Education information

Doctor of Philosophy, PhD (2023) (education, sociology of education)

Master of Engineering, MEng (2018) (technology/leadership)

Teacher's qualification (60 ECTS pedagogical studies) (2015)

Bachelor of Engineering, BEng (2013)

Description of research and teaching

I teach courses on general methodology, methods, and principles in the educational sciences. I also supervise master's and bachelor's students in seminar groups as they write their theses. (A new master's seminar is starting in autumn 2026). My teaching and invited talks are grounded in my research, which contributes to the critical school of education philosophy. Before entering academia, I worked in industry and the technology sector, and my basic qualification is as a teacher in vocational and adult education. This experience continues to inform my inquiries into the natural, practical and social ontologies of life, education, and work.

Education, as I see it, should support students in developing the capability to make choices they have reasons to value. A human development like this, when foregrounded by realist humanism, gives priority to neither human agency nor social structure. From here, questions of crucial importance for ecological and social justice can emerge, and in this perspective, I welcome all interpretive and positive perspectives, agreeing with neither entirely. I argue that we should be more interested in reasons people have to value things of concern than in categories drawn from human expression of value. Many things are not of our choosing, and nor can we be that certain of things. This is why I suggest it is fruitful to ask what about the world moves us in a state of uncertainty. We might sometimes have more and sometimes less agency than we think!

Research interests

1) My present research is a theoretical analysis of embodied personhood, foregrounding the human capabilities approach (also known as human development). In my research, I have used social realism to critique naive ideas and simplistic policy discourses that seek to impoverish and narrow the notion of human being. I have published on the role of knowledge and agency in education, showing how people make choices they have reasons to value to live the lives they want. This means considering education as a broad, life-affirming aspiration rather than in a narrow sense. This should be of particular concern when questions about what adult education and vocational education should accomplish are addressed.

I think Roy Bhaskar is right: "It is not that there are the starry heavens above and the moral law within, as Kant would have it; rather, the true basis of your virtuous existence is the fact that the starry heavens are within you, and you are within them." (The Philosophy of MetaReality 2012)

Research interests

2) I will be glad to advise/supervise doctoral students interested in theorising the role of education, analyse practical reason, policy discourses, et cetera. I believe I can support students who engage with natural and social ontology, economic and political sociology, the sociology of knowledge, and, in particular, the philosophical foundations and purposes of adult and vocational education.

I collaborate with people in the UK and Nordic countries to theorise and critique the standardisation of educational outcomes based on technical and economic rationality, and to develop alternative models of education that foreground transformative professional agency, the ethical lives of people and social cohesion.