Peter Samuels
Senior Lecturer in Research Practice
Graduate School of Management
Peter obtained a BA in Mathematics from Cambridge University in 1987 (converted to an MA in 1991). In the first 10 years of his career, he worked as a researcher, lecturer and educational developer in mathematics and mathematics education for the University of Reading, the Numerical Algorithms Group Ltd., Reading College, Brunel University and the University of Newcastle.
Biography
I am a Senior Lecturer in Research Practice in the Business School. My core role is as an academic developer with an emphasis on applied statistics, research methods and research writing. I am passionate about developing students and staff into competent academics. I seek to use my expertise and leadership abilities to enable others to fulfil their potentials whilst also collaborating, carrying out and publishing research.
Academic expertise
My first degree is in Mathematics. My PhD is in Mathematics and Cognitive Psychology. I have experience in educational research and in developing educational technology. I have worked as a learning developer. I retrained as an applied statistician and set up the Statistics Advisory Service at BCU. I have become an expert in research methods training and coordinate over 1,000 dissertation students per year. I also self-trained as an academic writing tutor and provide training to doctoral students in proposal writing. I also do project and voluntary work in East Africa and run writing retreats for the Business School.
Journey to BCU
I obtained an MA in Mathematics from Cambridge University 1991. In the first 10 years of my career I worked as a researcher, lecturer and educational developer in mathematics and mathematics education for the University of Reading, the Numerical Algorithms Group Ltd., Reading College, Brunel University and the University of Newcastle.
In 2000, I obtained a PhD in Mathematics from the University of Reading on “An account of research into an area of analytical fluid mechanics”. I then had a career break mainly doing voluntary work in East Africa before becoming an IT lecturer and branch manager of a private FE college in Birmingham in 2003.
From 2006 to 2010 I worked as Senior Research Fellow for the sigma Centre for Excellence in Mathematics Support at Coventry University. I also became coordinated their Serious Games and Virtual Worlds Applied Research Group. From 2010 to 2018 I worked as an Academic Skills Tutor/Teaching Fellow in the Centre for Academic Success at BCU. In 2017 I was promoted to Senior Lecturer. I was transferred to the Business School in 2018 following a restructuring.
Notable projects
I have been running intensive training courses for doctoral students in proposal writing and research methods since 2017. I started in Rwanda but have also tun these courses in Uganda and Kenya. This has enhanced the teaching I have provided to DBA students since 2018. In 2023, I had a book published by Taylor and Francis on 'Proposal Writing for Business Research Projects' which focuses on undergraduate and master's dissertations. I have agreed to write another book with them on 'Doctoral Proposal Writing: A guide for international students'.