I am currently working at the School of Education as a Chancellor’s Fellow. I grew up in China and received my early training in psychology and special education and was involved in projects on child development, mental health and intercultural communication. After witnessing exclusion and maltreatments against disabled children in segregated educational institutions, I shifted my research focus to inclusive educational development and particularly advocated for children’s rights to participation and their invaluable role in leading change. In 2016, I completed my PhD research ‘Imagining Inclusive Schooling’ at Moray House School of Education, University of Edinburgh, which explored the experiences of disabled children and their teachers in Chinese mainstream schools through an ethnographic approach. Following that, I worked as a postdoctoral researcher in inclusive education in Moray House and later was awarded the ESRC GCRF Postdoctoral Fellowship ‘Counting Every Child In’ to engage a range of key stakeholders to promote disabled children’s access to inclusive and quality education at all stages in China. Before joining Strathclyde in 2019, I was a Research Associate at the Centre for Research in Digital Education and developed projects to critically examine the relationships between inclusive education and technologies such as artificial intelligence and lecture recording in higher education. One of the projects resulted in the publishing of a co-edited book ‘Artificial intelligence and inclusive education: speculative futures and emerging practices’ with colleagues from the Centre, which won the 2020 Springer Nature New China Development award.

In Strathclyde, I continue to develop research focusing on the role of student voice in inclusive educational development in international contexts. I contribute to teaching on social research methods (BA Primary Education and MSc Education Studies) and strength-based multi-agency working in children’s services (BA Childhood Practice and MEd Inclusive Education). I am the module co-leader of Inclusive Pedagogy and co-coordinate the MEd Inclusive Education pathway (GTCS professional recognition certificate: Additional Support Needs 3-18). I regularly deliver short professional development programmes for Scottish practitioners to build their capacity in inclusive practice. I am also a member of committees and groups including the Scottish Universities Inclusion Group, Strathclyde Autism-Friendly University working group, School of Education’s Global Engagement working group and the Strathclyde Early Years Hub. Furthermore, I broadly promote Scotland-China exchange and partnerships in education and culture, and have successfully supported visiting programmes for researchers and practitioners from China.

I welcome prospective students who are interested in inclusion and diversity issues, international perspectives of inclusive educational development and student/child-led approaches to get in touch regarding supervision opportunities. Below is a list of some completed and on-going projects supervised by colleagues and myself in Strathclyde:

Maggie MacAskill. EdD. Title: What agency do students with Complex Additional Support Needs have in educational subject choice and what are the factors that determine this?

Roseann Maguire. PhD. Disabled children and young people’s understanding of participation in home and school environments.

Xunrou Shen. PhD. Parent involvement in early childhood education.

Rosie Campbell. EdD. The GIRFEC approach and socially just education for pupils with SEBN.

(Completed) Megan Chism. BA dissertation. Title: A literature-based study investigating the role education has in protecting girls who are at risk of female genital mutilation. 2020.

• Inclusion and diversity in education
• Student/pupil voice
• International development
• Technology
• Research engagement and impact