Peter is interested in social work and sensory impairment, particularly deafblindness and dual sensory loss. He is also interested in the relationship between law and social work practice, and the concept of vulnerability, especially in the context of safeguarding adults work. Peter’s practise experience has largely been with older people and disabled people. He has developed a particular interest in the experience of ageing with disability, including ageing with deafblindness. Ageing with deafblindness and the experience of vulnerability were the focus of his doctoral research, which adopted interpretative phenomenological analysis to explore the lived experience of these phenomena.
Joanne Hill
Associate Head of the School of Education and Social Work 
Doctoral thesis title: Growing your own: The impact of School Direct on the training of primary teachers
Current research interests: Teacher training, children of incarcerated parents/carers
I have been involved in the training of primary teachers since the early 1990s. I worked in three primary schools before becoming Deputy Head Teacher and for a while acting Head Teacher, but throughout all my school based career stages I continued to mentor and support the development of trainee teachers. I joined BCU in 2000 and have had a variety of different leadership roles including, partnership managers, PGCE Primary and Early Years course leader and, currently Associate Head of School but I have never moved far away from teacher training. I began my PhD part-time studies in 2013 and they concluded, successfully, in 2020.
Senior Lecturer in Academic Support 
Doctoral thesis title: Run-commuting in the UK: the emergence, production and potential of a mobile practice
Current research interests: Active practices, running, active travel, cycling, mobilities
I am a human geographer whose work sits at the intersection of mobility, transport, sport, health and cultural geography. My research concerns everyday active practices: the ways in which they happen, how they change, and what they can tell us about societies and spaces. I completed my PhD at Royal Holloway, University of London, exploring the rise of run-commuting in the UK. I am currently researching multi-modal mobilities, post-collision cycling practices and running during social distancing. I tweet @SimonIanCook and blog at www.jographies.wordpress.com.
Senior Lecturer 
Doctoral thesis title: ‘So, What Are We Looking at Here?’ - Research, its Position and Pedagogy in the UK Radiography Profession
Current research interests: Research pedagogy and the importance of research for a profession and our patients, knowledge mobilisation in the context of students entering practice as ‘thinking’ practitioners, qualitative methodology using imagery
Louise is a senior lecturer at Birmingham City University, with a strong interest in research, and enjoys teaching and supervising undergraduate, postgraduate, and doctoral research students. As a diagnostic radiographer, she worked in clinical practice for many years and brings that experience to vocational degree teaching in a higher education setting. Her research interest is the pedagogy of research in radiography, for which Louise continues to develop her Doctoral work on an innovative qualitative
data collection and analysis method. The aim of Louise’s work is to improve students’ learning experiences and confidence as critical professional practitioners.
Deputy Course Leader in BA (Hons) Early Childhood Studies 
Doctoral thesis title: Exploring the affordances of touchscreen technologies in early years settings in the West Midlands
Current research interests: Touchscreen technologies, early years pedagogy, children's voice, SEND and inclusion
Dr Shannon Ludgate is currently the deputy course leader for BA Early Childhood Studies, and the Course Leader for DipHE in Pre-School Education (Dual Award) at Birmingham City University. Shannon completed her BA Early Childhood Studies degree at Birmingham City University in 2014, and went on to complete a funded PhD researching the affordances of touchscreen technology in the early years. Shannon’s PhD research led to the creation and implementation of a new method for gaining consent with children, and she has since sought to continue developing innovative and child-focused ways of gaining consent and ongoing assent with young children during research.
Shannon’s experience in researching technology in the early years led to her becoming a member of the working group for Understanding the World, creating the Birth to 5 Matters non-statutory guidance to be used in conjunction with the Early Years Foundation Stage framework. Shannon continues to research into the use of technology for young children, and more recently has been working alongside Dr Carolyn Blackburn and Clair Meares, assessing parents’ experiences of home-schooling children with SEND during the Coronavirus pandemic.
Research Assistant 
External agents in schools: roles and responsibilities for children and young people’s learning and wellbeing
Current research interests: Education to community partnerships, creative research methods, researcher education, researcher development
Dr Julia Everitt is a Research Assistant in the Centre for the Study of Practice and Culture in Education (CSPACE). She has worked in education since 2002, as a lecturer, manager and commissioner of adult & community learning in schools, workplaces and community settings. The success of these roles was the development of partnerships between education, statutory agencies, businesses and voluntary organisations. This led Julia to a part-time MA in Education and then a professional doctorate (EdD). Her thesis explored how education to community partnerships are played out in practice in four case study schools as they attempted to respond to inequalities in education. She has published about the implications of these policies on practice and blogged about the issues with auditing these partnerships.
Julia moved into research in 2014 to gain experience during her doctorate and has worked on over 23 projects, which includes randomized controlled trials, external evaluations and research consultancy. Funders include the Department for Education, The Edge Foundation, the Gatsby Foundation, the Office for Students, the Careers & Enterprise Company and the Education and Training Foundation. The evaluations were generally of interventions responding to educational inequalities where the response included professionals from the statutory, voluntary and private sectors. Julia was involved in bid writing and project management of several projects.
Julia is also interested in creative research methods and is a co-convener of the Visual Sociology Study Group for the British Sociological Association. She is also interested in research supervision and a current internally funded project is exploring how expectations between supervisors and students are arranged during the doctoral journey.
Course lead, Master’s in Education 
Doctoral thesis title: What Matters in Initial Teacher Education? Posthuman Enquiries
Current research interests: Post-qualitative methodologies, creative and participatory methodologies, teacher education, continuing professional development, critical pedagogies
Before working in higher education, Lou worked in secondary schools where she was a department head for English and a senior leader. She has subsequently worked on several Initial Teacher Education programmes in secondary and primary phases on both university and schools based routes. Her doctoral thesis explored the experiences of new teachers using posthuman theories together with creative research methods. She is currently the course lead for the Master’s in Education course at BCU and is involved in various projects exploring the experiences of higher education for staff and students using creative and participatory research methods.
Amber Lewis
Research Assistant, Centre for Life and Sport Sciences 
Doctoral thesis title: Investigating the cytotoxic properties of Fagonia indica extract on breast and colon cancer
Current research interests: Cellular biology, membrane transporter proteins, cellular signalling, pathology
Amber became interested in a career in research after spending a year working as a laboratory technician in a cellular pathology department, following the completion her undergraduate degree in Biomedical sciences. At Leeds University she completed a Master’s programme where she researched cellular signalling events underpinning the onset of resistance to targeted hormone therapies in breast cancer. She took this interest in cellular biology into her PhD at Aston University where she worked on a project determining the effects of traditional medicines in breast and colon cancer. Amber has now taken on the role of Research Assistant at Birmingham City University, where she hopes to continue her research in cellular signalling and membrane transport in disease.
Course Lead, Professional Development for Educators
Doctoral thesis title: From shifting sands to disappearing in dunes: Using critically reflexive autoethnography to rethink place, position and purpose in general classroom music teacher education
Current research interests: Music education, Pedagogy, Autoethnography, Storying research data, Teacher professional development
Facets of my professional life: learner, teacher, teacher educator and international teacher educator. In fact, I have never left education, spending more than half a century in the field. Talking about fields, I used Bourdieu’s theoretical concepts in my thesis. I was particularly fascinated by Bourdieu’s reflexive turn, when he realised he could not impose his own intellectual elitism on those who he was trying to research. A reflexive turn helped me to mitigate against epistemic fallacy in my professional practice. Helping others to share the realities of their own practice, so their voices are not hidden, derided or ignored, is a key axiological principle that I would like to explore further. I am keen to find ways in which research can counter the divisive and destructive discourse of populism. Complexity and diversity are enriching and life enhancing. Perhaps I am ready for an onto-ethical turn?
