Pippa is a first-year DPhil student, whose research interests focus on vulnerable students’ outcomes and experiences of secondary school English education.
In 2023, Pippa completed an MSc in Learning and Teaching at the University of Oxford, researching pedagogical strategies for the teaching of emotionally challenging literature to students with experiences of trauma. Her DPhil research will build on this project, exploring looked after children’s engagement with English education, and their outcomes in the subject.
Alongside her research, Pippa continues to teach English in a secondary school; she is therefore passionate about collaborations between practice and research. Her project seeks to develop our understanding of looked after children’s experiences in English classrooms, in order to facilitate the development of strategies to support these vulnerable learners.
Supervisors
Nicole Dingwall and Julie Selwyn
Amy is a DPhil student, funded by an ESRC Grand Union DTP Studentship.
Her doctoral research focuses on the educational provision for separated asylum-seeking and refugee children within the UK context. Alongside her DPhil, she also works for a London local authority’s Virtual School for Looked After Children and Care Leavers, as an ‘Unaccompanied Asylum-Seeking Children Advisory Teacher/Caseworker’.
Prior to starting the DPhil, she completed an (ESRC funded) MSc in Sociology at Oxford University, a MPhil in Development Studies at Cambridge University, and a BA in International Development and Portuguese at Leeds University. She also spent a year studying Social Work at Rio de Janeiro’s PUC University.
Supervisors
David Mills and Ellie Ott
Alice provides research project support over a range of research projects at the Rees Centre.
Jiayi Li is a doctoral student in the Department of Education. Her research interests encompass education policy implementation, teachers’ and students’ mobility, self-identity construction, subjectification and socialisation in the context of international higher education.
Jiayi also works as a research assistant with the Rees Centre on policy mapping and local authority data analytics projects in the UK (PI: Professor Leon Feinstein). The focus is on how to improve measurements in the existing Early Years Systems to understand and ensure children’s success.
Prior to her DPhil studies at Oxford, she holds a MSc degree in Comparative and International Education from University of Oxford and a BA degree (double major) with high honours in Educational Studies and Economics from Colgate University in the US.
Her current doctoral research employs a comparative case study to explore self-identity construction and socialisation of international students from ambiguous territories (Taiwan, Hong Kong and Macau) in mainland Chinese universities.
Chris is a third-year part time DPhil student. He is an experienced Director of Children’s Services working in London. He is interested in path dependence and whether it is a helpful concept to understand how children’s services work.