Zoe Lewis

Zoe worked in early years settings, schools and voluntary organisations in Warwickshire before joining BCU in 2014. She completed her Early Childhood Studies degree and trained to become a teacher as a mature student and then taught predominantly in Reception classes before becoming Head of Early Years. Zoe completed her MA in Early Childhood Education as a part-time student in 2013. Since then, she has been engaged in research and advocacy work that promotes children’s rights as well as the need to value and support highly qualified practitioners in early years settings.

Zoe leads and teaches on undergraduate and Master’s level modules across early childhood and education studies where she focuses on research, professional practice, early years policy, young children’s play and creativity. In 2020 she became course leader for the BA (Hons) Early Childhood Studies course.

Currently, Zoe is studying for a professional doctorate in early childhood education. Her research is an ethnographic study of young children’s creativity in an art gallery and forest school setting. She is researching from a feminist new materialist perspective to explore the ways in which creativity might be understood as a collective endeavour rather than an individual trait.