Postgraduate research degrees

Our research-based programmes - PhD and MSc by Research - allow you to make a significant contribution to knowledge in, and understanding of, your chosen field.

The University of Edinburgh was ranked first in Scotland for research power in Education and Sport (REF 2021, Times Higher Education). We offer the largest concentration of researchers in education in a Scottish university, meaning you'll be supported by and collaborate with leaders in the field. 

Our rankings and reputation

Our research activities cover all aspects of education and learning - from pre-school to higher education and lifelong learning - and a wide range of aspects relating to sport, physical education and health sciences.

Programme start dates (2024-25)

1st October

6th January

Apply now

To apply for research degrees, applicants need to complete the online University of Edinburgh application form. More information is available on our Degree Finder.

PhD programme structure

At Moray House, we offer a Doctor of Philosophy (PhD) taken three years full-time or six years part-time. The first full-time year of the PhD degree is probationary and progress to year two is subject to satisfactory progress and passing the first-year progression board.

All research degrees culminate in the submission of a thesis. The PhD thesis should be up to 100,000 words.

You may start your studies with us either on the 1st October or the 1st January of a year.

There are no compulsory courses or modules on research degrees as these programmes are purely research degrees.

There are several School and University seminars and training courses available for research students, as well as a large number of postgraduate courses that students may audit if they wish. You will be encouraged to attend such courses when appropriate during your studies as part of your skill development, following discussions with your supervisor(s).


As a research student, you will be supported by supervisors with strong skills and expertise in the areas of your research. For the PhD programme, you will be supported by at least two supervisors.

Potential supervisors and their areas of research expertise are listed in the 'Supervisors and Topics' section below. 


You will have the opportunity to develop your presentation skills, and practice presenting your research to fellow students and staff at regular monthly sessions organised by the School. 

You will have several opportunities for optional training and development throughout your studies. Research students are encouraged to attend and actively engage with the activities of one or more research cluster, which include seminars, meetings and workshops.


Our PhD by Distance route allows students who are unable to commit to basing themselves in Edinburgh to study for a PhD in the fields of Education and Sport from their home country or city. 

The PhD by Distance is not intended to be an online learning programme. It is a PhD which you have chosen to study at a distance, having taken into account the challenges around access to resources that this may involve. It is available to suitably qualified applicants in the same areas as our on-campus programmes.

PhD by Distance students will receive the same level of academic support from their supervisory team as on-campus students. The frequency with which students will meet with their supervisors and method of communication for supervision sessions will be provisionally agreed at the point of application and confirmed during induction. 

Further details on the University's Code of Practice for Supervisors and Research Students

Please be aware that some funding bodies do not permit students to study by distance. For example, both ESRC and AHRC regulations currently state that students must live within the same area as the Institution where they are studying.

Applying to study for a PhD by Distance

The entry requirements for the PhD by Distance are the same as for the School’s on-campus programmes.  

In addition, applicants wishing to study by Distance must complete and submit the following form with their PhD application.

Applicants should provide information about any previous experience of distance study, together with a statement detailing the potential risks and characteristics of distance learning. Experience of studying at a distance is desirable; however, this is not a specific requirement for admission. It is important that applicants demonstrate an awareness of the challenges of this mode of study. 

Applicants must provide details of the access they will have to research facilities at their usual site of study and whether a local advisor is proposed. Applications to the PhD by Distance will only be accepted if applicants have access to local University-standard library facilities and to the internet.

Applicants will also be required to discuss and complete a provisional study plan in consultation with their proposed principal supervisor as part of the admissions process.

International students wishing to study part-time will be considered for this Distance programme.

There is no guarantee that a request to study by distance will be granted where an offer to study on-campus might be made.


MScR programme structure

The MSc by Research aims to provide a thorough training in research in a particular area within either Education or Sport. It is a one-year (full-time) or two-year (part-time) degree.

The MSc by Research (MScR) is a pure research degree with no taught elements and many students use it as a stepping stone to a PhD. The degree consists of a sustained piece of research culminating in either a dissertation of 30,000 words or a portfolio of smaller projects.  

 In preparing their dissertation students will develop skills in:

  • Defining a suitable topic of enquiry
  • Framing research questions and shaping appropriate research strategies 
  • Researching evidence or literature, and critically assessing it 
  • Designing and/or applying a suitable research methodology 
  • Analysing and interpreting evidence 
  • Communicating research plans and findings 
  • Effective academic referencing

It is suitable for applicants who have a sound grounding in the field of study and, ideally, have also completed a dissertation at undergraduate level to show their ability to successfully pursue independent research.

I found my research study [to be] the best thing that I have done in my life... It was a great opportunity to continue to learn new knowledge and skills, to become a critical thinker, as well as find different ways of working... It was a transformative experience that has changed my life.

Jo Forster

There are no taught elements to this programme and students are expected to be engaged in research 100% of the time. Each MSc by Research student will be assigned one supervisor with whom they will work to plan, execute, interpret and write up their independent research project.

In between meetings, students are expected to work on their own initiative, but may, of course, contact their supervisor at any time. You typically meet with your supervisor every 4 weeks. 

Dissertation studies may be field, laboratory or desk-based, reflecting the diversity of research in Moray House School of Education and Sport. They may be based on a single research study (more common in the field of Education) or a portfolio of smaller research studies with a coherent theme (more common in the field of Sport). 

The submitted dissertation will be assessed by two markers working independently. One is an internal examiner (a member of staff from the University of Edinburgh) and the other external to the University. Examiners will be nominated by the dissertation supervisor and approved by the Graduate School. There is no oral examination for the MSc by Research programme.


MSc by Research students are part of our large and internationally diverse Postgraduate Research Student Community. All students are offered research training workshops and seminars and are included in one or more of our Thematic Research Hubs, where they have opportunities to attend seminars and reading groups relevant to their research. We also hold a biannual PGR Research Conference called Interweaving.


Your application should be submitted online. When you complete the online form you have the opportunity to upload supporting documents.  Please ensure that ALL of the following are included in your application:

  • A transcript with all of your results achieved to date 
  • Copies of your degree/diploma certificate, if you have already completed your qualification 
  • Two academic references 
  • Evidence of your competence in written and spoken English, if English is not your first language (we accept various types of English tests - see 'English Language Proficiency guidance' on the Degree Finder)
  • Certified translations, if your original documents are not in English 
  • Your Curriculum Vitae 
  • A personal statement (no more than 500 words)
  • A research proposal

Research proposal template form


Supervisors and topics

Supervisors are affiliated with at least one thematic hub; some are affiliated with two or more hubs. You will find our supervisors grouped by hub below.

Available to supervise

Dr Fatih Aktas

Areas of research interest:

  • Comparative and International Education
  • Higher Education from a comparative and international perspective
  • Creativity, innovation, global citizenship in Higher Education
  • Education Financing
Dr Seongsook Choi

Areas of research interest:

  • Interaction (classroom interaction, professional interaction, interdisciplinary/intercultural interaction/communication)
  • Spoken, institutional, and professional discourse
  • Constructing identity
  • Interdisciplinary research engagements in Higher Education
Dr Alice Dias Lopes

Areas of research interest:

  • Higher education
  • Social stratification in education
  • Data and education
  • Quantitative methods
  • Education expansion in Latin America
Dr Adriana Duta

Areas of research interest:

  • Social stratification and social mobility
  • Social inequalities in education, the labour market and family demography
  • School attainment | Higher education | Graduates’ labour market outcomes 
  • Life course | Longitudinal analysis
  • Cross-national comparative research
  • Quantitative methods | Large-scale survey and administrative data
Dr Sarah Foley

Welcomes ideas on projects around:

  • parenting and families
  • fathers
  • family transitions (e.g., to parenthood, divorce/separation)
  • new family forms
  • mind-mindedness
  • attachment
  • theory of mind
  • child social, emotional and cognitive development
  • longitudinal methods
  • quantitative methods
Professor Deborah (Debi) Fry

Areas of research interest:

  • Burden of violence on educational and learning outcomes
  • Violence in childhood particularly child sexual exploitation and abuse
  • Child protection
  • Child sexual exploitation and abuse in schools
Professor Cristina Iannelli

Areas of research interest:

  • Social stratification in education and the labour market
  • Social mobility
  • Youth transitions
  • Cross-country comparative analyses
  • Quantitative data analysis
Dr Kristina Lindemann

Areas of research interest:

  • Social and ethnic inequalities in education
  • School-to-work transitions
  • Parental separation and stepfamilies
  • Comparative analysis of educational contexts
  • Quantitative methods
Dr Nataša Pantić

Areas of research interest: 

  • Teacher agency
  • Educational change
  • Relationships in an education setting
  • Mixed-method social network analysis 
Professor John Ravenscroft

Areas of research interest:

  • Visual impairment
  • Adaptive sport
  • Sensory impairment
  • Hearing impairment
  • Inclusion
  • Philosophy of education/ Virtue epistemology
Professor Sheila Riddell

Areas of research interest:

  • Additional support needs
  • Higher education
  • Equality and social justice
Dr Daniel Shephard

I am interested in supervising the following topics and methodologies:

Topics:

  • Education and development
  • Refugee education 
  • Migrant education 
  • Education and conflict
  • Educational data

Methodologies:

  • Social network analysis 
  • Mixed methods
  • Longitudinal research   
  • Primary data collection (qualitative and quantitative)
Dr Tracy Stewart

Areas of research interest:

  • Child and adolescent mental health and wellbeing (including adolescents up to age 24)
  • Cognition, executive functioning and emotion regulation in depression and anxiety
  • Mental health in developmental disorders
Dr Tessa Strain
Dr Csabo Szabo

Areas of research interest:

  • Emotion vocabulary testing and learning
  • Vocabulary knowledge, learning and testing in multilingual contexts
  • Language assessment
  • Academic achievement in HE
  • Cognate recognition, processing and production
Dr Patricio Troncoso

Interested in supervising PhD students on the following topics/areas:

  • Educational inequalities
  • Quantitative methods
  • Children and family's mental health and wellbeing
  • Child protection

Methodological expertise: Advanced Statistical Methods, including:

  • Multilevel Modelling
  • Longitudinal Analysis
  • Structural Equation Modelling
  • Latent Variable Modelling

Not available to supervise

Dr Serdar Abaci

Areas of research interest:

  • Digital literacy for teachers
  • Data literacy in education
  • Online and blended learning
  • Technology-enabled assessment and feedback
  • Use of technology for teaching and learning
Dr Josie Booth

My research seeks to understand and support how children learn and the relationships with their health behaviour (e.g. physical activity and obesity). Much of my research involves school-based programmes which are often co-created with teachers and pupils and includes neurodiverse populations, such as ADHD. I use a range of methodology in my research, such as Randomised Controlled Trials, Secondary data analysis of longitudinal data sets, and systematic reviews and meta-analyses.

Professor Judy Robertson

Interested in computer science education schools, particularly data literacy.

Dr William Smith

Areas of research interest:

  • Education and international development
  • Comparative education
  • Global governance and international organisations
  • Testing and accountability in education

Note that I focus on the primary and secondary level.


Available to supervise

Dr Fatih Aktas

Areas of research interest:

  • Comparative and International Education
  • Higher Education from a comparative and international perspective
  • Creativity, innovation, global citizenship in Higher Education
  • Education Financing
Dr Davies Banda

Areas of research interest:

  • Sport, health and education policies within international development sector
  • Sport and social inclusion
  • African political settings and sport
  • Sport mega events and legacy programme design and evaluation
  • Elite sport and social impact measurement
  • Sport policy and political science analysis
Dr Shereen Benjamin

Areas of research interest:

  • Gender and education (particularly schooling)
  • Inclusive education
  • Intersections of gender, disability and social class
  • Developing feminist poststructuralist and Marxist theories/methodologies
Dr Josie Booth

My research seeks to understand and support how children learn and the relationships with their health behaviour (e.g. physical activity and obesity). Much of my research involves school-based programmes which are often co-created with teachers and pupils and includes neurodiverse populations, such as ADHD. I use a range of methodology in my research, such as Randomised Controlled Trials, Secondary data analysis of longitudinal data sets, and systematic reviews and meta-analyses.

Dr Katie Cebula

Areas of research interest:

  • Social-cognitive and social-emotional development
  • Children with additional support needs (particularly Down’s syndrome, Williams syndrome and autism)
  • Family (e.g. sibling relationships)
  • Children’s play
Dr Kuang-Hsu Chiang

Areas of research interest:

  • Higher Education policies
  • Knowledge production
  • University-industry partnership, Doctoral education
  • Research training, Disciplinary differences, European and international higher education systems, Interculturality and knowledge, Research on research
  • Meta-analysis of research
  • Nature of enquiry
  • Research in different fields: Trust and Higher Education, University and industry, Research and Higher Education policies, Technocracy and administration, Research and teaching relationships, Comparative education studies
Dr Seongsook Choi

Areas of research interest:

  • Interaction (classroom interaction, professional interaction, interdisciplinary/intercultural interaction/communication)
  • Spoken, institutional, and professional discourse
  • Constructing identity
  • Interdisciplinary research engagements in Higher Education
Professor Laura Colucci-Gray

Areas of research interest:

  • Science education
  • Sustainability education
  • Outdoor learning
  • STEAM education
  • Citizen science
  • Interactive and participatory research methodologies
Dr Kirsten Darling-McQuistan

Areas of research interest:

  • Inclusive education
  • Early years education
  • Sustainability
  • Arts-based methods
Dr Huw Davies

Areas of research interest:

  • Critical/digital/media/information/data literacies
  • Structured digital inequalities
  • Political economy of edtech and AIEd
  • Politics of education
  • Culture wars and education
Dr Pauline Duncan

Areas of research interest:

  • Visual and digital research methods
  • Children’s drawings
  • Play-based pedagogy
  • Creative teaching and learning
  • Learning with digital technology 
  • Meaning-making
  • Social semiotics
  • Multimodality
Dr Omolabake Fakunle

Areas of research interest:

  • Internationalisation of higher education (including policy development in different global regions)
  • International student/staff mobility
  • Intercultural experiences in education
  • Inclusive internationalisation
  • Internationalising the curriculum
  • Digitilisation of international higher education
  • Graduate employability
Dr Maureen Finn

Areas of research interest:

  • Digital, visual pedagogy and learner agency
  • Postdigital space as a location for children’s meaning-making
  • Culturally relevant, place-based pedagogy
  • Supporting families in nomadic children’s learning
  • Digital, visual research methods
  • Embedding participative literacies between home and school
  • Children's agency in postdigital learning environments
Dr Sarah Foley

Welcomes ideas on projects around:

  • parenting and families
  • fathers
  • family transitions (e.g., to parenthood, divorce/separation)
  • new family forms
  • mind-mindedness
  • attachment
  • theory of mind
  • child social, emotional and cognitive development
  • longitudinal methods
  • quantitative methods
Dr Samantha Friedman

Areas of research interest:

  • Autism (and neurodiversity more broadly)
  • Neurodivergent children's school experiences
  • Neurodivergent teachers
  • Nature-based learning
  • Connection to nature
  • Qualitative methods
Professor Deborah (Debi) Fry

Areas of research interest:

  • Burden of violence on educational and learning outcomes
  • Violence in childhood particularly child sexual exploitation and abuse
  • Child protection
  • Child sexual exploitation and abuse in schools
Dr Ian Fyfe

Areas of research interest:

  • Youth studies
  • Community-based youth work
  • Youth political participation
  • Youth culture and subculture
  • Learning in communities
  • Education for citizenship
  • Widening access and participation in Higher Education
  • Qualitative research methodology
Professor Grant Jarvie

Areas of research interest:

  • Sport, social sciences, politics
  • Scottish sports policy
  • Sport diplomacy and cultural/international relations
  • Political economy of sport
  • Football (including fan engagement strategies for clubs)
  • The future of sport
  • Data-driven Innovation and the sports industry
  • Sport for peace and conflict resolution
  • Sport, poverty and inequality
  • Sport and health ( including planetary health)
Dr Kristina Konstantoni

Areas of research interest:

  • Children's and young people's social identities and attitudes
  • Diversity, equity/fairness/social justice practices
  • Children's and young people's rights and participation in research, policy and practice
  • Intersectionality
  • Partnerships between research, policy and practice
  • Methodologies of research with children and young people
  • Ethical issues in research with children and young people
  • Early years and professionalism
  • Early learning and care 
Dr Jennifer Lavoie

Areas of research interest:

  • Children and the legal system
  • Child maltreatment and child protection
  • Commercial sexual exploitation of children
  • Child-friendly justice models
  • Forensic interviewing protocols
  • Forensic disclosure
  • Children
  •  Adolescents
  • Developmental trajectories
  • Lying
  • Secrecy
  • Theory of mind
  • Justice
  • Moral development
  • Cognitive development
  • Conduct problems
  • Parent socialisation and parenting
Dr Kristina Lindemann

Kristina’s research focuses on educational inequalities and intergenerational mobility, family dynamics, and policy contexts. Central to her work is the exploration of how societal contexts influence individuals' behaviours and decisions throughout their life course.

Key areas of focus within her research include:

  • Social and ethnic inequalities in education
  • School-to-work transitions
  • Parental separation and stepfamilies
  • Comparative analysis of educational contexts
  • Application of quantitative methods
Professor Gale Macleod

Areas of research interest:

  • Social, emotional and behavioural problems
  • School disaffection
  • Behaviour
  • Exclusion/inclusion
  • Authority relationships
  • Medicalisation of behaviour
Professor Andrew Manches

Areas of research interest:

  • Children (<12 years) and technology
  • Embodied cognition
  • Early numerical development
  • Computing education
Professor Catherine (Mary) Maternowska

Areas of research interest:

  • Children and young people
  • Social justice and inclusion
  • Medical anthropology
  • Violence prevention
  • Child rights and protection
  • Sexual and reproductive health
  • Mixed methods research
  • Child sexual abuse and exploitation
Dr Callum McGregor
Dr Lynn McNair

Areas of research interest:

  • Early childhood education
  • Friedrich Froebel
  • Transition
  • Pedagogy
  • Power
  • Philosophy of education
  • Scottish education
  • Play
Dr Stuart Moir

Areas of research interest:

  • Citizenship education and learning for democracy
  • Critical pedagogy
  • Marxist analysis and critique of education
  • Adult education and popular/radical education
  • Youth political participation and activism
  • Youth work in schools
  • Critical social research and professional practice learning
Dr Fiona Morrison

Areas of research interest:

  • Children’s rights
  • Participatory methods
  • Violence against children
Dr Maggie Morrison
Dr Colin Morrison
Professor John Ravenscroft

Areas of research interest:

  • Visual impairment
  • Adaptive sport
  • Sensory impairment
  • Hearing impairment
  • Inclusion
  • Philosophy of education/ Virtue epistemology
Dr Andie Reynolds

Areas of research interest:

  • Additional support needs
  • Inclusion in higher education

I am also very interested in working with doctoral students looking to use indigenous, decolonial, intersectional, feminist or post-structuralist methodologies and methods.

Dr Julie Smith

Areas of research interest:

  • Student learning in Higher Education
  • Psychology of mathematics teaching and learning
  • supporting mental health in education
Dr Tracy Stewart

Areas of research interest:

  • Child and adolescent mental health and wellbeing (including adolescents up to age 24)
  • Cognition, executive functioning and emotion regulation in depression and anxiety
  • Mental health in developmental disorders
Professor Kay Tisdall

Areas of research interest:

  • Children's human rights
  • Children's participation in decision-making
  • Participatory methodologies of research and consultation with children and young people
Dr Martin Toye

Areas of research interest:

  • Inclusive education
  • Cognitive development
  • Executive functions and academic attainment
  • Specific learning difficulties
Dr Patricio Troncoso

Interested in supervising PhD students on the following topics/areas:

  • Educational inequalities
  • Quantitative methods
  • Children and family's mental health and wellbeing
  • Child protection

Methodological expertise: Advanced Statistical Methods, including:

  • Multilevel Modelling
  • Longitudinal Analysis
  • Structural Equation Modelling
  • Latent Variable Modelling
Dr Sarah Ward

Areas of research interest: 

  • Youth work and community development
  • Youth activism and youth voice
  • Capabilities Approach (Sen/Nussbaum) with children and young people
  • Theory-based evaluation (theory of change/realistic evaluation)
Dr Cara Wilson
Dr Laura Wright

Areas of research interest:

  • Participatory methods (play and arts-based)
  • Child rights
  • Co-research/coproduction with children and young people
  • Child and youth activism
  • Outdoor play
  • Mental health and psychosocial wellbeing
  • Children and young people's mental health and wellbeing
Dr Samaneh Zandian

Areas of research interest:

  • Second/ foreign language acquisition and learning for children of all ages
  • Innovative participatory research methodologies with children
  • Intercultural communication, social psychology and cross-cultural adaptation processes

I am currently interested in exploring international students’ educational, social and linguistic experiences in UK Higher Education.

 

Please contact regarding availability to supervise

Dr Marie Murphy

 

Not available to supervise

Dr Marlies Kustatscher

Areas of research interest:

  • Children and young people’s social identities and inequalities of race, class, gender etc.
  • Children’s rights and participation in research, policy and practice
  • Children's emotions and relationships, particularly in educational settings
  • Intersectionality, feminist research, research with children, participatory action research
Dr Sarah McGeown

Areas of research interest:

  • Literacy/reading
  • Sex/gender differences
  • Mental toughness/resilience
  • Motivation
Professor Judy Robertson
  • Artificial Intelligence in Education and critical AI Literacy
  • Data science education
  • Research methodologies with a realist slant
Dr William Smith

Areas of research interest:

  • Education and international development
  • Comparative education
  • Global governance and international organisations
  • Testing and accountability in education

Note that I focus on the primary and secondary level.


Available to supervise

Dr Huw Davies

Areas of research interest:

  • Critical/digital/media/information/data literacies
  • Structured digital inequalities
  • Political economy of edtech and AIEd
  • Politics of education
  • Culture wars and education
Dr Janja Komljenovic

Interdisciplinary approaches to the study of ‘the digital’ in higher education and themes related to:

  • Digitalisation, platformisation and datafication of universities
  • Political economy of education digitalisation
  • Policy and governance of technology and digital data in higher education, assetisation, and the social, economic, legal and cultural dimensions of digitalisation
  • Digital markets and digital economy in education, EdTech industry, EdTech actors
  • Privatisation and commercialisation of higher education
Dr Alice Dias Lopes

Areas of research interest:

  • Higher education
  • Social stratification in education
  • Data and education
  • Quantitative methods
  • Education expansion in Latin America
Dr Rory Ewins

Areas of research interest:

  • IT and its political, social, cultural and educational impact 
  • Intellectual property
  • Online identity
  • Digital education in developing countries
Dr James Lamb

Areas of research interest:

  • Learning spaces
  • Multimodality in education
  • Assessment practice and digital technology
  • Sonic methods in education research
Professor Andrew Manches

Areas of research interest:

  • Children (<12 years) and technology
  • Embodied cognition
  • Early numerical development
  • Computing education
Dr David Overend

Areas of research interest:

  • Contemporary art practice and theory
  • Contemporary theatre and performance
  • Artistic/creative research
  • Creative approaches to space and place
  • Interdisciplinary learning and teaching
Dr Philippa Sheail

Areas of research interest:

  • Digital education
  • Distance education
  • Libraries
  • Organisational theory
  • Temporality
  • Ethnography
Dr ML White

Interested in issues related to:

  • social justice
  • ethnographic educational research
  • visual research methods
  • multimodal perspectives on urban schooling

Specifically, I am interested in how we prepare beginner teachers to work in areas of socio-economic disadvantage, reaching and teaching students in poverty and the consequences of what Ladson-Billings (2006) calls the educational debt. In addition to my work in teacher education, I am interested in and have written about developing civic media pedagogies, social geography and how young people experience space and place in education and learning.

Dr Ben Williamson

Interested in social scientific analyses of digital technologies, data, metrics, and the organizations that produce and promote them, in the field of education:

  • Critical social scientific studies of data or metrics in education policy and governance, in the schools and HE sectors
  • Education policy studies on digital technologies, technology companies, education businesses, think tanks, consultancies
  • Social science studies of data-centred sciences in education (e.g. digital psychometrics, biometrics, neuroscience, genetics)
  • Empirical studies of educational data use in practice

 

Not available to supervise

Dr Serdar Abaci

Areas of research interest:

  • Digital literacy for teachers
  • Data literacy in education
  • Online and blended learning
  • Technology-enabled assessment and feedback
  • Use of technology for teaching and learning
Professor Sian Bayne

Areas of research interest:

  • Higher education
  • Lifelong learning
  • Open education
  • Digital education
Dr Peter Evans

Areas of research interest:

  • Digital education
  • Higher Education
  • Digital education policy and strategy
  • Organisational theory
  • Informal and non-formal digital learning
  • Alternative credentials
Dr Michael Gallagher

Areas of research interest:

  • Digital education in the Global South
  • Education in Emergencies
  • Education in forced displacement contexts
  • Mobilities frameworks
  • Policy and practice around the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs)
  • Emerging pedagogies
  • Educational futures
Professor Velda McCune

Areas of research interest:

  • Higher education for wicked problems 
  • Learning, teaching and curricula in higher education
  • Inclusive higher education
  • Academic identities
Professor Judy Robertson

Interested in computer science education schools, particularly data literacy.

Dr Jen Ross

Areas of research interest:

  • Digital-related topics with a critical and well-theorised perspective as they relate to Higher Education, cultural sector (museums and galleries), lifelong and informal learning
  • Education futures, speculative methods and pedagogies
  • Open education and online distance learning

Available to supervise

Dr Florence Bonacina-Pugh

Areas of research interest:

  • Language policy and practice in education
  • Bilingualism/multilingualism in education
  • Discourse analysis (Conversation Analysis)
  • The Internationalisation of higher education
Dr Madeleine Campbell

Areas of research interest:

  • Multimodality and language education
  • Translation and language education
  • Transdisciplinarity in language education
Dr Michele Saraiva Carilo

Areas of research interest:

  • Applied Linguistics
  • Critical multiculturalism
  • Critical pedagogy
  • Intercultural Language Education
  • Anti-prejudice inclusive language
  • Decolonisation of language teaching and learning
  • Social justice, diversity, and intersectionality in language education
  • Bilingualism/multilingualism in education
  • Language teacher education
  • Language curriculum development
  • Portuguese as a Foreign / Additional Language
  • Teaching Languages Other Than English (LOTEs)
  • Teaching English for Speakers of Other Languages (TESOL) 
  • Critical Digital Ethnography
  • Critical Ethnography
Dr Seongsook Choi

Areas of research interest:

  • Interaction (classroom interaction, professional interaction, interdisciplinary/intercultural interaction/communication)
  • Spoken, institutional, and professional discourse
  • Constructing identity
  • Interdisciplinary research engagements in Higher Education
Dr Maria Dasli

Areas of research interest:

  • Intercultural education
  • Intercultural communication
  • Intercultural citizenship
  • Intercultural dialogue and peacebuilding
  • Critical multiculturalism
  • Critical pedagogy
  • Social justice, inclusion and democracy
  • Ethics of responsibility and hospitality
  • Deconstruction
  • Ethnography
  • critical discourse analysis
  • anti-racist discourse
Dr Kenneth Fordyce

Areas of research interest:

  • Learner corpus research
  • Interlanguage pragmatics
  • Intercultural pragmatics
  • Internationalisation of higher education (linguistic and cultural issues)
  • Academic literacies
Dr Lorna Hamilton

Areas of research interest:

  • Identity - personal and professional
  • Teacher beliefs and values (early professional development)
  • Behaviour in schools and developing professional identity
  • Intercultural education and multicultural citizenship
  • Inclusion - critical approaches to giftedness - gifted and talented youth
  • Ability and ability grouping
  • The organization of learning
  • Pupil voice – absent voices
Dr Claudia Rosenhan

Areas of research interest:

  • Language and literature
  • Pedagogy
  • Ecocriticism/ecolinguistics
Dr Csabo Szabo

Areas of research interest:

  • Emotion vocabulary testing and learning
  • Vocabulary knowledge, learning and testing in multilingual contexts
  • Language assessment
  • Academic achievement in HE
  • Cognate recognition, processing and production
Dr Vander Viana

Areas of research interest:

  • Teaching English to speakers of other languages (TESOL)
  • English for academic purposes (EAP)
  • Corpus linguistics
  • Data-driven learning
  • Language teacher education
  • Academic/pedagogical discourse analysis
Dr Samaneh Zandian

Areas of research interest:

  • Second/ foreign language acquisition and learning for children of all ages
  • Innovative participatory research methodologies with children
  • Intercultural communication, social psychology and cross-cultural adaptation processes

I am currently interested in exploring international students’ educational, social and linguistic experiences in UK Higher Education.

 

Not available to supervise

Dr Farah Akbar

Areas of research interest:

  • English language learning and teaching
  • Evaluation and design of ELT materials
  • Individual differences in language learning
  • Language and identity
Dr Dario Banegas

Areas of research interest:

  • Language teacher education
  • Language curriculum development
  • CLIL
  • Materials development
  • Learner and teacher identity
  • Language learning/teaching motivation
  • Social justice and diversity (gender & sexuality) in language education
  • Action research
  • Content analysis
  • Mixed methods
  • Ethnography
Dr Ania Byerly

Areas of research interest:

  • Bi/multilingualism
  • English as an Additional Language (EAL)
  • Anti-racism
  • Critical multiculturalism
  • Pedagogy for antiracism in the Early Years and beyond
  • Social justice and inclusion
  • Teacher education and development related to all the areas above
Dr Sal Consoli

Areas of research interest:

  • Psychology of language education
  • Language practitioner research
  • Narrative inquiry
  • Applications of 'life capital' to educational research and practice
  • Internationalisation of (Higher) Education
Professor Do Coyle

Areas of research interest:

  • Content and Language Integrated Learning (CLIL) in school and tertiary sectors
  • Ecological frameworks for learning and Educational Linguistics
  • Immersion and bilingual education in classrooms including transdisciplinary studies, language-medium learning
  • PluriLiteracies and the role of language in meaning-making, conceptual development and intercultural understanding
  • Academic literacies (discourse, conceptual and intercultural thinking) in different disciplines, e.g. science, history, social sciences
  •  Transformative pedagogies and shared learning spaces for deeper learning
  • Pupils as researchers, teachers as researchers, student teachers as researchers
  • Theories of Practice
  • Classroom discourse
Dr Mike Lynch

Areas of research interest:

  • Modern language learning and teaching
  • Second language acquisition
  • L2 learning and teaching 
  • Communicative language teaching 
  • Language teacher cognition
Professor Velda McCune

Areas of research interest:

  • Higher education for wicked problems
  • Learning, teaching and curricula in higher education
  • Inclusive higher education
  • Academic identities
Dr Fiona O'Hanlon

Areas of research interest:

  • Bilingual education
  • Languages education
  • Attitudes to language
  • Language policy
  • Language planning
Dr Ashley Simpson

Areas of research interest:

Language Education: 

  • Intercultural education
  • Intercultural communication
  • Multilingualism
  • Discourses, identities and diversities in education

Social Justice and Inclusion: 

  • Critical approaches to democracy
  • Equality and human rights in education
  • Critical approaches and theories of Global Education

Methodologies: 

  • Discourse analysis
  • Conversation analysis
  • Dialogism
Dr Isobel Kai-Hui Wang

Areas of research interest:

  • Language learner strategies
  • Vocabulary learning strategies
  • Strategy-based instruction
  • Second/foreign vocabulary teaching and learning

Available to supervise

Dr Fatih Aktas

Areas of research interest:

  • Comparative and International Education
  • Higher Education from a comparative and international perspective
  • Creativity, innovation, global citizenship in Higher Education
  • Education Financing
Dr Shereen Benjamin

Areas of research interest:

  • Gender and education (particularly schooling)
  • Inclusive education
  • Intersections of gender, disability and social class
  • Developing feminist poststructuralist and Marxist theories/methodologies
Dr Hazel Christie

Areas of research interest:

  • Student identities in HE 
  • Widening participation and access to university
  • Student transitions into and through university
  • Student agency and student voice in the curriculum
Dr Kirsten Darling-McQuistan

Areas of research interest:

  • Inclusive education
  • Early years education
  • Sustainability
  • Arts-based methods
Dr Jacqueline Dohaney

Areas of research interest:

  • University and higher education
  • University STEM education
  • Geosciences and climate change education
  • Student being-and-becoming
  • Using Bourdieu to unpack access, belonging, and retention in higher education
  • Philosophy of education
Dr Adriana Duta

Areas of research interest:

  • Social stratification and social mobility
  • Social inequalities in education, the labour market and family demography
  • School attainment | Higher education | Graduates’ labour market outcomes 
  • Life course | Longitudinal analysis
  • Cross-national comparative research
  • Quantitative methods | Large-scale survey and administrative data
Dr Gary Fraser

Areas of research interest:

  • Informal education
  • Community learning and development
  • Adult education
Professor Deborah (Debi) Fry

Areas of research interest:

  • Burden of violence on educational and learning outcomes
  • Violence in childhood particularly child sexual exploitation and abuse
  • Child protection
  • Child sexual exploitation and abuse in schools
Dr Ian Fyfe

Areas of research interest:

  • Youth studies
  • Community-based youth work
  • Youth political participation
  • Youth culture and subculture
  • Learning in communities
  • Education for citizenship
  • Widening access and participation in Higher Education
  • Qualitative research methodology
Dr Jule Hildmann

Areas of research interest:

  • Personal and social development
  • Experiential learning
  • Outdoor environmental education
  • Outdoor learning (and taking the curriculum outdoors), leadership (theory, styles, etc.) in education
  • Facilitation of individual and group processes
  • Creative approaches to learning
  • Emotions and learning
Dr Deborah Holt

Areas of research interest:

  • Positive mental health promotion in education 
  • Health and wellbeing
  • Wellbeing promotion
  • Pastoral care of pupils in schools and students in universities
  • Anything related to promoting the social, emotional and mental wellbeing of learners, e.g. resilience, emotional literacy, co-operative learning, resolving conflict
  • Metacognitive approaches in the classroom
Dr Lindsey Horner

Areas of research interest:

  • Education and development
  • Peacebuilding education
  • Peace education
  • Education and conflict
  • Postdevelopment approaches
  • Popular education/community organising (in developing contexts)
  • Arts-based research methods
  • Participatory research methods
  • Ethnography
Professor Cristina Iannelli

Areas of research interest:

  • Social stratification in education and the labour market
  • Social mobility
  • Youth transitions
  • Cross-country comparative analyses
  • Quantitative data analysis
Dr Jennifer Kirkwood

Areas of research interest:

  • Sociology of education elites
  • Power and inequalities
  • Social mobility and educational strategies
  • Elite education and education of elites
  • International education
Dr Kristina Konstantoni

Areas of research interest:

  • Children's and young people's social identities and attitudes
  • Diversity, equity/fairness/social justice practices
  • Children's and young people's rights and participation in research, policy and practice
  • Intersectionality
  • Partnerships between research, policy and practice
  • Methodologies of research with children and young people
  • Ethical issues in research with children and young people
  • Early years and professionalism
  • Early learning and care 
Dr Stuart Moir

Areas of research interest:

  • Citizenship education and learning for democracy
  • Critical pedagogy
  • Marxist analysis and critique of education
  • Adult education and popular/radical education
  • Youth political participation and activism
  • Youth work in schools
  • Critical social research and professional practice learning
Dr Nataša Pantić

Areas of research interest: 

  • Teacher agency
  • Educational change
  • Relationships in an education setting
  • Mixed-method social network analysis  
Dr Margaret Petrie

Areas of research interest:

  • The role of informal education in promoting or inhibiting social justice and participatory democracy
  • Community engagement
  • Community-based research
  • Co-constructing knowledge with communities
Professor John Ravenscroft

Areas of research interest:

  • Visual impairment
  • Adaptive sport
  • Sensory impairment
  • Hearing impairment
  • Inclusion
  • Philosophy of education/ Virtue epistemology
Dr Andie Reynolds

Areas of research interest:

  • Working with children and young people for social justice
  • Children and young people’s participation in policymaking
  • Youth work and mental health
  • Refugee education / Education in Emergencies

I am also very interested in working with doctoral students looking to use indigenous, decolonial, intersectional, feminist or post-structuralist methodologies and methods.

Professor Sheila Riddell

Areas of research interest:

  • Additional support needs
  • Higher education
  • Equality and social justice
Dr Daniel Shephard

I am interested in supervising the following topics and methodologies:

Topics:

  • Education and development
  • Refugee education 
  • Migrant education 
  • Education and conflict
  • Educational data

Methodologies:

  • Social network analysis 
  • Mixed methods
  • Longitudinal research   
  • Primary data collection (qualitative and quantitative)
Dr Heidi Smith

Outdoor Environmental Education with particular interest in:

  • pedagogy
  • leadership
  • transculturality
  • international perspectives
  • nature connection
  • learning communities
  • initial teacher education
Dr ML White

Interested in issues related to:

  • social justice
  • ethnographic educational research
  • visual research methods
  • multimodal perspectives on urban schooling

Specifically, I am interested in how we prepare beginner teachers to work in areas of socio-economic disadvantage, reaching and teaching students in poverty and the consequences of what Ladson-Billings (2006) calls the educational debt. In addition to my work in teacher education, I am interested in and have written about developing civic media pedagogies, social geography and how young people experience space and place in education and learning.

Dr Laura Wright

Areas of research interest:

  • Participatory methods (play and arts-based)
  • Child rights
  • Co-research/coproduction with children and young people
  • Child and youth activism
  • Outdoor play
  • Mental health and psychosocial wellbeing
  • Children and young people's mental health and wellbeing

 

Please contact regarding availability to supervise

Dr Omolabake Fakunle

Areas of research interest:

  • Internationalisation of higher education (including policy development in different global regions)
  • International student/staff mobility
  • Intercultural experiences in education
  • Inclusive internationalisation
  • Internationalising the curriculum
  • Digitilisation of international higher education
  • Graduate employability
Dr Callum McGregor

 

Not available to supervise

Dr Simon Beames

Areas of research interest:

  • Outdoor adventure education
  • Outdoor adventure recreation/leisure
  • Learning outside the classroom
Professor Catherine Bovill

Areas of research interest:

  • Co-created curriculum
  • Student-staff partnership in learning, teaching
  • Higher education curriculum conceptualisation
  • Relational pedagogy, belonging, mattering and student engagement
Dr Katie Cebula

Areas of research interest:

  • Social-cognitive and social-emotional development
  • Children with additional support needs (particularly Down’s syndrome, Williams syndrome and autism)
  • Family (e.g. sibling relationships)
  • Children’s play
Dr Lisa Fernandes

Areas of research interest:

  • Autism
  • Inclusion
  • Teacher education
  • Learning support assistants
Dr Jingyi Li

Areas of research interest:

  • Education Policy development
  • International education
  • Globalisation
Professor Gillean McCluskey

Areas of research interest:

  • Exclusion from school
  • Youth at risk
  • Behaviour and relationships in school
  • Troubled and troublesome pupils
  • Restorative approaches in school
  • Relationships between youth crime and education
  • Pupil voice
  • Marginalised groups in education
Professor Velda McCune

Areas of research interest:

  • Higher education for wicked problems
  • Learning, teaching and curricula in higher education
  • Inclusive higher education
  • Academic identities
Dr Rachel O'Neill

Areas of research interest:

  • Deaf education
  • Language policies at any level in relation to signed languages
  • Science discussion and deaf learners
  • Online reading and deaf learners
  • Monitoring deaf children's early language acquisition in speech and sign
  • Transition of deaf young people from school to college, university and work
Dr William Smith

Areas of research interest:

  • Education and international development
  • Comparative education
  • Global governance and international organisations
  • Testing and accountability in education

Note that I focus on the primary and secondary level.


Available to supervise

Dr Mike Ashford

My current research has included a number of key themes:

  • player decision making in rugby union and team sports
  • talent identification and development
  • the role of challenge and emotional disturbance in player development
  • coach planning and decision making
  • coaching practice
  • skill acquisition
  • coach development

Presently, I am undertaking a number of projects which include: 

  • developing and implementing shared mental models of performance
  • the impact of law modifications on coach, player and referee behaviour
  • team coordination, player decision making, coach expertise, and understanding athletes' true experiences in Olympic sports 

Generally, my research explores a wide array of concepts central to the role of a coach and/or coach developer.

Dr Graham Baker

Areas of research interest:

  • Physical activity
  • Walking
  • Cycling
  • Active travel/transport Interventions
  • Health inequalities
  • Ethnicity
  • Exercise prescription
  • Exercise Rehabilitation
  • Behaviour change
  • Prevention, management of overweight and obesity
  • Health psychology
  • Measurement of health behaviours
Dr Davies Banda

Areas of research interest:

  • Sport and international development
  • Sport and social inclusion
  • African political settings and sport
Dr Ray Bobrownicki 

Areas of research interest:

  • Coaching instruction/practice
  • Performing under pressure
  • Motor learning/control
  • Impact of sporting structures and policies on athlete identity, welfare, and rights
Dr Josie Booth

My research seeks to understand and support how children learn and the relationships with their health behaviour (e.g. physical activity and obesity). Much of my research involves school-based programmes which are often co-created with teachers and pupils and includes neurodiverse populations, such as ADHD. I use a range of methodology in my research, such as Randomised Controlled Trials, Secondary data analysis of longitudinal data sets, and systematic reviews and meta-analyses.

Dr Howie Carson

Areas of research interest:

  • Sports coaching
  • Motor learning and control
Dr Pippa Chapman

Areas of research interest:

  • Elite sport policy, with a particular focus on Olympic and Paralympic sports
  • Keen interest in leadership and governance in sport and the relationship between sport policy and health policy
Professor Dave Collins

Areas of research interest:

  • Performance enhancement and support
  • Coach development
  • Talent development
  • Expertise
Dr Loel Collins

Areas of research interest:

  • Theory and practice of coaching, coach development and education in outdoor activities, action and adventure sports
  • Judgement and decision-making in complex and consequential environments
Dr Shirley Gray

Areas of research interest:

  • Physical education
  • Health and wellbeing (health, the body and healthism discourse)
  • PE pedagogy and curriculum
  • Motivation, self-regulation and self-determination
  • Student engagement in PE
  • Girls' participation in PE
  • Team games pedagogy and decision-making
  • Masculinity and PE
  • Teacher learning and research
Professor Grant Jarvie

Areas of research interest:

  • Sport, social sciences, politics
  • Scottish sports policy
  • Sport diplomacy and cultural/international relations
  • Political economy of sport
  • Football (including fan engagement strategies for clubs)
  • The future of sport
  • Data-driven Innovation and the sports industry
  • Sport for peace and conflict resolution
  • Sport, poverty and inequality
  • Sport and health ( including planetary health)
Dr Mike Jess

Areas of research interest:

  • Complexity thinking
  • Curriculum and pedagogy
  • Policy
  • Physical education, particularly primary physical education
Dr John Kelly

Areas of research interest:

  • Sport and culture/fandom
  • Media analyses and sport
  • Militarism (civil-military relations) and sport
  • 'Sectarianism' and sport
  • PE and the body (socio-cultural issues)
  • Symbolic interactionism (sociological theory)
  • Sub-cultures in sport
  • Offensiveness, language and discourse in sport
Dr Paul Kelly

Areas of research interest:

  • Walking, cycling and active travel
  • Health behaviour measurement
  • Health behaviour change
Dr Jung Woo (Jay) Lee

Areas of research interest:

  • Sport media and communication
  • Sport and globalisation
  • Sports mega-events studies
  • Sports and international relations
  • Sociology of sport
  • Sport and social identities
  • Sport and social theories
  • Sport and semiotics
Dr Georgios Machtsiras

Areas of research interest:

  • Swimming
  • Sports biomechanics
  • Dance biomechanics
Dr Justine MacLean

Areas of research interest:

  • Social sciences and policy
  • Curriculum
  • Agency
  • Identity
  • Resilience
Dr Alan MacPherson

Areas of research interest:

  • Rhythm for expertise
  • Instructional technique/coaching
  • Sources of information for movement
Dr Amanda Martindale

Areas of research interest:

  • Professional judgement and decision-making
  • Accelerating expertise (individuals and teams)
  • Mindfulness
  • Performance psychology

Please note - the context of research can be diverse and involve an element of risk (e.g., sport, medicine, emergency services, military, business)

Dr Matthew (Matt) McDowell

Areas of research interest:

  • ‘Second-order’ sporting events
  • The history of football
  • Sport on the North Atlantic Rim
  • The patronage of sport by industrialists, politicians and landowners
  • Sport, material culture and the politics of representation
  • Scottish/British sport, Empire, and decolonisation
  • Lifestyle sports in Scotland
  • The history of education (including physical education)
  • North American sport
  • The Scottish diaspora and sport
  • The history and politics of baseball
  • Hillwalking, land politics and environmentalism
Dr Paul McMillan

Areas of research interest:

  • Physical education, particularly in secondary schools
  • The 'Sport Education' model
  • Curriculum
  • Pedagogy
  • Teachers' everyday practices
  • Teacher-pupil interaction, qualitative classroom research
  • Naturalistic inquiry
  • Qualitative research methods, self-study
Dr Christine Nash

Areas of research interest:

  • Sport coaching
  • Coach education
  • Talent development
  • Development of expertise
  • Mentoring
Dr Deborah (Debbie) Palmer

Areas of research interest:

  • Sports injury and illness epidemiology, risk and prevention
  • Longer-term consequences of injury (e.g. osteoarthritis)
  • Retired athlete health
  • Sport-related concussion
  • Elite, recreational, community and youth sport cohorts
  • Trauma and orthopaedics
  • Clinical cohorts
Dr Stelios Psycharakis

Areas of research interest:

  • Biomechanics of swimming and other aquatic sports
  • Aquatic rehabilitation, in particular for chronic low back pain patients, sufferers of other MSDs and the elderly
  • Clinical biomechanics
  • Applied biomechanics in sports
  • Human performance science
  • Physical activity and health
Dr Hugh Richards

Areas of research interest:

  • Coping
  • Talent
  • Individual differences and professional development related to sport, military and music
Dr Walker Ross

Areas of research interest:

  • Climate change
  • Olympic Games
  • Environmental justice
  • Space utilization and land development
Dr Dave Saunders

Areas of research interest:

  • Life after stroke
  • Physical activity
  • Systematic review
Dr Isla Shill

Areas of research interest:

  • Sports injury epidemiology, risk factors, and prevention
  • Sport-related concussion
  • Community and youth sport cohorts
Dr Wendy Timmons

I am interested in supervising Doctoral work related to the application of dance science and education to dance practice. For example: 

  • Digital  technology that supports teaching and learning in the dance studio  
  • Dance, health and wellbeing 
  • Dance and dementia 
  • Dance education
Dr Vander Viana

Areas of research interest:

  • Teaching English to speakers of other languages (TESOL)
  • English for academic purposes (EAP)
  • Corpus linguistics
  • Data-driven learning
  • Language teacher education
  • Academic/pedagogical discourse analysis
Dr Martine Verheul

Areas of research interest:

  • Motor Control
  • Motor coordination
  • Perception and movement
  • Motor development
  • Disability sport

 

Please contact regarding availability to supervise

Dr Neil Buchanan
Dr Marie Murphy
Dr Jamie Taylor

 

Not available to supervise

Dr Nicola Carse

Areas of research interest:

  • Primary physical education
  • Teacher education
  • Teacher professional learning
  • Educational change
  • Curriculum development
  • Complexity thinking

Methodologically, I am interested in self-study and the use of observation and interview as research methods.

Dr Samantha Fawkner

Areas of research interest:

  • Young people
  • Physical activity
  • Sedentary behaviour
  • Body composition
Dr Claire Fitzsimons

Areas of research interest:

  • Sedentary behaviour and older adults
  • Physical activity and older adults
Dr Andrew Horrell

Areas of research interest:

  • Teacher professional learning
  • Curriculum development
  • Educational policy and curriculum enactment
  • Physical education curriculum, pedagogy and assessment
  • Physical education teacher education

I specialise in areas of enquiry which draw on qualitative research methods.

Dr Linda Linton
Dr Sarah MacIsaac

Areas of research interest:

  • Health and the body from a sociological perspective
  • Social media and the body
  • Embodied identities
  • Young people's experiences of, and engagements with, the PE environment
  • Ethnographic research methods
Professor Ailsa Niven

Areas of research interest:

  • Psychological determinants and consequences of physical activity and sedentary behaviour
  • Walking for health
  • Health in adolescents
Dr Shaun Phillips

Areas of research interest:

  • Fatigue mechanisms in sport and exercise
  • Self-regulation of sport and exercise performance
  • Perceptions of high-intensity interval exercise
  • Sport and exercise interventions for individuals with neurological impairment
Dr Gavin Reid

Areas of research interest: 

  • Sport and the city
  • Sport and social enterprise
  • Sport and event legacies
  • Sport and the politics of dissent/protest
  • Sport and local government austerity
  • Sport and social exclusion
Dr Shari Sabeti

Areas of research interest:

  • Arts education (including literature, graphic novels and the visual arts)
  • Cultural heritage education
  • Museum education
  • Creative writing
  • Anthropology of education
  • Education in the global south
  • Education and development
  • Literacy in its social context
  • Projects focused around ethnography as the primary approach to research
  • Projects interested in using visual or arts-based methodologies
Dr Tony Turner

Areas of research interest:

  • Human performance science
  • Motorsport physiology & performance
  • Cardio-respiratory systems’ responses during exercise
  • Physiology of strength & conditioning
  • Concussion
Dr Matthew (Matt) Weston

Research interest: Applied sports science


Available to supervise

Dr Ramsey Affifi

Areas of research interest:

  • Environmental, sustainability and outdoor education
  • Philosophy of education
  • Environmental humanities 
  • "Ecologising" education
  • Integrating art into science education 
  • Re-imagining STEAM education 
  • Aesthetics
  • Emotions and contemplative approaches to education (especially in response to the ecological crisis)
  • Post-qualitative and arts-informed research methods
Dr Mary Bovill

Areas of research interest:

  • Conceptions of texts and textual practices in English and history 
  • Philosophy in prisons
  • Philosophy with children
  • Critical thinking
Dr Audrey Cameron

I am available to supervise deaf, deafblind and hard-of-hearing students on topics related to science education and sign languages. 

Dr Sue Chapman

Areas of research interest:

  • Teacher wellbeing
  • Teacher professional learning
  • Teacher identity
  • Initial teacher education
  • Teacher/student teacher mentoring
Dr David Clarke

Environmental and sustainability education (formal and informal) practice, policy, philosophy and research methodology with a focus on the following approaches:

  • Practitioner inquiry and participatory action research
  • Narrative, autobiographical, and autoethnographic inquiry
  • Philosophical inquiry, writing as inquiry, thinking/living with theory, creative-relational and post-qualitative inquiry
  • Immanent ontologies, including animisms, affect theory, feminist new materialisms and posthumanism
Professor Laura Colucci-Gray

Areas of research interest:

  • Science education
  • Sustainability education
  • Outdoor learning
  • STEAM education
  • Citizen science
  • Interactive and participatory research methodologies
Dr Maria Dasli

Areas of research interest:

  • Intercultural education
  • Intercultural communication
  • Intercultural citizenship
  • Intercultural dialogue and peacebuilding
  • Critical multiculturalism
  • Critical pedagogy
  • Social justice, inclusion and democracy
  • Ethics of responsibility and hospitality
  • Deconstruction
  • Ethnography
  • Critical discourse analysis
  • Anti-racist discourse
Dr Andrea English

Areas of research interest:

  • Philosophy of education, especially Dewey, and the classical German tradition 
  • Phenomenology and pragmatism
  • Topics of moral education
  • Dialogic teaching
  • Pupil voice
  • Critical thinking
Dr Lauren Hammond

Areas of research interest:

  • Children’s geographies
  • Geography education
  • Curriculum
  • Geographies of education and education spaces
  • Children’s rights
  • Participatory research methods
Dr James MacAllister

Areas of research interest:

  • Philosophical inquiries into any educational issue/s
  • Ethics, values and moral education
  • Epistemology and education - what types of knowledge and curricula are valuable and why
  • Issues concerning discipline and/or punishment in educational settings
  • Alternative schooling 
Dr Ann MacDonald

Areas of research interest:

  • Gender
  • Religious culture and experience
  • Gender and feminism in religion
  • Religion and schooling
  • Teacher culture
  • Women teachers
  • Primary teaching as work
  • Schooling in Scotland
  • Social justice
Professor Gale Macleod

Areas of research interest:

  • Social, emotional and behavioural problems
  • School disaffection
  • Behaviour
  • Exclusion/inclusion
  • Authority relationships
  • Medicalisation of behaviour
Dr Geetha Marcus

Experiences:

  • BAME teachers and student teachers
  • Gypsy/Travellers 
  • "Migrant" and/or "refugee" women and girls

Also:

  • Culturally relevant pedagogies for teaching the new century child
  • Translingualism and Translanguaging 
  • Black feminist methodology (otherwise known an intersectionality)
  • Oral history
Dr Aline Nardo

Areas of research interest:

  • Philosophy of Education, in particular topics connected to Dewey, Vygotsky, Marxism and Critical Theory
  • Topics at the intersection of Evolution and Education
  • Philosophical/conceptual/historical work on ‘learning’ and ‘development’
  • Theory and design related to ‘ethics and play’ (digital and analogue) in educational contexts
Professor Robbie Nicol

Areas of research interest:

  • Outdoor environmental education (theory and practice)
  • Environmental philosophy
  • Epistemological diversity (different ways of knowing)
  • Experiential learning
  • Sustainable development
  • Education
  • Learning for sustainability
  • Cultural perspectives on environmental education
Dr David Overend

Areas of research interest:

  • Contemporary theatre and performance
  • Artistic/creative research
  • Creative approaches to space and place
  • Interdisciplinary learning and teaching
Dr Dimitra Tsakalou

Areas of research interest:

  • Inclusive education
  • Equality and social justice
  • Perceptions and practices on inclusion
  • Inclusive practices
Dr ML White

Interested in issues related to:

  • social justice
  • ethnographic educational research
  • visual research methods
  • multimodal perspectives on urban schooling

Specifically, I am interested in how we prepare beginner teachers to work in areas of socio-economic disadvantage, reaching and teaching students in poverty and the consequences of what Ladson-Billings (2006) calls the educational debt. In addition to my work in teacher education, I am interested in and have written about developing civic media pedagogies, social geography and how young people experience space and place in education and learning.

 

Please contact regarding availaibility to supervise

Dr Hui-Chuan (Jane) Li

Areas of research interest:

  • Curriculum materials design and development, particularly in relation to mathematics
  • Social constructivism in mathematics teaching and learning
  • Development of students’ mathematical proficiency with meaningful grounding
  • Learning for sustainability in mathematics education
  • Learning, teaching and assessment
  • Classroom discussion and communication
  • International and comparative education
Dr Holly Linklater

Areas of research interest:

  • Autoethnography
  • Ethnography
  • Practitioner research
  • Teacher research
  • Inclusion
  • Pedagogy (especially primary schools/ early years); Teachers' creative/imaginative thinking (with regard to pedagogic decision-making)

 

Not available to supervise

Professor Gert Biesta

Areas of research interest:

  • Educational theory 
  • Education policy
  • Curriculum
  • Teaching
  • Teacher education 
  • Citizenship education
  • Arts education
  • Religious education
Professor Catherine Bovill

Areas of research interest:

  • Co-created curriculum
  • Student-staff partnership in learning, teaching
  • Higher education curriculum conceptualisation
  • Relational pedagogy, belonging, mattering and student engagement
Dr Beth Christie

Areas of research interest:

  • Practical, theoretical and philosophical aspects of outdoor learning and learning for sustainability
  • The developing policy landscape in Scotland in relation to outdoor learning, learning for sustainability and the curriculum
Dr Lisa Fernandes

Areas of research interest:

  • Autism
  • Inclusion
  • Teacher education
  • Learning support assistants
Dr Yvonne Foley

Areas of research interest:

  • Language teacher education
  • Teachers' beliefs and identities
  • Literacy development for pupils learning English as an additional language (EAL)
  • Critical literacies
  • Second/additional language learning and teaching
Professor Peter Higgins

Areas of research interest:

  • Theory, philosophy and practice of outdoor education/outdoor learning
  • Theory, philosophy and practice of environmental and sustainability education 
  • International comparative approaches to outdoor, environmental and sustainability education
  • Coaching and skill acquisition in outdoor activities
Dr Donna Murray

Areas of research interest:

  • Taught postgraduate student experience
  • Masters provision
  • Self-efficacy
Dr Zoe Robertson

Areas of research interest:

  • Teacher education
  • Teacher professional learning and development
  • School leadership and leadership development/preparation

Our students

Af'ida Hysniyah

'I think it's very important to work with supervisors and with departments that are investing in our success and listening to our stories.'

Wan

'Doing a PhD here is a dream come true for me. No words can describe how excited I am to be part of this journey.'

How to apply

We ask all postgraduate research applicants to create a research proposal and contact a potential supervisor before submitting an application. Please ensure that, in your research proposal, you clearly identify the Moray House research area of expertise that your proposal falls under, as well as at least one staff member with expertise in this area. We are only able to support applications for research study in the disciplines and research clusters that relate to our School.

As part of your application, you must submit a detailed research proposal. For a PhD application, you must use the template.

Guidelines for writing a PhD research proposal

Guidelines for writing a MScR research proposal


We encourage applicants to contact potential supervisors before submitting an application. At this stage, members of staff would normally provide generic and informal guidance on one draft of your proposal only, and not a detailed or formal review of your application. 

When contacting a potential supervisor:

  • Contact a member of staff from the list only if the area of your proposed study is listed under their areas of expertise
  • Send this staff member a short proposal (maximum 5 pages) and explain in a couple of sentences why you are contacting them specifically. If you do not receive a reply within a couple of weeks, it is fine to send a polite reminder.
  • Do not contact more than one member of staff simultaneously with generic enquiries.

When you submit your application online, please clearly state the names of any staff with whom you have discussed your proposal. If you have not discussed your proposal with any staff members, please identify on your proposal at least one staff member that is expert in your proposed area of study and may be an appropriate supervisor. 


There is no application fee to apply for a research degree.

Applicants currently undertaking a degree or who do not yet have certification or classification may still apply. Any decision to accept your application is likely to be conditional on successful completion of your degree with a classification that meets our normal entry requirements.

The online application system may ask you to provide a certificate. Even if you cannot upload a certificate at this stage, please upload a transcript of the marks of your current programme with a note of when you are expecting to complete the programme.

If you do not meet the requirements to apply for a Research degree, we encourage you to consider applying for one of our Masters' programmes. In particular, our ESRC-recognised MSc Education (Research) provides excellent preparation for doctoral study.

More about our MSc Education (Research)


For degrees starting 1 October 2024, the deadline is 31 July 2024

For degrees starting 6 January 2025, the deadline is 31 October 2024

Applicants are strongly encouraged to apply well before these deadlines, as places are very competitive and many supervisors have limited capacity and may not be available if they have reached the maximum number of PhD students they can supervise.


After your application is submitted online, it is checked to ensure that all the entry requirements are met and the research proposal and any appropriate documentation are submitted. Please ensure that all required documents are submitted online, as missing documents delay the processing of your application. All doctoral proposals submitted as part of an application will be run through plagiarism detection software.

Each application is normally reviewed by at least two members of academic staff in your proposed area of study, as well as the School’s PhD programme directorate. We aim to review all applications within 6 weeks. You will be notified in writing once a final recommendation is made.


Fees and funding

Information about tuition fees and opportunities for scholarships and financial support for our Postgraduate Research students is available on our Fees and Funding page.

Visiting research student

If you are a doctoral researcher and you would like to come to Moray House for a brief period of time, consider coming as a visiting research student.

Information about becoming a visiting research student

Incoming visiting research students

If your application to be a visiting research student at the Moray House School of Education and Sport has been approved, please get in touch with MHSES-Ethics@ed.ac.uk to discuss whether your project will need ethical review in our School, or whether your ethics approval from another institution is sufficient. If ethical review is required, we recommend allowing 6-8 weeks for this process when planning your visit.

Email MHSES-Ethics@ed.ac.uk 

Contact us

Programme-specific questions

For programme-specific enquiries, contact the School's Postgraduate Research Programmes Officer or the Director of Postgraduate Research.

Senior Academic Services Administrator (PGR Programmes)

  • Moray House School of Education and Sport

Contact details

Dr Darío Banegas

Director of Postgraduate Research

  • Moray House School of Education and Sport

Contact details

Questions about your application or how to apply

 For enquiries about your application or how to apply, contact the Postgraduate Admissions office.

Postgraduate Admissions Office (Education)

College of Arts, Humanities & Social Sciences (CAHSS)

Contact details

Address

The University of Edinburgh
57 George Square
Edinburgh
EH8 9JU

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