Professor Kirk has research interests in curriculum innovation and change, curriculum history, and physical education and sport pedagogy.

I am currently Professor of Education and former Head of the School of Education (2014-17) at the University of Strathclyde. I am an educational researcher with teaching and research interests in educational innovation, curriculum history, and physical education and sport pedagogy. I am founding editor of the peer reviewed journal Physical Education and Sport Pedagogy (Routledge) and editor of Routledge Studies in Physical Education and Youth Sport. I have held academic appointments previously in universities in England, Australia, Ireland and Belgium and am currently Honorary Professor of Human Movement Studies at the University of Queensland. My most recent single-authored book Precarity, Critical Pedagogy and Physical Education was published by Routledge in 2020. My most recent co-authored book with Professor Ash Casey, Applying Models-based Practice in Physical Education, was published by Routledge in 2024. 

• Curriculum historian
• Qualitative researcher
• Curriculum designer
• School-based intervention designer
• Physical education teacher educator

Professor Kirk has been involved in a wide range of knowledge exchange activities throughout his career. He was a Founding Member of the Queensland Junior Sport Council in 1996, member of the Queensland Board of Senior Secondary School Studies Health & Physical Education Advisory Committee in two spells (1985-1988 and 1995-1998), a member of the Qualifications Curriculum Authority Expert Panel for A Level Physical Education (1999-2000), and Founding Member of both the Australian Association for Research in Education and the British Association for Educational Research Physical Education and Sport Pedagogy Special Interest Groups. More recently, in 2011 he completed a consultancy for UNESCO Bangkok on girls and women in physical education and sport, and in 2012 was a consultant for the Australian Sports Commissions Junior Sport Policy. In 2013 he was appointed as Special Advisor to the House of Commons Education Committee in relation to its report School Sport Following London 2012.

• Physical education and sport pedagogy
• Curriculum change, including curriculum history
• Curriculum design