Studentships
For information about potential studentships with the School of Education please see our Financial Support pages.
ESRC Studentships
The Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC) is the UK's leading research funding and training agency addressing economic and social concerns. They recently awarded 3 quota studentship to the School (1 of only 14 outlets to receive studentship quota in Education) to work with our academic staff.
The Graduate School of Education warmly welcomes their new cohort of UK and international doctoral students. Three of these new students will be working on ESRC funded PhD studentships which are linked to major research projects in our School:
Ian Alcock
Ian is working with Dr Flora Macleod and Dr Keith Postlethwaite on a research project linked to the ESRC funded project ‘Learning Lives: Learning, Identity and Agency in the Life-Course’ (see http://www.learninglives.org). Ian’s research is an investigation of the relationships between participation in education, and the sense of agentic control that people have over their lives. These relationships will be examined longitudinally within the life-course of working age adults, using archive data from the British Household Panel Survey. The first phase of the project aims to model agency in terms of items from the questionnaire used in this annual survey of over 10,000 individuals.
Ruth Gwernan-Jones
Ruth is working with Professor Bob Burden and Professor Gert Biesta on a research project also linked to the Learning Lives project, focusing on dyslexia. The field of dyslexia tends to focus on aetiology and intervention, but the need to understand the dyslexic person can be overlooked. Ruth will be carrying out life history research with dyslexic adults, to develop understanding of the experience of being dyslexic, with particular interest in these adults’ identity and agency. The research will be looking at themes within their life stories, then placing the stories in context by viewing them in relation to wider structures within society relating to literacy. It is hoped that the research will contribute to a better understanding of what being dyslexic means for adults within our culture.
Jane McDonnell
Jane is working with Professor Gert Biesta and Dr Rob Lawy on a research project linked to a British Academy funded project ‘Citizenship Learning in Everyday Life’. Jane’s research builds on the project through inquiry into the opportunities for democratic learning in arts-based and creative activities for young people. In collaboration with Professor Biesta and Dr Lawy, Jane is working on a joint project with Exeter art galleries, looking into young peoples’ decision making in arts projects and the opportunities for democratic learning that these projects afford. She intends to develop her work in the area of theatre and creative writing, exploring the opportunities for democratic learning that young people encounter in these settings.