Having started at Oxford for an undergraduate degree in Philosophy and Theology in 2018, Anna continued her studies with a PGCE (Religious Education), MSc (Higher Education) and now a DPhil. My research explores the use of religious scripture as a primary text in Religious Education classrooms.
MSc Dissertation: FE and HE or FE versus HE: an analysis of perspectives from college and university leaders in England
Supervisors
Liam Gearon and Liam Guilfoyle
Louise was born and raised in Glasgow and moved to Oxford to pursue a DPhil in Education.
Louise’s research interests are education policy, particularly higher education policy, as well as qualitative research into the experiences of students in higher education and reducing inequalities in access to higher education. Louise is also interested in educational capabilities, educational purpose, aspirations and philosophical debates about knowledge construction and co-construction. Louise has a First Class BA (Joint Honours) in Social Policy and Education from the University of Strathclyde, and two Masters degrees with Distinction also from the University of Strathclyde in Applied Educational and Social Research and Social Policy (Research Methods). Louise also participated in the University of Oxford’s UNIQ+ Graduate Access Programme in the summer of 2022, where she worked at the Department of Sociology with Melinda Mills, Bo Zhao and Evelina Akimova on research into the impact of socio-economic status on inequalities in access to veterinary care in Scotland. Louise’s DPhil thesis is interested in evaluating Lorella Terzi’s educational capabilities framework through the lens of contemporary higher education in order to gain an understanding of what graduate capabilities are identified by students and stakeholders as being necessary for enabling graduates to successfully thrive and adapt in a post-pandemic society.
Supervisors
Alis Oancea and Kelsey Inouye
Christine Namdar is a Doctoral Researcher for the project “Growing up radical? The role of educational institutions in guiding young people’s worldview construction”, which is being carried out partially at University of Oxford department of education between 2018-2023 and funded by the Academy of Finland.
Christine is also a lecturer at the University of Helsinki in the education department and affiliated with the sociology department at Åbo Akademi. In the past she has worked as a researcher at the Warwick Business School, Center for small and medium-sized enterprises, where she investigated businesses’ sense of community responsibility. She has also conducted research at the War Crimes Tribunal in The Hague looking at factors that influence initiatives to address social injustices in the context of international law.
Christine holds a BA and MA by research in sociology from The University of Warwick, as well as a BSc in education from Stockholm University. She has also studied at Lund university. Her Ph.D. research looks at the positive potential and capabilities of youth as transformative agents of change. She states, “Youth, in general, are seldom regarded in terms of their positive potentials, though the rhetoric is about them being our future”.
Her research interests include service-based learning, existential and spiritual questions in educational settings, as well as evaluating successful deradicalisation processes in society. She is also actively researching service-based projects in schools and communities promoting the role of youth as transformative agents of change.
In November 2022, the researchers of “Growing up radical? The role of educational institutions in guiding young people’s worldview construction” were invited to present and discuss with the Prime Minister of Slovakia, Eduard Heger and their Minister of Education, Ján Horecký, on the role of education in preventing radicalisation in society.
The Ministry of Interior of Finland and the Finnish Institute for Health and Welfare (THL) invited Christine in February 2023 to present and speak about the role of young people in society and the prevention of gang related crime.
The European Commission’s network countering radicalisation, Radicalisation Awareness Network (RAN Stratcomms) invited Christine to Brussels in May 2023 to present and advise.
Additional web links: https://researchportal.helsinki.fi/en/persons/christine-namdar/activities/
Lyudmila Nurse is an Honorary Research Fellow. A sociologist with over 30 years’ experience of research in education, culture, identities, and international social and policy development consultancy work. Dr Lyudmila Nurse’s research include international comparative studies of social mobility and education, identities and belonging, comparative inter-generational studies of identities, ethnic minorities and migrants, parenting, well-being of families with children and young people, application of advanced methods of qualitative, biographical, mixed methods and arts-based research.
She was Research Fellow and Co-Investigator at the Department of Education and previously held post-doctoral and visiting fellowships at universities of Edinburgh, Warwick, City (London) and was an Honorary Research Fellow at Oxford Brookes University. She also has extensive expertise in European comparative research and development consultancy in social and youth policy of countries of Eastern Europe. She is a co-editor of the Policy Press (Bristol) book series: Advances in Biographical Research. She is a co-founder and a research director of the Oxford XXI think tank. Lyudmila is currently Coordinator/Chair of the Research Network 03 ‘Biographical Perspectives on European Societies’ of the European Sociological Association (ESA), a member of the ESA Council of Research Networks and of the Cultural, Scientific and Medical Advisory Board of Music Mind Spirit Trust.
At the Department of Education she works in collaboration with Dr Ian Thompson and Professor Harry Daniels associating with the Socio-Cultural and Activity Theory Group. She was a Co-Investigator in AHRC-funded project Cultural Artefacts and Belonging: A comparative case study of displaced and refugee young people and families in Ukraine led by the Department of Education (2021-2022). In 2017-2019 as Research fellow in the Department of Education she worked with Professor Edward Melhuish and Professor Jaqueline Barnes in the EC H2020 project: Inclusive Education and Social Support to Tackle Inequalities in Society (ISOTIS) in which she led a comparative qualitative study of mothers with pre-school and primary school children from low-income families in two metropolitan areas of England: Greater London and North West England. She also coordinated comparative qualitative study of mothers from low-income families, families with immigrant background and ethnic minority background in ten EU countries: Czech Republic, England, France, Germany, Greece, Italy, The Netherlands, Norway, Poland and Portugal.
Research interests are:
- Theoretical approaches to cultural identities and belonging
- Social mobility and inclusive education
- Migration studies (educational migration; forced migration)
- Individual and families’ strategies in tackling impact of inequalities
- Parenting cultures
- Cultural identities and music
- Advanced qualitative, biographical, ethnographic and art-based methods
Publications
Books
- Nurse, L., Moran, L. and Sidiropulu-Janku, K. (editors) (forthcoming 2023) Biographical Research and the Meanings of Mothering: Life Choices, Identities and Methods. Bristol: Policy Press
Journal Special Issues:
- Guest co-editor with Professor Edward Melhuish of the Special Issue: Comparative Perspectives on Educational Inequalities in Europe of the Contemporary Social Science, Journal of the Academy of Social Sciences (2021) Volume 16, Issue 4 (2021), 417-522. https://www.tandfonline.com/toc/rsoc21/16/4?nav=tocList
Book chapters:
- Nurse, L., Sidiropulu-Janku, K., Obrovska, J., Gajek, K., & J.Mbiatong. (2022)
The place of religious and non-religious values and beliefs in identities of mothers of young children: Methodological approach and empirical evidence from the European countries. In: Kuusisto, A. (editor): The Routledge International Handbook of the Place of Religion in Early Childhood Education. Routledge
- Nurse, L. and Robertson, C. (2021) The Art of Communication in the Socially Distanced Environment. In: Brown, A., Carbon, F., Chambers, B., Coomes, M., Coudenys, W., Rogers, J., Weyer, D. and M. Wilson (editors) Re-Imagining the Tower of Babel. Luxembourg: University of Luxembourg, pp 137-141.
- Nurse, L. (2020). Construction of Schooling Time as Part of Mothers’ Identities. In: Schilling and O’Neill (eds). Frontiers in Time Research-Einfuhrung in die interdisziplinare Zeitforschung. Springer VS, 287-310. https://link.springer.com/chapter/10.1007/978-3-658-31252-7_13
- Nurse, L, & O’Neill, M (two editions: 2018, 2019). Biographical Research in the UK: profiles and perspectives in: Lutz, H., Schiebel, M. and E. Tuider (editors) Handbuch Biographieforschung. Springer VS.
- Nurse, L., (2013). Biographical approach in the Study of Identities of Ethnic Minorities in Eastern Europe. In: Mrozowicki, A. and Turk, J.D. (editors) Realist Biography and European policy: An Innovative Approach to European Policy Studies. Leuven: Leuven University Press, Belgium.
- Nurse, L.& E.Sik (2011) Identity and music. Identity of place and cultural identities of generations. In: Axford, B. and Huggins, R. ( editors) Cultures and/of globalisation, Cambridge: Cambridge Scholars Publishing, p. 171-201
Peer reviewed journal articles:
- Nurse, L. and Robertson, C. (forthcoming 2022) Hearing and Feeling the Music in Every Step: Musical Walks and Biographical Experience of Lockdown. Irish Journal of Sociology
- Nurse, L. and Melhuish, E. (2021). Comparative perspectives on educational inequalities in Europe: an overview of the old and emergent inequalities from a bottom-up perspective in: Contemporary Social Science, Volume 16, 2021 – Issue 4, 417-431. https://doi.org/10.1080/21582041.2021.1948095
- Nurse, L. (2016). Identities and a sense of belonging: young Lithuanians and Latvians from ethnic minorities. INTER., Vol., No 12, pp 21-33. http://jour.isras.ru/index.php/inter/article/view/4009
- Nurse, L., Gibson, A., and Surányi, R. (2016). Media Consumption and Self-Identification: Hungarian and Slovak case study, in: Identities: Global Studies in Culture and Power, Routledge, Taylor and Francis Group. Volume 23, Number 6, pp. 705-724.
- Nurse, L., Sik, E. (2012). Zene és identitás, in: Pro Minoritate, 2012 tél., Budapest, pp. 3-39 (In Hungarian)
- Nurse, L (2012). A zene szerepe a magyarországi szlovákok etnikai identitásában in: Pro Minoritate, 2012 tél., Budapest, pp.40-57 (In Hungarian)
- Nurse, L. (2011). Music in the identities of Ethnic Slovaks in Hungary. In: Slovak Journal of Political Sciences, Volume 11,No3, pp. 249-266, Trnava: The Institute of Social Sciences, University of SS Cyril and Methodius.
International reports:
- Broekhuizen, M., Wolf, K., Francot, R., Moser, T., Pastori, G., Nurse, L., Melhuish, E. & P. Leseman (2019) (Editors). Resources, experiences, and support needs of families in disadvantaged communities.INTEGRATIVE REPORT D 2.5 https://www.isotis.org/en/publications/resources-experiences-and-support-needs-of-families-in- disadvantaged-communities
- United Nations World Youth Report, 2003. Consultant.
- Breen, P. J., Shionnemann, M-E., L. Nurse,L., Azzopardi,A., Lagree, J-C.& P. Lauritzen (2003) Youth Policy in Lithuania. Report by an international group of experts appointed by the Council of Europe. Council of Europe Publishing
- Helsingius, U., du Bois-Reymond, M., Nurse, L., Chan, V., Machado Pais, J. & D. Trestieni Ion. (2001) Youth Policy in Romania. Report by an international groups of Experts appointed by the Council of Europe. Council of Europe Publishing.
Gift Sonkqayi is a doctoral student in the department. He is fully funded by the Clarendon Scholarship and Brasenose college.
He is mainly interested in all things concerning the epistemology of decolonising the university space within and beyond the South African context.
Fang Xu is a doctoral student in education at University of Oxford. Her research interests are in equity, social class and socioeconomic status gaps in educational outcomes. Her research is motivated by a theoretical interest in the production and reproduction of social inequalities.
She aims to use empirical data and longitudinal datasets to understand how youth developmental outcomes are shaped by families with a particular focus on populations in the Greater China region. She is also interested in the role of individual decision-making mechanisms in shaping educational inequality by social origins and school segregation, comparative studies of education system characteristics, and big data and machine learning in education.
Fang Xu obtained her BA degree in Chinese Language and Literature (Teacher Education) at South China Normal University. During her undergraduate study, she was selected into the Class of Sinology and obtained the qualification certificate for teachers in senior high school Chinese teaching in China. She completed her MA degree in Sociology of Education at the Institute of Education, University College London in 2019, conducting quantitative research on adolescents’ educational aspirations in China for her dissertation. Prior to her DPhil study, she worked as a research assistant at Shenzhen Institute of Artificial Intelligence and Robotics for Society (AIRS) at The Chinese University of Hong Kong, Shenzhen.
Szilvi’s main research interest lies in student religiosity. She completed her BA in Theology in Budapest (summa cum laude). After working in a number of ministry and teaching settings, she completed her PGCE in Religious Education at the Department, followed by an MSc in Research Design and Methodology (distinction).
She has been working as a project manager on a large-scale science-religion project at the University of Oxford before starting her DPhil. Szilvi lives in Oxford with her husband and 3 children.