Accepting PhD Students

PhD projects

I welcome enquiries about PhD supervision in the following areas:

1. Critical studies of educational technology in developing contexts.
2. Critical studies on broadening access to higher education through technology for marginalised groups in developing contexts, particularly for refugees and internally displaced persons (IDPs).
3. Critical studies of the intersections of national policy, global indicators of educational development (SDGs, etc.), technology, and educational autonomy in developing contexts.
4. Futures approaches to community-led edtech development and emergent pedagogies

Personal profile

Biography

I am Senior Lecturer in Digital Education at the University of Edinburgh, and a Co-Director of the Centre for Research in Digital Education. My published work includes critical perspectives on educational technologies, the mobilities of digital education particularly for marginalised groups, and futures educational research. I work often on connected learning in contexts of forced displacement.

I am Principal Investigator (PI) on the Mastercard Foundation-funded project Practitioner Networks and Digital Inclusion for Higher Education in Sub-Saharan Africa, PI on the Royal Society of Edinburgh (RSE) funded Connected Policy, Practice and Accreditation: Connected Refugee Education in Ugandan Higher Education project, PI on the GCRF-funded Digital Education Africa cluster, and PI on the Digital Education for change makers in sub-Saharan Africa project. I am Co-Founder and Chief Digital Education Officer of Panoply Digital, a consultancy dedicated to appropriate use of educational technologies in developing contexts.  I am a member of the Education Beyond Borders Operational & Advisory Group. I work with the Connected Learning in Crisis Consortium on forced displacement research throughout Sub-Saharan Africa.

I was Co-I on the Mastercard Foundation-funded Foundations for All project, and Co-I on the Universal Secondary Education in Asia Pacific project. I was the PI on the Exploring the Teacher Function: Continuing Interventions in Automated Teaching project and worked on the Near Futures Teaching project, and was formerly part of the NERC Research for Emergency Aftershock Response project. I was an Assistant Professor at Hankuk University of Foreign Studies in Seoul, Korea for many years. I was a core team member of the Future University Lab at Una Europa (2019-2023).

My research focuses on the critical examination of the mobilities exhibited by groups and sectors in flux and how technology is used to both structure and manage these mobilities. Post-Brexit, with greater concentrations of international students, displaced peoples, and refugees, with the unbundling of labour and education, with a global edtech regime emerging in developing contexts that can unmoor local educational expertise and displace higher education as a vehicle for social mobility, this research focuses on frameworks to investigate these movements holistically and to begin to address the larger intractable challenges that may stunt educational progress in development contexts.

Education/Academic qualification

Education, Doctor of Philosophy (PhD), Mobile Learning in Higher Education in South Korea: Charting Trajectories of Peripheral Participation, University College London

1 Oct 201217 Dec 2016

Award Date: 17 Dec 2016

Digital Education, Master in Science, University of Edinburgh

20 Sept 200911 Jul 2011

Award Date: 11 Jun 2011

Information Science, Master in Science, Drexel University

20042006

Award Date: 15 Jun 2006

Education, Bachelor of Education, Wright State Univ

19941997

Award Date: 17 Dec 1997

External positions

Member, Connected Learning in Crisis Consortium

2022 → …

Core Team Member, Una Europa

20202023

Consultant , UN Habitat

1 Mar 20192021

Co-Founder and Chief Digital Education Officer, Panoply Digital

1 Feb 2015 → …

Consultant, The World Bank

Jul 20142019

Member, Advisory Board, Beni American University

1 Feb 2012 → …

Keywords

  • L Education (General)
  • Digital Education
  • Mobile Learning
  • SDG 4
  • Mobility
  • Sub-Saharan Africa
  • South Asia
  • majority world
  • forced displacement
  • Global South
  • refugees
  • refugee education
  • LB2300 Higher Education
  • mobilities
  • refugees
  • postdevelopment theory
  • communicative action
  • capability approaches

Research Themes and Networks

  • Data & Digital

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