Abigail is an ESRC Postdoctoral Research Fellow. She has three years of experience teaching African history, politics and qualitative social sciences at the African Studies Centre within the Oxford School of Global and Area Studies. Her interdisciplinary research explores the role of educational institutions in postcolonial knowledge production and circulation.
Her doctoral thesis, Decoding ‘Balance’: Learning about the British Empire in English Secondary Schools, analysed students’ discursive constructions of imperialism over the course of a GCSE history module. She has also conducted research on teaching and learning post/colonial history in schools in South Africa and Northern Ireland. Her work extends to higher education, researching the perspectives of Ghanaian and Nigerian academics on the ways in which bibliometric coloniality structures global academic publishing.
She is an Affiliated Researcher with ‘A portrait of the teaching of the British Empire, migration and belonging in English secondary schools’. This collaborative research project brings together scholars from UCL’s Faculty of Education and Society and the University of Oxford’s Department of Education to support teaching and learning about the history of the British Empire and its legacies within British culture, politics and society today.
She holds postgraduate degrees in Post-Conflict and Transitional Justice (University of Cape Town), in Education, Globalisation and International Development (University of Cambridge) and in African Studies (University of Oxford).
Publications
Post-Colonial and Post-Conflict History Education
Abigail Branford, ‘”I’m not Catholic and I’m not Protestant”: Identity, individualisation and challenges for history education in Northern Ireland’, History Education Research Journal, 18 (2), 2021.
Abigail Branford, ‘Transitions, Truth-Telling and Teaching History’, Cambridge Open-Review Educational Research e-Journal, Vol. 4, 2017.
Academic Publishing Practices in West Africa
David Mills, Patricia Kingori, Abigail Branford, Samuel Chatio, Natasha Robinson and Paulina Tindana, Whose Knowledge Counts? Ghanaian Academic Publishing and Global Science, (African Minds: Cape Town), 2023. [Featured in an editorial for Nature]
David Mills and Abigail Branford, ‘Getting by in a Bibliometric Economy: Scholarly Publishing and Academic Credibility in the Nigerian Academy’, Africa: Journal of the International African Institute, 92 (5), 2022.
David Mills, Abigail Branford, Kelsey Inouye, Natasha Robinson & Patricia Kingori, “Fake” Journals and the Fragility of Authenticity: Citation Indexes, “Predatory” Publishing, and the African Research Ecosystem’, Journal of African Cultural Studies, 33 (3), 2021.
Hau Ming Tse is an Honorary Norham Fellow and an external adviser for the Group of National Experts on Effective Learning Environments, OECD and Department of Education, UK.
A qualified architect, Hau Ming was educated at Bath, Cambridge, and the Architectural Association, London. After graduating, she worked for nine years at David Chipperfield Architects, where she was an Associate Director. Selected projects include the Hepworth Gallery, Wakefield; the headquarters of BBC Scotland, Glasgow; and the San Michele Cemetery, Venice.
Contemporary architecture’s radical approach and multidisciplinary agenda continue to influence Hau Ming’s work. Her research aims to gather empirical evidence on the impact of design on student’s engagement, well being & attainment. Her work also explores the relationship between space, perception and the environment, focusing on productive points of interaction and innovation between theory and practice in learning environments. Current field research include Design matters? The effects of new schools on students’, teachers’ and parents’ actions and perceptions. funded by the AHRC (2012-2016). This project examines the complex relationship between design and pedagogic practice in some of the most challenging primary and secondary schools in the UK.
Books
Tse, H.M., Daniels H., Stables, A. and Cox, S. (2018). Future of Schooling: Contemporary Visions for Education: Routledge.
Daniels H., Stables, A., Tse, H.M and Cox, S. (2018). School Design Matters: The Effects of New Schools on Students’, Teachers’ and Parents’ Actions and Perceptions: Routledge.
Stables, A., S. Learoyd-Smith, H. Daniels, H.M. Tse (2014). Schools and Schooling as Semiotic Engagement: A Focus on Design. In I. Semetsky and A. Stables (eds.), Pedagogy and Edusemiotics: Theoretical Challenges/Practical Opportunities. Rotterdam, Boston, Taipei: Sense Publishers.
Book chapters
Daniels H. and Tse, H.M (2018). Designing Practice in I. Grosvenor and L. Rosén Rasmussen (Ed) In Making Education- Governance by Design: Routledge.
Daniels H. and Tse, H.M (2017). School Design: A Tool for Learning in “Dall’Aula all’ Ambiente di Apprendimento” From the Classroom to the Learning Environment : National Institute for Documentation, Innovation and Educational Research, Ministry of Education, Italy.
Daniels H., Tse, H.M., Tanzi Neto A., Stables, A., Ortega, L., and Cox, S. (2015). Learning from Pupils and Teachers – Design and Practice: How new school buildings influence teachers’ and pupils’ experience of schooling in P. Clegg (Ed) Learning from Schools London: Artifice
Journal articles
Daniels, H., Tse, H.M., Stables, A. and Cox, S. (2018). Design as a Social Practice: The Experience of New Build Schools, Cambridge Journal of Education.
Daniels H., Tse, H.M., Stables, A. and Cox, S. Cox (2017) Design as a social practice: the design of new build schools, Oxford Review of Education, 43:6, 767-787
Daniels, H., Tse H.M., Ortega, L., Stables, A. and Cox, S. (at review) Changing Schools: A study of primary secondary transfer using Vygotsky and Bernstein, British Journal of Sociology of Education
Daniels, DH, Tse, HM, Stables, A, Cox, S (2017) “Design as a Social Practice: the Experience of New Build Schools”, Cadernos de Educação. (56)
DOI: http://doi.org/10.15210/caduc.v0i56.11780
Tse, H.M., S. Learoyd-Smith, A. Stables , H. Daniels (2015). Continuity and Conflict in School Design: A Case Study from Building Schools for the Future. Special issue: ‘Designing Intelligent School Buildings: What do We Know’. Intelligent Buildings International 7(2-3): 64-82.
Reports
Tse, H.M., Daniels, H., Porter, J., Thompson, I. and Cox, S. (2018) Designing for practice: Pedagogic implications of creating new schools : School building guidance for head teachers, school building commissioners, teachers and the wider school community, Oxford University Department of Education.
Other
https://www.socsci.ox.ac.uk/research/videos/designing-better-schools
The massive impacts teachers have on students, learning and in a broad sense, the future of our society have driven Jessica to research pedagogy, theories of learning and teacher professional development.
Her research interests and foci can be described as:
- Vygotskian and post-Vygotskian concepts in human development
- Pedagogy; educational assessment
- Teacher education and professional development
- Methodological issues in Cultural-historical theory
- Learning in groups; classroom interaction
- Conditions of effective teaching
- Slightly crossing the boundary, Jessica is also keen on bringing the fruits of educational research to medicine, especially in medical education and inter-professional work in health services.