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Professor Barbara Crossouard (Director)

Barbara's work draws on post-structural, postcolonial and feminist scholarship to critique how education normalises and legitimises difference through intersecting identity structures such as gender, sexuality, nation, ethnicity, religion, citizenship, age. Her current research explores the intersections of work, education and gender for rural youth in Sub-Saharan Africa.

Dr Emily Danvers 

Emily is an Associate Professor In Education. Her current research interests are around everyday exclusions faced in higher education, specifically on how disadvantaged groups experience exclusion beyond the level of access and in the everyday e.g. via pedagogies, practices, policies, relationships and assessment. This includes specific projects on critical thinking, Prevent, academic writing, GRT inclusion, widening participation and feminist theory.

Professor Máiréad Dunne (Emeritus)

Máiréad is a Professor of the Sociology of Education. Her interests are in the work of education firstly in the production of social stratification, difference and inequalities and secondly in the (re-)production and valorisation of particular privileged /colonial/ 'Western' knowledges. Máiréad’s research employs feminist, postcolonial, poststructural and intersectional approaches to exploring identities with implications for livelihoods, equality and social development locally and globally. Recent research includes . 

Dr Alejandro Farieta Barrera 

Alejandro is an Assistant Professor in Education, having completed his PhD, titled 'Policy reforms for Initial Teacher Education courses in Colombia 2014-2018. A Critical Realist Impact Evaluation' in 2025. His main research interests are Educational Policy, Policy Evaluation, and Political Economy of Education. His research is both quantitative and qualitative, focused on different aspects of why policies fail from a critical realism perspective.

Read more about Alejandro

Professor Louise Gazeley

Louise is a Professor in Education and her research focuses on the intersection of educational with social (dis)advantage. Her research includes a focus on exclusion from school within the United Kingdom, but her research in school inclusion and university access more broadly are cross contextual. Doctoral researchers supported have focused on contexts including Ghana, Mexico and Nigeria.  

Professor Tamsin Hinton-Smith

Tamsin is a Professor of Sociology of Gender and Education, with particular interests around higher education participation, pedagogies, curricula, and inequalities internationally. Previous work includes Roma students’ university participation in Europe; and higher education pedagogic development in Nigeria. Her current research, , includes partners in India, Kazakhstan, Morocco and Nigeria.

Dr Nimi Hoffmann

Nimi is an Assistant Professor in International Education and Development. Nimi's research interests are in intellectual history and social policy. Her doctoral work examined how pan-African knowledge commons emerge and endure. Her current work aims to deepen this line of investigation, as well as exploring the relationship between research and policymaking, particularly in terms of social experimentation and the requirements of democratic social policy.

Dr Perpetua Kirby 

Perpetua is an Assistant Professor in Childhood & Youth in the School of Education and Social Work. Her research interests are children and people’s rights, participation and agency, including democratic approaches to education, as well as ethnographic and multimodal methodologies. She has researched child and youth participation with multiple and diverse public and third sector organisations. Her current research includes working to ensure children’s and families’ voices, as well as the views of practitioners, are heard and used to improve practice, services and policy in local authorities. 

Dr Birgul Kutan

Birgul is an Assistant Professor of Education and holds a PhD in Human Geography from Bristol University. As a political geographer and ethnographer, she has expertise in contemporary politics and social movements in Turkey and is interested in theories of social change, international development, human rights, gender-justice and decolonial theory. She leads research on Turkey for the ESRC funded project .

Professor Linda Morrice

Linda is a Professor of Education and Migration. Her research interests focus on refugee education across the life course in both the global north and the south. She is interested in informal learning through everyday social practices, and also formal learning in education settings. She has particular expertise in participative and peer research methodologies and has worked with refugee researchers on a number of projects.

Professor Mario Novelli

Mario is Professor in the Political Economy of Education at the ÃûæÂÖ±²¥. He is interested in issues related to the relationship between education/conflict/war and peace and is currently working on research related to  and .

Professor Simon Thompson

Simon is a Professor in Education, currently working as Deputy Pro-Vice-Chancellor (International) for the University's Global and Civic Engagement initiative. Simon is the former Head of School for Education and Social Work, and is also a member of the CIE Advisory Group. 

Dr Gunjan Wadhwa (Deputy Director)

Gunjan is an Assistant Professor in International Education. Her research is focused on sociology of education with a strong interest in identities, gender, youth, ethnicity, religion and citizenship, in contexts of protracted violence, conflict and postcoloniality. Gunjan's research draws on postcolonial, feminist and poststructural perspectives to understand and critique the production of social difference in international development discourses, national policy and local community settings.

Dr Rebecca Webb (Honorary)

Rebecca is an Honorary Associate Professor in Education, focusing on discourses of schooling and the subjects of schooling, locally and internationally, including the ‘schooling’ of those between 0-5 years of age. Drawing on post-foundational theoretical and methodological approaches that query the purposes of schooling for the uncertain challenges of the 21^st century, especially as these relate to climate change and sustainability.

Professor Jo Westbrook (Emeritus)

Jo’s research interests are in teacher development, curriculum, pedagogy and multilingualism, currently focused on critical and inclusive pedagogies for out of school learners, those with disabilities and those learning to read and comprehend in two or more languages.  She is working on an inclusive education project in Uganda and government adoption and scale-up of the Speed School programme in Ethiopia.