Research

I was appointed as a lecturer in education at the University of Strathclyde in September 2022. My background is in law, graduating from Queen’s University Belfast with a 2.1 in law (single honours) in 2009 before qualifying and practicing as a secondary school English teacher. From this teaching experience, I developed an interest in children's human rights in education, and went on to complete a PhD Education at the Centre for Children’s Rights at Queen’s University Belfast. I returned to teaching practice in January 2020 for Education Queensland in Australia. Returning to Belfast in 2021, I worked as a research fellow, and completed a ESRC postdoctoral fellowship at the Centre for Children’s Rights.

My research interests are in childhood and children’s rights, children’s rights theory, and participation. I have a strong interest in research that examines student voice and participation in schools under the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child, and critiques of student voice more broadly. My own research investigates the role of silence in both participation and ‘voice’ in education, and what young people’s silences can tell us about their (non) participation. I have worked on research projects that use a children’s rights-based methodology to elicit young people’s life stories using life history (narrative) interviews, and am currently working on a project that examines children’s experiences of secure accommodation orders in Jersey, in collaboration with scholars from QUB. Further research has explored how a child-led, child-centred model of engagement with professional artists can be brought to children and young people in the Arts sector in the West of Ireland, particularly those who have limited access to technology and who are from communities already experiencing social exclusion and disadvantage. An emerging research interest for me is children’s rights pedagogy and what this means for young people’s everyday rights in classrooms

Teaching & Supervision

I joined the school in September 2022, and currently teach/supervise/tutor undergraduate, postgraduate taught, and postgraduate research students:

• Undergraduate Education dissertation supervision
• Education Studies; Professional Practice (PGDE)
• Professional Learning Through Enquiry (PGDE)
• EdD Methods of Enquiry and Research Methods
• Doctoral supervision