Before joining the University of Gloucestershire, I taught in various primary schools in my home city of Bristol. I have also been an SEND teacher and a youth worker for a charity promoting community inclusion for young people with emotional and behavioural challenges. As a primary English specialist, my main area of interest in terms of teaching and research is children’s and young-adult literature. I am particularly interested in children’s emotional responses to fiction and how primary teachers can support, encourage and engage with reader-response in the classroom. I lead the Cheltenham ‘Reading Teachers, Reading Pupils’ (RTRP) group, in conjunction with the Open University and the Cheltenham Festival, and am also on the RTRP book selection panel.
2015 Santander Travel Award
2018 – ‘Best Paper in Section’ Award – CEA annual conference, St Petersburg, Florida
Although predominantly a teacher trainer teaching core English and literacy-based specialist modules on the B.Ed pathway, I also teach children’s literature modules on the Education Studies degree and the Masters Degree in Education. I also supervise PhD students.
My research is predominantly focused on ‘othered’, marginalised and excluded young people, and their representations in contemporary culture – particularly in children’s literature and film. My current post-graduate teaching and research in this area centres on depictions of young people with mental illnesses in YA fiction. I am also interested in how childhood as a ‘site’ of emerging identity is conceived of in late twentieth-century British poetry. With this in mind, I am currently working on an extended study exploring childhood to adulthood transitions in the work of the late Gloucestershire-based poet U.A. Fanthorpe.
Children's and YA Literature Reader-Response Social and emotional literacy skills