Dr George Koutsouris (He/him/his)

I am a Senior Lecturer in Education (Special Educational Needs and Inclusive Education), primarily teaching on the MA International Education and MA Special Educational Needs programmes. I have published about social inclusion, inclusive pedagogies, Lesson Study and early reading interventions.

In my research work, I critically explore inclusion in education in its many different forms and expressions.

I have been awarded, together with Prof Brahm Norwich, the British Educational Research Journal (BERJ) Editors’ Choice Award 2019 for an article exploring the role of randomised controlled trials in education. I have been involved in several systematic literature reviews, exploring a wide range of educational issues (including gender and mental health); and have jointly authored three articles about inclusion in Higher Education teaching, curriculum and institutional policies.

More recently, I led the ESRC-funded evaluation (2021) of the intergenerational Silver Stories programme - the programme of a charity that sees older people listening to primary or secondary students read. Our evaluation suggests that Silver Stories can enhance wellbeing for both students and older people through a feeling that they can support each other, reduce loneliness, and improve students’ confidence in reading and other reading-related outcomes.

I am current involved in the Disability Rights and In/Equalities in Higher Education, British Academy funded, project (2024-26). This project reflects an Indonesia/England problem-focused partnership to address the inclusion of students with disabilities in higher education. We will explore how sociocultural public discourses about disability and inclusion influence expectations and practice, foregrounding the lived experiences of students with disabilities in both countries. We bring together an interdisciplinary team spanning education, critical disability studies and media/communications to provide novel insights for practice, policy and research communities.

I was also involved in a British Academy-funded project (2019-2021) exploring student experiences in the intersection of disability and gender; and a pilot (2022) examining how socioemotional learning can be explicitly integrated into the secondary school curriculum using a Lesson Study approach. In 2021, I co-authored a British Educational Research Association-funded report on the structures and processes influencing research activities in the UK.

I am a Fellow of the Higher Education Academy – and I was a 2018-2019 Education Incubator Fellow with a project exploring the Hidden Curriculum in Higher Education. I also led the development of the MA International Education programme and both its main modules: Perspectives on International Education and Education for Diversity.

From September 2022, I am responsible for the global engagement of the School of Education, and my responsibilities include international student recruitment and institutional partnerships. I am actively involved in the activities of the UK-China Humanities Alliance for Higher Education and particularly the organisation of the 2023 (hosted by Tsinghua University) and 2024 (hosted by the University of Exeter) HEYTA student conferences.

I gained my PhD at Exeter in 2014. For my doctoral study, I explored a tension between young people’s preferences in everyday social interaction and the ethical dilemma of including all people. After gaining my PhD, I was employed in a number of small-scale research projects, including an ESRC-funded Lesson Study project. Between 2015-2017, I was the research officer of the Nuffield Foundation-funded Integrated Group Reading (IGR) project, led by Prof Brahm Norwich, a randomised controlled trial that run over two years in 34 English primary schools.

Qualifications

• University of Exeter, School of Education; PhD in Education
• University of Exeter, School of Education; Master in Education, SEN (Distinction)
• National and Kapodistrian University of Athens; Annual Seminary of Special Educational Needs
• National and Kapodistrian University of Athens; Ptychion in History and Archaeology