Gonzalo is a Postdoctoral Researcher at the Centre on Skills, Knowledge, and Organisational Performance (SKOPE). He works on the “System-Thinking Approaches to Tertiary Education Policymaking in England” project, which aims to explore and foster collaboration, cohesion, and synergies within the tertiary education sector in England.
His research interests include the politics of education policy at the macro, meso, and micro levels, as well as the policy effects on institutions and education actors. He is particularly interested in the political dimensions of “education quality” and the lived effects of “quality” discourses within the context of global trends toward market-driven and accountability policies in education.
Nuo (Richard) Chen is a Research Assistant whose research interests are multilingualism, language learning (especially technology-mediated language learning), and Internet discourse.
Nuo obtained a BA in English Studies from the University of Macau in 2022 and an MSc in Applied Linguistics and Second Language Acquisition (Distinction) from the University of Oxford in 2023. His Master’s dissertation focused on the effect of early-year exposure in the acquisition of Mandarin lexical tones through the lens of heritage language speakers.
He has been involved in projects investigating the validity of research quality appraisal tools. Nuo is also committed to making academic ideas more accessible with multimedia format and has played a pivotal role in several educational video production projects.
Claire is passionate about breaking down the historical and spatial boundaries between higher education institutions and the communities excluded from these establishments. She is a Talloires Network Next Generation Leader and hopes to orientate her research and practice towards the construction of a more just education system in South Africa.
Claire holds a MSt in Women’s, Gender, and Sexuality Studies, and MPhil in Economics. She previously worked at the Rhodes University Community Engagement Division, responsible facilitating an engaged research group and a community engagement short course for high schools. Her research interests include community/public engagement, African higher education, feminist and engaged research methods, and community histories.
Claire is eager to hear from anyone thinking about pursuing doctoral study in education, and especially from those with similar research interests.
Supervisors
Dr David Mills and Dr Aliya Khalid
Warda Arif is a doctoral student at the Department of Education. Her research aims to operationalise Critical Realist conceptions and methods to study Cultures of Higher Education in select Indian universities.
She completed her Master’s in Education and International Development from University College London’s – Institute of Education (UCL-IOE) as a Commonwealth Scholar and holds a B.Sc. in Biochemistry form Aligarh Muslim University (AMU).
Over her brief career, Warda has worked in the social development and impact sector in South Africa, India and Saudi Arabia, in teaching, research and advisory roles.
Supervisors
Dr Steven Puttick and Dr Aliya Khalid
Dr Gardiana Bandeira-Melo is a Post-Doctoral Researcher, on the project ‘International Student Mobility and World Development’, leading research on countries at the South of the Sahara.
She underwent training in Critical Development Studies and Political Economy of the Global South at Cardiff Metropolitan University (PhD) and the Sorbonne University (BSc and MSc).
Her career straddles, the worlds of academia and government, over three continents (Africa, Europe/Asia and the Americas) in the areas of development, politics and ethics.
Dr Bandeira-Melo’s research delves into the nexus of indigenous African knowledge, decoloniality and climate justice. It employs mixed research designs and interdisciplinary frameworks, namely Critical Race Theory and Theories of Change, where these relate to responses to colonial legacies and socioeconomic and environmental transformations.
She seeks to understand, through the lived experiences and perspectives of people from Africa and the Diaspora, how traditional African science and culture are employed to overcome mechanisms of oppression, inequalities and climate disruption. Her work aims to offer counter-narratives to representations of African backwardness and helplessness, amplifying the voices of African and Afro-descendants and highlighting their contributions to the global community.