About
I have been a Researcher at the Edge Foundation since 2022, where my work centres on the dynamics of tertiary education in the United Kingdom. My research explores the evolving relationship between further and higher education, the blurred boundaries between general, liberal, and vocational education, and the role of historical policy in shaping contemporary practice. While at Edge, I have contributed to research on Degree Apprenticeships in England, students' experiences of T Levels, and new higher education institutions. Forthcoming research includes on student transitions between further and higher education, and a policy review of the Manpower Services Commission (19740-1987). I currently coordinate Edge's Learning from the Past policy review series, and launched our What's in a Word series, which seek to help policymakers and stakeholders consider the importance of history and the ramifications of language used in policy. I have also curated Edge's Skills Shortage Bulletins, and co-convene the Emerging Researchers’ Network. I regularly present my findings at national and international conferences.
Alongside applied policy research, I maintain an active academic profile. My forthcoming monograph, Universities and the Purpose of Higher Education: Expansion and Development Post-World War II (Routledge), examines the expansion of British higher education in the mid-twentieth century and its implications for liberal societies. I have published articles in Twentieth Century British History and Midlands History, and I contribute commentary to outlets such as London Higher, HEPI, and Wonkhe (see here for a full list of my publications). I also serve as a member of the British Academy’s Higher Education Policy Development Group. Outside of my research, I am Chief Swimming Coach at Otter Swimming Club in London. In my roles in sport (see below) I have worked with athletes ranging from beginners to those competing at international level, including Olympic Trials and international masters swimming and triathlon competitions. I've worked hard to try and ensure my programmes can accommodate high performance and remain accessible and inclusive. I continue to train and compete in swimming.
I didn't mean to do this when I first started writing this page, but apparently I was feeling reflective and I've also drafted a rough account of my intellectual development over the course of my education.
You can view my CV here.
Education, positions, and other interests
2021-2022
Early Career Teaching and Research Fellow,
Institute for Advanced Teaching and Learning
Following my doctorate, I was appointed an Early Career Teaching Fellow at Warwick’s Institute for Advanced Teaching and Learning (2021–22). I co-convened interdisciplinary modules on Applied Imagination and Rethinking Education which included student-devised assessments.
Beyond formal research, towards the end of my Phd and during the fellowship, I was the founding editor of the Journal of Postgraduate Researcher Pedagogic Practice, which as part of the Warwick Postgraduate Teaching Community (PTC) continues to provide a forum for dialogue on teaching and learning among early career academics. I also co-developed the Maskulinities Project at Warwick, an intervention designed to co-create strategies to combat sexism, transphobia, and homophobia amongst male-identifying students. Warwick PTC was awarded an Advance HE Collaborative Award for teaching excellence in 2024, and in 2022 was Highly Commended in the Collaborative Award for Teaching Excellence at Warwick, and the Maskulinities Project was awarded an Excellence in Gender Equality Team Award in 2023 by the Social Inclusion Group, Warwick.
2017-2021
PhD in History
University of Warwick
I completed my PhD in History at Warwick in 2021, supported by a full departmental studentship, and supervised by Mathew Thomson, and Claudia Stein, with Giorgio Riello in my first year. My thesis, Imagining the Role of the Student in Society: Ideas of British Higher Education Policy and Pedagogy, 1957–1972, was examined by Prof. Peter Mandler (Cambridge) and Prof. Maxine Berg (Warwick). It examined how policymakers and reformist academics imagined the place of the student within society during the post-war decades. It highlighted the ways liberal and neoliberal ideas were entangled in higher education policy, showing how universities experimented with educating for both citizenship and consumerism.
As Graduate Teaching Assistant, I led seminars on Historiography for second- and third-year undergraduates. I consistently received excellent feedback from both colleagues and students, who valued my empathetic, student-centred, and reflective approach to teaching and sought to continue to develop my teaching practice by working towards and achieving an Associate Fellowship, Advanced HE. I also launched and led a Modern British History reading group at Warwick from 2021-22. Outside of my research, I took on the role of Head Swimming Coach of Warwick Swimming and Water Polo (UWSWP) in 2017-18 and again from 2020-22. My experience of teaching and coaching to this point (see below) was really pretty central to the development of my teaching practice, including a strong awareness of the different needs students/swimmers approach learning environments with.
2016-2017
MA in Global and Comparative History, Distinction
University of Warwick
Prior to my PhD, I studied for an MA in Global and Comparative History, funded by a departmental scholarship. My dissertation, supervised by Claudia Stein, was a development of my undergraduate dissertation. It explored the intersections of pragmatism and sociocultural history, and considered how this enabled historians to move beyond the limitations of written documents and archives and generate (compromised) historical narratives and 'experiences' from the insights of evolutionary biology and neurobiology. The research was awarded the departmental dissertation prize.
I remained a highly active in swimming at Warwick, though I moved back from formal student leadership positions on the understanding that other undergraduates would benefit from the same experiences I had gained so much from. I still, however, took on roles aiming to develop formal participation pathways at Warwick including through the swim team. That year, I was awarded the Colin Brummitt for 'outstanding contribution to sport' at Warwick in addition to another award for volunteering.
2013-2016
BA (Hons) in History, First
University of Warwick
Between 2013-2016 for my undergraduate degree I studied History. In my first year and building on my prior experiences (see below) I particularly benefited from the insightful teaching of Mark Philp in his optional module on the Enlightenment, and graduate tutors delivering core modules on the Making of the Modern World and Making History. In my second year, Claudia Stein took me under her wing when I took her optional module Being Human. The module's incisive, even productively caustic, and intensely historical, appreciation of scientific and historical epistemologies provided an early apprenticeship in the methods and questions of intellectual history. I carried this through to my third year studies in the core module Historiography, and my dissertation on the so-called 'biological turn' in history writing, which I was permitted to attach to Historiography. In my second and third years, I also studied two global history modules with Giorgio Riello and Maxine Berg.
Alongside my studies I was twice elected men's swimming captain at UWSWP and spent a disproportionately high (compared to my actual studies) amount of time in Warwick's old sports centre (1972).
2012-2013
BTEC Foundation Diploma in Art and Design, Merit
Reigate School of Art, East Surrey College
As a member of the 2012 school-leavers cohort, I was the first cohort to be required to pay the new £9000 tuition fees. Unlike the 2011 school-leavers cohort, I was not under pressure to attend university immediately. I took a gap year and studied for a BTEC Foundation Diploma in art and design, which I think was funded by the Education Funding Agency's 16-18 entitlement. On reflection, this was a very valuable option to have. Although officially designated as a Level 3 qualification, it was framed by tutors as 'Level 4' in scope and ambition (and I was under the impression that it was 'Level 4'). The diploma, alongside which I also took an optional AS Level in art history, provided a panoramic account of the history of western art from the ancient Egyptians to the present. This was, of course, a descendant of the kind of first-year 'common courses' covering 'Plato to NATO' I later came to research. The diploma offered an early encounter with questions of representation and interpretation and Western knowledge frameworks, ideas which I later understood as concerning epistemology. I achieved a Merit rather than a Distinction, almost entirely because at that stage I struggled to seek, accommodate, and utilise feedback from tutors and peers. The additional year was retrospectively enormously helpful in establishing foundations for my subsequent intellectual development and in my own maturity. Prior to attending the college, I studied for A Levels in History, English Language and Literature, and Design and Technology (Resistant Materials), with AS Levels in Biology and ICT.