, and placing their experiences as students in the broader context of their identities and attachments as people in the world. My research on student commuters and local student mobilities in Higher Education with Dr Mark Holton is an example of this work. 

Much of my work seeks to examine the relational (as opposed to individualistic) dimensions of decision-making, and the role of personal relationships in making sense of education and work-based identities. I am particularly interested in the ways higher education policy, and popular representations of students, shapes what we come to recognise as distinctly student identities and values and how this creates both a hierarchy of experience and a partial view of an increasingly diverse cohort of uiversity entrants and graduates.

This interest in representations of students and higer education more broadly has shaped my recent work on Millennials and generational discourses as they relate to student experiences and identities (with Dr Kim Allen and Professor Nicola Ingram). This work also examines what modes and expressions of citizenship are made (un)available to students in the contemporary spaces of HE. 

Finally, I am interested in methodologically innovative research, particularly techniques that illuminate the different temporalities of student experiences, identities and modes of belonging (i.e. qualitative longitudinal research), the mobilities that underpin transitions and experiences (i.e. go along methods, mapping, walking interviews) and participatory visual methods. My work has a strong focus on the interrelated experiences of social class and gender and I draw on theoretical frameworks which foreground reflexivity and the relational and emotional dimensions of inequality, identity and belonging. Further interests include graduate trajectories and employability including university-to-work transitions; intergenerational issues as they relate to education and work; friendships in education; student citizenship and representational issues; and student housing.

List by: Type | Date

Doctoral Students (Current) 

Abdulaziz Hamoud M Alanzi - Saudi Arabian HE Policy and World Rankings 

Yijie Wang - Gender and Citizenship in China 

Dawn Dane - First year university students' experiences of transitioning to higher education and available academic resources 

PhD Students (Completed)

Shin Pyng Wong 'Correspondence or Discrepancy? A Multi-method Examination of Internationalisation Agendas in Malaysian Private Higher Education' (October 2018)

Amy Robertson 'Storytelling for Learning in a Diagnostic Radiography Community of Practice.' (January 2019)

Joseph Collins 'Lifelong Learning as a Transformative Endeavour: How do part-time mature learners make sense of barriers and opportunities in Higher Education?' (January 2019)

Sadanand Varma 'Conceptions of Teaching and Learning Interactions Among Industry Practitioners Taught by Practitioner-Tutors: A Case Study of Part-time MBA Students in Singapore' (March 2019)

Mike Johnson 'Using Mobilage thinking to study healthcare students' experiences of using and learning to use mobile phones for academic work' (May 2019)

For the academic year 2019-20 I provide teaching on the following:

• Approaches to Inclusive Learning (Ed Stuides for Adult, Community and Youth)
• Modern Educational Thought (Core Masters level module)
• EdD Ethics and Education (Doctorate in Education)