Lauren Hammond is Departmental Lecturer in Geography Education. She teaches on the PGCE Geography and MSc Teaching and Learning and supervises DPhil students.
Lauren began her career as a teacher of geography, working primarily in London and Singapore. She holds a BA (hons) Geography from Kings College London, PGCE Secondary Geography from the University of Bristol, MA Geography Education from the Institute of Education (University of London), and a PhD from University College London. Lauren is recognised as Senior Fellow of the Higher Education Academy (SFHEA) for her work in connecting research and teaching across the disciplines of geography and education, and her work in mentoring and partnership in teacher education. She is Associate Fellow of the Centre for Teachers and Teaching Research (CTTR) at IOE, UCL’s Faculty of Education and Society.
Prior to working in the Department of Education at the University of Oxford, Lauren was Lecturer in Geography Education at IOE (2014-2022) and Lecturer in Teacher Education at Moray House School of Education and Sport, University of Edinburgh (2022-2024). At IOE, Lauren worked in teacher education (including leading the PGCE Secondary Geography) and supervised students at Masters and Doctoral level. She established and convened an undergraduate module in UCL’s Geography department ‘Geography Education’, which critically examined the complex relationships between geography, education and young people’s lives. Lauren job shared a Partnership Co-ordinator role, leading on mentoring across ITE and convening an ITE wide mentor development group. She also co-chaired IOE’s Early Career Network, which was a cross-departmental role working with a range of colleagues to explore how best to empower colleagues in the first stages of their academic careers and co-create more just academic spaces.
At Moray House School of Education and Sport, Lauren taught on the Primary PGCE, MA Gaelic Education and MSc Transformative Learning and Teaching, as well as supervising students on the MEd Leadership and Learning programme. Collaborating with a range of colleagues, Lauren played roles in establishing a Geography (Teacher) Education Network in Scotland and the ScotGEESE (Scottish Geography, Earth and Environmental Sciences Educators) group. Lauren retains research interests in Scottish education, particularly Geography and Social Studies Education across education phases and spaces, and the relationships between education, rights and citizenship in Scotland.
Lauren’s research is interdisciplinary and examines the relationships between children, geography and education. She is particularly interested in children’s geographies and children’s citizenship, and in considering how education can empower young people in their lives and futures. Lauren is also interested in geographies of education and education spaces and examining how in/justices are (re)produced in, and through, education, and the relationships between education, space and place.
Lauren’s scholarship mainly lies in the field of Geography Education, and she is interested in how geography is constructed, taught, experienced and imagined from early years through to postgraduate, and in a range of spaces. She is committed to developing geography education research(ers) and serves as Secretary for the Geography Education Research Collective (GEReCo). Lauren is an active member of the Geographical Association (GA) and a member of the Geography Education Research Special Interest Group (GERSIG). She is Fellow of the Royal Geographical Society (FRGS) and has served as Deputy Secretary for the Geography and Education Research Group (GeogEd), and Membership Officer and Acting Secretary for the Geographies of Children, Youth and Families Research Group (GCYFRG).
Dr Claire Stewart-Hall holds a PhD in Education (Leeds Beckett University), an MA in Feminist Critical Theory (University of Bristol) and a BA in Contemporary Art.
Her work builds on her experience and qualification as a Head Teacher in Secondary and Post 16 Education. Her work focuses on whiteness and constructions of ‘race’ and racism in policy enactment of senior leadership teams of schools in England. She has an interest in qualitative research methods and archival research about place and policy.
Research
- Stewart-Hall, C., Rabiger, P., Lander, V., & Grant, V. (2023). Resisting whiteness: Anti-racist leadership and professional learning in majority white senior leadership teams in English schools. The Curriculum Journal, 34, 138–155. https://doi.org/10.1002/curj.196
Robert (Rob) Klassen joined the University of Oxford as Professor of Education in November 2023.
Rob was previously at the University of York, where he worked from 2012 as Professor and Chair of the Psychology in Education Research Centre. Before coming to the UK, Rob was Assistant, Associate, and Full Professor in the Department of Educational Psychology at the University of Alberta (2004-2012). Before entering academia he worked as an educational psychologist and high school teacher in his hometown of Vancouver.
Rob’s primary research interests are in building an understanding of teacher motivation and development across the career span and across countries. His current work aims to develop and test theory-informed technological interventions related to teacher and school leader recruitment, selection, and development.
Rob has published over 100 peer-reviewed journal articles, chapters, and books. Recent projects have been funded by the ESRC, the ERC, GIZ, and the World Bank, with recent projects in the UK, Australia, Africa (Morocco, Kenya, South Africa), and Europe. He has served as advisor to education ministries in England, Africa, Australia, Europe, and South America. In 2023 he founded the spinout company, TSP, in collaboration with the University of York. He is a Fellow of the Academy of Social Sciences and the American Psychological Association, and has served on editorial boards for the British Journal of Educational Psychology, the Journal of Educational Psychology, and the Oxford Review of Education.
Representative research includes:
On teacher recruitment: Klassen, R. M., Rushby, J. V., & Wang, H. (2023). Can an online scenario-based learning activity influence preservice teachers’ self-efficacy, person-vocation fit, and career intentions? Computers and Education, 207, 104935.
On teacher retention: Wang, H., & Klassen, R. M. (2023). Longitudinal relations between teachers’ utility values and quitting intentions. Teaching and Teacher Education, 127, 104109.
On teacher selection: Klassen, R. M., & Kim, L. E. (2021). Teacher selection: Evidence-based practices. Springer, ISBN 978-3-030-76186-8.
Robert has been involved in secondary mathematics education since 2004. He has taught mathematics in schools in the Midlands, London and the US, and has contributed to a number of textbook series and books for teachers.
Robert was awarded his PhD by the University of Warwick in 2013. His interests include the purposes of mathematics education, improving pedagogy and practice, and finding new ways to get pupils excited about and engaged with mathematics.
Julia teaches and supervises on the MSc in Education and is involved in the Cognitive Development and Educational Attainment; Core Principles of Child Assessment, and the Foundation Learning and Wellbeing papers.
Before joining the Department of Education she worked in the Department of Experimental Psychology (2013-2023) and continues collaborations there, including co-leading the WISDOM (working in schools to deliver on mental health) Network: https://wisdom.mhid.org.uk.
Her research is concerned with child development, primarily peer relationships, bullying and mental health. She works with primary, secondary and special education schools across the UK and with children aged 4-18. She is also an advocate for public and community engagement, especially with school staff and parents.
Julia wants to support every child to achieve their potential in school.
Recently funded PI projects:
- Feasibility trial of an anti-bullying programme for children in special schools.
- Pupil interactions and networks in special schools.
- Mental health in schools with diversity.
- Special schools, mental health and bullying.
- Teaching staff perspectives: Using VR to enhance PSHE learning.
Arathi is a sociologist of education. Her current research examines reparative justice in educational systems and practices. How might collective recognition of past and present injustices help us imagine ‘reparative futures’ of education? What does reparation in education look like?
This line of inquiry has emerged from Arathi’s scholarship over a number of years which has illuminated the structural injustices of schooling systems. She has examined the politics of educational inequality in the Indian, Australian and UK contexts as well as the global governance of childhood and the family.
Underlying much of this research has been an abiding interest in the racial politics of education. Her scholarship has explored the active erasures of racism and coloniality in the field of education and the ways in which racial capitalism sustains educational injustices. Major collaborative works in these areas include: Learning Whiteness: Education and the Settler Colonial State (Pluto, 2022); Black Lives Matter and Global Struggles for Racial Justice in Education (Chicago, 2023); and Learning With the Past: Racism, Education and Reparative Futures (Unesco, 2020).
Prior to joining the University of Oxford, Arathi taught at the Universities of Bristol, Cambridge and Sydney. She is a co-convenor of the Race, Empire and Education Research Collective.
Funded Research Projects
Reparative Futures of Education (REPAIR-ED)
This is a five-year research programme (2023-2028) selected by the European Research Council and funded by UKRI Frontier Research. It involves collaborating with primary school-communities in the city of Bristol to conduct in-depth ethnographic and oral-history research on the features and mechanisms of structural inequities in education. The project uses its empirical findings to facilitate dialogues with schools, their communities, policy-actors and the broader public to explore how reparative justice in education might be conceptualised and enacted. It is motivated by the overarching question: what does reparation in education look like?
ESRC Centre for Sociodigital Futures
We live in a sociodigital world (the social and digital are interwoven). No single ‘future’ awaits us – there are many possible ‘sociodigital futures’. The Centre for Sociodigital Futures (CenSoF) brings together world-leading interdisciplinary expertise to explore sociodigital futures in-the-making to support fair and sustainable ways of life. Arathi is a member of the team whose work focuses on the sociodigital futures of education.
Global Advocacy for Anti-Racist Education
Global education policy frameworks have been silent on racism and coloniality, despite the overwhelming role of racial injustice in the maintenance of educational inequities across the world. This 8-year project, in partnership with Action Aid International, the University of Bristol, and a global consortium of anti-racist activists and educators, builds research evidence and a global movement for anti-racist education policy, systems and practices.
Jeremy Knox is Associate Professor of Digital Education at the Department of Education, University of Oxford, and an Official Fellow of Kellogg College.
His research interests include the relationships between education, data-driven technologies, and wider society, and he has led projects funded by the ESRC and the British Council in the UK. Jeremy has previously served as co-Director of the Centre for Research in Digital Education at the University of Edinburgh, and currently co-convenes the Society for Research in Higher Education Digital University network. His published work includes AI and Education in China(2023), Data Justice and the Right to the City (2022), The Manifesto for Teaching Online(2020), Artificial Intelligence and Inclusive Education (2019), and Posthumanism and the Massive Open Online Course (2016).
Sara is a post-doctoral researcher on the Learning in Families through Technology (LiFT) project. A passionate educator with research interests focused on policy, pedagogy and technology.
Sara has enjoyed many years as a classroom teacher, school leader, and lecturer before specialising in the delivery of large-scale digital assessment globally with a leading EdTech company. Her academic qualifications include a Masters in Educational Leadership (UNSW), Graduate Diploma in Psychology (UNSW), Certificate of Gifted Education (UNSW) and a Bachelor of Primary Education (ECU). She completed her PhD in Education at the University of Sydney where she was awarded the inaugural NESA scholarship from the Centre for Educational Measurement and Assessment (CEMA) and the University of Sydney Doctoral Travel Scholarship which enabled her to spend three terms as a Recognised Student in the Oxford University Centre for Educational Assessment (OUCEA) where she is now a Departmental Associate. Her doctoral research focused on national education policies and the international assessments used to measure their success.
Sara is regularly invited to speak on the ethics of AI in Education and consults to organisations such as UNESCO, OECD and the Asian Development Bank. Recently, Sara supported the publication of the UNESCO AI Competency Framework for Teachers.
Sara is also an Adjunct Fellow – Digital Technologies in Education at The Centre of Independent Studies in Australia.
Danica studied at the University of Cape Town (2011-2019) in South Africa (BSc, BMedScHons, MScMed, PhD) before joining the University of the Western Cape as an educationalist (2020). She joined Oxford as a Senior Departmental Lecturer in the MSc in Medical Education program in 2023.
The #RhodesMustFall student-led protests in South Africa (2015), calling for free, decolonised Higher Education, sparked her jump from the laboratory bench to the classroom desk, moving from biomedical research to educational research. Her PhD in Health Sciences Education explored clinician-educators’ conceptions of assessment, and factors influencing their assessment practices, in medical programmes in diverse Southern settings.
Her research interests include assessment and feedback, curriculum transformation, technology-enhanced education, faculty development and social justice in medical education.
Publications
Clinician educators’ conceptions of assessment in medical education; D. A. Sims; F. J. Cilliers; 2023; Advances in Health Sciences Education; https://doi.org/10.1007/s10459-022-10197-5