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Group members

 

Leader(s)

Dr Michael Thomas Dr Michael Thomas
Associate Dean – Equality and Diversity / Senior Lecturer in Social work
I am a Senior Lecturer in Social Work. My research interests focus on sexualities, equalities and the interplay between public services and personal life. I am interested in subjective experiences of loneiness among older people and people in minority groups. I am also interested in professionalism and values in Social Work. My research interests focus on investigating the diversity of contemporary family life and the interplay between public policy and personal life, with a particular focus on Social Work. I am interested in the impact of ageing on LGB identities and in using narrative approaches to understanding identity and experience. I am module leader for the following modules on the MA in Social Work: SW5600: The Dissertation, and SW5620: Social Policy and Sociology. I was awarded 'Lecturer of the Year' and 'Best Small Module' across the College of Health and Life Sciences at the 2019 Student-Led Teaching Awards. Student Testimonials, 2019/20 Lecturer challenges students in a positive way and encourages discussion during the lessons. Lectures are engaging and interactive, group work and discussions are very helpful. The tutor engages us in an interesting way that makes us want to participate in every activity. The module is very interesting and I also like how it is linked to social work practice This module is brilliant...moreso because of the way it is delivered and the lecturers knowledge and engagement style. Student Testimonials, 2018/19 “Michael always comes down to student's level in his interaction with learners. He is approachable and very liberal in his interaction with students. All his lectures are delivered with real-life examples. His method of teaching has made me x-ray my life and see the application of social work to virtually everything that goes on in any human society.” “Dr Mike Thomas is an outstanding teacher! he has the ability to see the hidden skills students have and explore them, and make the student shine through them. He has helped me know my potential and how far I can go, regardless of where I come from.”

Members

Dr Sara De Benedictis Dr Sara De Benedictis
Senior Lecturer in Sociology and Communications
Sara joined Brunel in May 2017. She is currently a Senior Lecturer in Sociology and Communications in the Department of Social and Political Sciences. Sara’s research explores the cultural politics of gender, class, reproduction and activism. She has published on topics like televisual birth, ‘period poverty’, ‘poverty porn’ or #MeToo, and has contributed to public and political debates on such topics. Sara is currently researching ‘period poverty’, reproductive politics and feminist activism. Sara teaches various modules in Media and Communications and Sociology at Brunel. She has taught on media studies, cultural studies and sociology courses at various universities at undergraduate and postgraduate levels, such as City University London, King’s College London and the London School of Economics. Before entering academia, Sara worked for charities in the women’s sector. I teach on a variety of modules: L4 Key Ideas in Media L6 Gender, Sexuality and Feminism L6 Dissertation Supervisor
Dr Anne Chappell Dr Anne Chappell
Head of Department / Reader - Education
Anne Chappell is the Head of Department and Reader in the Department of Education. Anne has been at Brunel University London in the Department since 2004 and teaches on undergraduate and postgraduate education programmes, including Initial Teacher Education. Prior to this she worked in several secondary schools in London and the South-East of England with roles including Head of Year and Head of Physical Education. She studied Education, Physical Education and Science at West Sussex Institute of Higher Education, before completing a Master’s in Education at the University of Southampton and a PhD at Brunel University London. Anne is a Senior Fellow of Advance Higher Education (previously HIgher Education Academy). Anne's research focuses on auto/biographical experiences and her particular interests are in education, policy, professionals, narrative methodologies and ethical exploration and representation. Anne is the co-editor of The Palgrave Handbook of Auto/Biography with Dr Julie Parsons, University of Plymouth. She has undertaken funded research with university students from widening participation backgrounds, commuting students and students from military families. She has also undertaken research with teachers at different career stages. She was Brunel's coordinator for the EU funded “Universities Supporting Victims of Sexual Violence: Training for Sustainable Student Services (USVSV)” project. Anne co-convenes the BSA's Auto/Biography Study Group: Auto/Biography Study Group (britsoc.co.uk) with Dr Carly Stewart, Bournemouth University. Auto/Biographical experiences; Education policy and practices; Professions, professional formation, professional learning and continuing professional development. Research Groups Education, Identities and Society | Brunel University London Research Projects ‘Grown up’ children from military families: reflections on experiences of childhood and education (PI: £1900 funded by the Global Lives Interdisciplinary Research Centre, 2020-2021). This project is exploring the experiences of 'grown up' children from military families who are 'missing' from the current profile of research about the military community: The experiences of undergraduate students from military families (Co-I: £3480 funded by the Access and Participation Fund, 2019-2020) explored the experiences of undergraduate students from military families to add to our understanding about this under-researched group within the university community. An exploration of the experiences of undergraduate commuter students (PI: £11,389 funded by the Access and Participation Fund, 2019-2020). This project explored the experiences of undergraduate students who commute to university: Childhood, parenting and the commodification of education: the growth and role of tuition centres in the UK (Co-I: £4984 funded by the Research Development Fund, 2018-2019). The project explored the growth, role, and use of private tuition centres for children of primary school age (4 to 11) to provide new research on how such centres are shaping contemporary educational practices and the role of parents in their children’s education. Universities supporting victims of sexual violence: training for sustainable student services (USVSV) (Co-I: £148,236 co-funded by the European Commission’s DG Justice, Rights, Equality and Citizenship Programme (DAPHNE), 2016-2018, JUST/2014/RDAP/AG/VICT/7401). This is an evaluation of a programme developed as part of the project to support Brunel University London staff to offer an effective ‘first response’ to disclosures of sexual violence. The project is taking place across 7 European countries ( #USVReact): Successful students: exploring the factors that encourage and enable widening participation students to stay the course (PI: £14,717 funded by the Access and Student Success Fund, 2016-2018). This project focused on what encourages and enables students from widening participation backgrounds to stay at university and complete their studies to provide a fuller and more judicious understanding of the student experience. Focusing on the everyday experiences of level 3 students at Brunel, this project uses a creative and interactive methodology with students as stakeholders: Professional learning: teachers’ experiences (PI: unfunded, 2015-2019). This project is exploring the way in which teachers at different career stages experience their professional roles, the meaning they attribute to the experiences, their responses to policy, and the impact on their lives and work. Professional learning: teachers’ narratives of experience (PhD awarded 2014). Doctoral research focussed on the ways in which teachers narrate and make meaning of their professional experiences, with consideration of the dilemmas associated with the research process including data collection, analysis and representation. An exploration of black and minority ethnic students’ experiences of physical education teacher education (Co-I: £2000 funded by a Recruitment and Retention Challenge Grant from the Training and Development Agency (TDA), 2008 to 2009). Led by Prof Anne Flintoff, Leeds Beckett University: Recent Conference Presentations Chappell, A., Ince, C. and McHugh, E. (2021) Auto/Biographical experiences of university students from military families: the same but different? presentation at the British Sociological Association Annual Conference, Online, 14th April 2021. Ince, C., McHugh, E. and Chappell, A. (2020) The same but different: Auto/Biographical accounts of university students from military families, presentation at the British Sociological Association Auto/Biography Study Group Conference, Online, 4th December 2020. Chappell, A. (2018) Three Teachers ‘doing’ their Family Lives, presentation at the British Sociological Association Auto/Biography Study Group Conference, Wolfson College, 19th-21st July 2018. McHugh, E., Chappell, A. and Wainwright, E. (2018) ‘Successful Students’ and the Geographies of Belonging, presentation at British Sociological Association Annual Conference, Northumbria University, Newcastle, 10th-12th April 2018. Jones, C. and Chappell, A. (2018) Belief, Recognition and Support: Improving Responses to Sexual Violence in Higher Education, presentation at British Sociological Association Annual Conference, Northumbria University, Newcastle, 10th-12th April 2018. Chappell, A. and Jones, C. (2018) Experiences of the USVreact programme at Brunel, presentation at Tackling Sexual Violence and Harassment on Campus: Policy and Practice, Brunel University London, 7th February 2018. Chappell, A. and Jones, C. (2017) Sharing experiences from the UK, presentation at Supporting Survivors of Sexual Violence in Universities: learning from pan-European practice (USVreact findings conference), Rich Mix, London, 9th November 2017. Chappell, A. and Jones, C. (2017) Responses to Sexual Violence: Effecting Change in Higher Education, presentation at European Conference on Educational Research, Copenhagen, 22nd-25th August 2017. Chappell, A. and Jones, C. (2017) Staff culture in Higher Education: Challenging preconceptions about sexual violence, presentation at Gender and Education Association Conference, Middlesex University, London, 21st-23rd June 2017. Chappell, A. and Jones, C. (2017) Universities Supporting Victims/Survivors of Sexual Violence: Training for Sustainable Services (USVSV) #USVreact, presentation at British Sociological Association Annual Conference, Manchester University, Manchester, 4th-6th April 2017. Jones, C. and Chappell, A. (2017) Universities Supporting Victims/Survivors of Sexual Violence: Thinking Critically about a ‘Response’ Approach, presentation at National Conference on Tackling Gender Based Violence in Universities, Newcastle University, Newcastle, 14th March 2017. Alldred, P. and Chappell, A. (2016) Students, Societies, Sexual Violence and Support, presentation at the New Mediations of Feminist Sociology of Education Event, Institute of Education University College London, London, 7th November 2016. Chappell, A., and Ludhra, G. (2016) ‘Messy’ and entangled research, presentation at the British Sociological Association Auto/Biography Study Group Conference, Friends House, London, 16th December 2016. Chappell, A. (2016) Thinking differently about continuing professional development: teachers’ narratives of professional learning, presentation at the European Conference on Educational Research, University College Dublin, Ireland, 23rd-26th August 2016. Chappell, A. (2016) Insider research: it’s all about me? presentation at the British Sociological Association Auto/Biography Study Group Conference, Wolfson College, Oxford, 15th-17th July 2016. BA Education PGCE Secondary and Primary Education MA Education Doctoral Research programmes Teaching Interests Sociology of education Education policy Identities Professions and professionalism Professional formation/continuing professional development Teaching and students Inclusion and intersectionality Auto/Biography and narrative Research methodology and methods Safeguarding, health and safety and safe practice Physical education: status, perceptions, experiences and subject knowledge.
Mr Gerard Conway Mr Gerard Conway
Senior Lecturer & Professional Liaison Tutor
I have taught law at Brunel since 2007. From 2007-2010, I held a Lectureship in Public Law at Brunel sponsored by the City Solicitors' Educational Trust. My PhD research, which I commenced at Queen's University Belfast and completed at Brunel University, was supported by a fees scholarship from the Department of Education & Learning of Northern Ireland (2005-2008) and by a Modern Law Review Doctoral Scholarship (2006-2008). During 2005-2006, I worked as one of a group of researchers under Prof. Tom Hadden of the School of Law of Queen’s University Belfast on a research contract with the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights, on the topic of minority representation in the criminal justice sector. Research based on work for my Master’s degree was published in a number of journals, including the European Journal of International Law and the International Criminal Law Review. I worked as a lecturer in law at Leeds Metropolitan University (now Leeds Beckett University) from 2006-2007 and was a tutor in law in Jurisprudence at Queen's University Belfast in 2005-2006. I have also been a visiting lecturer in international law on the LL.M programme at the University of Buckingham in 2009-2010 and an associate lecturer at Greenwich School of Management from 2013-2018. Prior to becoming an academic, I worked for almost three years as a legal research officer in the Office of the Director of Public Prosecutions of Ireland (2002-2005); as a judicial researcher to the judges of the Ciruit, High and Supreme Courts of Ireland in the Judges' Library in Ireland (2001-2002 for seven months); and as a legal trainee in Legal Division of the Irish Department of Foreign Affairs (for six months in 2001-2002). The role and legal reasoning of the European Court of Justice Legal reasoning of international courts The relationship between the European Union and the Council of Europe Governance of migration in Europe Comparative criminal law and justice, especially the role of prosecutors Jurisprudence; Land Law; Public Law; European Union Law; Comparative Criminal Justice Student Support Director of the CPE/GDL Professional Liaison Representive
Dr Laura Hills Dr Laura Hills
Divisional Lead / Reader in SHES
Laura is the Associate Dean (Equality and Diversity) for the College of Health and Life Sciences. Her teaching is located within Sport, Health and Exercise Sciences. My research has always focus on sporting inequalities with particular attention to gender and, more recently, social disadvantage. I have conducted a number of evaluations with charities exploring how to engage girls and women in sport and understanding how sporting opportunities can best lead to positive outcomes for young people. I have an ongoing project with the Football Association exploring mixed gender football policy and recently completed a project evaluating Street League's sport and employability programme. Laura is currently leading two modules that she developed based on socio-cultural understandings of sport. Young people, Sport and Identity The module aims to: Provide an understanding of sociological theories of identity and how they can be used to help understand young people’s sporting experiences. The module explores the relationship between identity and inequality, links identity in sport and physical education to broader social contexts; and, consider the relevance of the politics of difference and identity to different sporting and (physical) educational contexts. In this module, students conduct an analysis of the representation of young people and sport in film. Media, Sport and Society This module aims to: Increase students’ understanding of contemporary social theories and their application to sport; Develop students ability to critically analyse social and cultural discourses and practices; Enhance students’ appreciation of different theoretical perspectives; to consider and evaluate possibilities for social change. Part of this module is taught with the Brunel University London Media Production Centre. In the first part of the module students’ explore sociological issues and theories and use them to conduct semiotic and discourse analyse of a sports film. In the second part of the module students create a video based on a contemporary controversial issue in sport. This includes access to industry standard equipment and training in camera work and editing using Final Cut Pro.
Dr Eliza Kania Dr Eliza Kania
Journal Manager and Research Impact Officer (Social Media)
Brand’s success is a combination of a thoughtful strategy, substantive analysis, and effective communications – this is what I believe and put into practice. I hold a PhD in Political Science and work as a research communications specialist at Brunel University London and for Political Studies Review – one of the Political Studies Association’s flagship journals, published by Sage Publishing. I am a member of the Social Justice Research Group and Brunel Public Policy project. My research interests cover new social movements and the process of precarisation of labour.
Dr Wendy Martin Dr Wendy Martin
Senior Lecturer
Wendy’s research focuses on the social and cultural aspects of ageing. This includes the digital and ageing, the body and embodiment, care and caring, memory and ageing, materiality and rhythms and everyday life. Her research is qualitative and includes the use of visual, material and digital methods in ageing research. Wendy is co-convenor of the interdisciplinary Ageing Studies research group and founding member of the Living Avatars research group within the university. Wendy's research has been supported by a range of funders including the Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC), Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada (SSHRC), The Leverhulme Trust, The Dunhill Medical Trust and National Institute for Health and Care Research (NIHR). A key dimension of her research is disseminating to a wide and diverse array of audiences and the public engagement of her research can be viewed through photographic exhibitions that have emerged from her research. Wendy is an elected Executive Member of the British Society of Gerontology, Founding and Board member of the interdisciplinary International Network of Socio-Gerontechnology, Co-Convenor of the Ageing, Body and Society study group (British Sociological Association), and is a Member-at-Large for the Executive Board of the Research Committee RC11 Sociology of Ageing of the International Sociological Association. She is Co-Editor of the Routledge Handbook of Cultural Gerontology and is a member of the Editorial Board for the Ageing and Society journal. She has previously served on the Editorial Boards of the Sociological Research Online and Sociology journals. The focus of her teaching is on the MSc Public Health and Health Promotion and has involved leading both the programme and key modules, such as, health and society, research methods and the dissertation. Wendy has extensive experience in curriculum development and is a Recognised Programme Developer within the university. She is an experienced supervisor for doctoral researchers and has acted as an internal and external examiner for PhDs. Some of the key roles that Wendy has undertaken within the university include Programme Leader, MSc Public Health and Health Promotion, Recognised Programme Developer that resulted in internal and external validation of new programmes across the university, Chair of Board of Studies, Chair of Exam Boards and Panels, Department Ethics Officer and as Vice Chancellor Representative for Misconduct. Qualifications: PhD (2008) Department of Sociology, University of Warwick. ESRC funded. Thesis ‘Embodying ‘active’ ageing: health, bodies and emotions in later life’. MA (with distinction) in Sociological Research in Health Care. University of Warwick (1999). ESRC funded. BSc (First Class Honours) Sociology and Anthropology. Oxford Brookes University (1997) Registered General Nurse. St. Mary’s Hospital, London (1986) Postgraduate Certificate in Academic Practice. University of Reading (2011)
Dr Adrienne Milner Dr Adrienne Milner
Honorary Senior Lecturer - Health Sciences
Dr Adrienne Milner is Honorary Senior Lecturer in the Division of Global Public Health, Department of Health Sciences. Dr Milner’s research addresses issues of health equity in terms of race and ethnicity and sex and gender in education, political, and sports contexts. Specifically, she has studied racial and sexual attitudes, policy preferences, and inequality to examine issues such as COVID-19, police brutality, discrimination of transgender individuals, and affirmative action. She is also Research and Insight Director at Utopia where she utilises her expertise in policy addressing race-ethnic, sexual, and other types of inequity to improve organisational outcomes. She supports large corporates such as Google, Coca-Cola European Pacific Partners, and Kellogg's to drive equity, diversity, and inclusion as well as leads on quantitative and qualitative research and impact measurement. Dr Milner is co-author with Prof Jomills Henry Braddock II of the monograph, Sex Segregation in Sports: Why Separate Is Not Equal, which uses a socio-legal approach to compare racial and sexual policy and argue that sex segregation in sport should be eliminated. Specifically, Milner and Braddock II focus on why large-scale sex integration in sport would result in a number of social benefits, such as increased safety and access to athletic participation and decreased prevalence of violence against women, eating disorders, and use of performance-enhancing substances. She is also co-editor with Prof Braddock of the collection, Women in Sports: Breaking Barriers, Facing Obstacles. Dr Milner graduated from Emory University with a double major in Sociology and Women's Studies and went on to complete her MA and PhD in Sociology at the University of Miami. Prior to her move to Brunel, she was a Teaching Assistant Professor of Sociology and African American Studies at the University of Alabama at Birmingham and Lecturer in Social Determinants of Health at Queen Mary University of London. Dr Milner is a dedicated teacher with over ten years of experience designing and delivering more than twenty different modules in US and UK universities. She is a Fellow of the Higher Education Academy and her published works on race/ethnicity, sex/gender, sport, and inequality include a wide variety of teaching materials. She firmly believes in the teacher-scholar model and has co-authored a number of publications with students. She was the director of the MSc in Global Public Health and Social Justice and module lead for Global Public Health and Health Policy, Politics, and Social Justice.
Dr Royona Mitra Dr Royona Mitra
Associate Dean / Professor - Dance and Performance Cultures
Royona is Professor in Dance and Performance Cultures and the author of Akram Khan: Dancing New Interculturalism (Palgrave, May 2015). Her book was awarded the 2017 de la Torre Bueno First Book Award by the Dance Studies Association (DSA) and it was runner-up for the 2016 New Career Research in Theatre/Performance awarded by the Theatre & Performance Research Association (TaPRA). She has a PhD from Royal Holloway, University of London (2011) on the British-Bangladeshi dance artist Akram Khan, an MA in Physical Theatre from Royal Holloway, University of London (2001) and a BA (Hons) in Theatre & Performance from the University of Plymouth (2000). She trained in classical and contemporary South Asian dance in India and specialised in physical theatre in the UK. Prior to joining the Theatre Department at Brunel, Royona was a Senior Lecturer in the Drama Department at University of Wolverhampton where she was also the MA Drama Course Leader. She has also taught in the Theatre and Performance Department at the University of Plymouth. Royona served as a member on the REF2021 Sub Panel 33. She is one of the three Chairs of TaPRA (2022- ) alongside Drs Rachel Hann and Broderick Chow. She was elected as Secretary to join the Executive Committee for SCUDD (Standing Conference for University Drama Department) from 2013-2016. She was also an elected member of DSA’s (Dance Studies Association) Board of Directors (2018-2022), and a Working Group Convenor for the Bodies and Performance WG of TaPRA (2015-2018). She has served on the editorial board for DSA's Studies in Dance History series (2015-2018) and was a co-editor for the Training Grounds section of Theatre, Dance and Performance Training Journal (2015-2018). Royona's research addresses intersectionalities between bodies, new interculturalisms, race, gender, postcolonialities and decolonialities, and she contributes to the fields of intercultural performance, diaspora and dance, contemporary South Asian dance and physical theatre/dance theatre. Her first monograph Akram Khan: Dancing New Interculturalism analyses the relationship between this British-Asian dance artist's complex identity-positions and his art through the lens of ‘new interculturalism’. Through seven key case studies from Khan’s oeuvre, this book demonstrates how Khan’s philosophy and aesthetic of ‘new interculturalism’ is a challenge to the 1980s predominantly western ‘intercultural theatre’ project, as a more nuanced and embodied approach to representing Othernesses, from his own position of the Other. Additionally, the book challenges popular perception of Khan’s art as contemporary South Asian dance by suggesting that, instead, Khan uses South Asian dramaturgical principles to transform the western contemporary dance landscape in intercultural ways. Offering the first full-length investigation of Akram Khan’s work, this book is essential reading for students, researchers, practitioners and fans of Khan’s work. Her current book project titled Unmaking Contact: Choreographing South Asian Touch contracted with Oxford University Press interrogates the politics of choreographing touch at the intersections of race, gender, caste, sexuality, new interculturalisms and decoloniaity, in order to reframe choreographic touch, a ubiquitous feature of contemporary choreographies. She completed a British Academy Small Grant funded project titled ‘Contemporary Dance and Whiteness' alongside Drs Simon Ellis (Coventry) and Arabella Stanger (Sussex) in 2019. The project’s aim was to examine race and racism in British contemporary dance and to critique whiteness as part of a commitment to the field’s anti-racist futures. The project examines whiteness as a structure of racism that exists in the relationships between personal prejudice, cultural norms, and the lived conditions of inequality and racial violence. Working in coalition with UK and US colleagues from across theatre and dance studies, Royona has been leading conversations on anti-racism for these disciplines as a scholar and an educator, with a strong commiment to dismantling their whiteness. Royona’s teaching specialisms are in the fields of physical theatre/dance–theatre, live art practices, dance and embodiment, intercultural performance and critical theory. She would be keen to supervise PhD projects in the above areas and also projects that interrogate the relationships between bodies, cultures, gender, race, sexuality and identity in performance.
Dr Ben Parker Dr Ben Parker
Senior Lecturer in Statistics
Academic with research interests in Design and Analysis of Experiments; Statistics of Networks and related areas.
Professor William Spurlin Professor William Spurlin
Honorary Professor
William J Spurlin is Professor Emeritus and Honorary Professor of English and Comparative Literature in the College of Business, Arts & Social Sciences; prior to his retirement in 2022, Professor Spurlin was Professor of English and Vice-Dean in the College of Business, Arts & Social Sciences where he held the portfolio for teaching and learning. Professor Spurlin has written extensively on the politics of gender and sexual dissidence and is widely known for his research in queer studies and modern and contemporary comparative literature which spans the 20th and 21st centuries. His latest monograph, Contested Borders: Queer Politics and Cultural Translation in Contemporary Francophone Writing from the Maghreb (2022) broadens understandings of dissident sexualities in Africa throgh examining representations of same-sex desire emerging in recent francophone autofictional writing from the Maghreb complicated and nuanced by the experience of emigration and settlement by the writers concerned in France. His previous monograph, Lost Intimacies: Rethinking Homosexuality under National Socialism (2009), uses queer theory as a hermeneutic tool with which to read against the grain of hetero-textual narratives of the Holocaust and as a way for locating sexuality at its intersections with race, gender, and eugenics within the National Socialist imaginary. His book also challenges prevailing assumptions in the received scholarship that lesbians were not as systematically persecuted by the Nazis. The research for Lost Intimacies was funded by the Arts and Humanities Research Council (AHRC), and the book is widely cited and has been reviewed in such journals as Men and Masculinities; German Studies Review; International Review of Social History; and Zeitscrift für Geschichtswissenscaft. Professor Spurlin’s research also investigates sexuality as a significant vector of social organisation and cultural arrangement in colonial and postcolonial Africa. His earlier book, Imperialism within the Margins: Queer Representation and the Politics of Culture in Southern Africa (2006), examines the politics of sexuality that emerged in South Africa’s transition from apartheid to democracy and analyses its effects in the region. This work, funded by the US National Endowment for the Humanities, led to his theorisation of the racialisation of sexuality under the Third Reich, given that the framers of apartheid in South Africa visited Nazi Germany, in the years prior to the outbreak of the Second World War, to study Nazi eugenics and fascist hierarchies of race, which engendered, in both regimes, the policing of sexuality through the regulation of gender norms and racial policies. Professor Spurlin has also co-edited, with Jarrod Hayes and Margaret R. Higonnet, Comparatively Queer: Interrogating Identities across Time and Cultures (2010), and he has written extensively on postcolonial/queer theory, African studies, queer translation studies, modern and contemporary comparative literature, and the biomedicalisation of sexuality in more than 50 essays in international journals and as chapters in volumes, most recently in The Wiley-Blackwell Companion to Holocaust Studies (forthcoming 2020), Journal of Medical Humanities (2018), Queer in Translation (2017), Research in African Literatures (2016), The Future of Postcolonial Studies (2015), Comparative Literature Studies (2014), and Studies in Ethnicity and Nationalism (2013). He is currently writing a book on representations of sexual dissidence in new queer francophone life writing from the Maghreb. Professor Spurlin has given invited lectures on his work in queer Holocaust studies across New Zealand at universities, the Auckland Museum, and the National Library in Wellington sponsored by the New Zealand Holocaust Centre. He has given invited lectures in queer studies, postcolonial studies, and translation studies around the world in English and in French, most recently in South Africa, China, Australia, and across Europe and North America. He holds a Ph.D. in Comparative Literature from Columbia University. For the outstanding contribution of his research in queer studies to social science scholarship, Professor Spurlin has been named a Fellow of the Academy of Social Sciences (2017) and Principal Fellow of the Higher Education Academy (2016) in recognition of exceptional leadership and scholarship in teaching. Professor Spurlin's interdisciplinary research in queer studies, postcolonial studies, and critical/cultural theory encompasses the analysis of a broad range of literary, cultural, and critical texts ranging from the fin de siècle through the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. Trained in comparative literature and critical theory, the texts with which he works cross national, geographic, and linguistic borders and include not only British and American texts, but those located within francophone and Germanic cultures, southern Africa, and the wider African diaspora. His recent work, particularly his book Imperialism within the Margins: Queer Representation and the Politics of Culture in Southern Africa (2006), funded by the US National Endowment for the Humanities and a Visiting Fellowship at the University of Cape Town, has contributed to the formulation new theoretical thinking at the nexus of postcolonial and queer enquiry. His latest monograph, Lost Intimacies: Rethinking Homosexuality under National Socialism (2009), builds on his postcolonial work by focusing specifically on the interwar period, marked by the decline of European imperialism in the colonies and the simultaneous rise of totalitarianism within Europe, especially German fascism. This book examines the racialisation of homosexuality in another racist regime, that of National Socialism, which was also underwritten by a politics of gender and eugenics in a similar, but not reducible, way that it was under colonialism and apartheid in South Africa, and within some forms of postcolonial nationalism in Africa and elsewhere that continue to racialise homosexuality as a vestige of empire. This project was supported by a one-year sabbatical in 2004 whilst at Cardiff University and by a research grant from the Arts and Humanities Research Council (AHRC). His recent monograph project Contested Borders: Queer Politics and Cultural Translation in Contemporary Francophone Writing from the Maghreb, published in 2022 by Rowman & Littlefield, analyses how writers such as Rachid O., Eyet-Chekib Djaziri, Abdellah Taia, and Nina Bouraoui foreground translation and narrative reflexivity around incommensurable spaces of queerness in order to index their crossings of negotiations of multiple languages, histories, and cultures, alongside crossings of gender and sexuality. By writing in French, the book argues that the writers are not merely mimicking the language of their former coloniser, but inflecting a European language with discursive turns of phrase indigenous to North Africa, thus creating new possibilities of meaning and expression to name their lived experiences of gender and sexual alterity--a form of (queer) translational practice that destabilises received gender/sexual categories both within the Maghreb and in Europe. Professor Spurlin has published over sixty essays in queer studies, postcolonial studies, African studies, feminist theory, and comparative literature and culture. His work has been instrumental in formulating the new discipline of queer translation studies, especially through guest-editing, by invitation, a special issue of the journal Comparative Literature Studies in 2014 on the gender and sexual politics of translation. He has given invited lectures on his work in France; most recently at Univ de Paris XIII, at the Centre d' Études des Discours, Images, Textes, Écrits, et Communications at Univ de Paris XII, at the College International de Philosophie, and at the Sorbonne, as well as in South Africa, Singapore, China, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, across North America, and in other parts of the world. Professor Spurlin has also lectured in medical/clinical contexts on queer theory and biomedical practice at NHS Trust-funded symposia on sexual health, and in medical research centres and hospitals, on topics pertaining to the cultural politics of biomedicine and sexuality, STIs, and HIV/AIDS care. He chaired the Comparative Gender Studies Committee at the International Comparative Literature Association (ICLA) from 2010-2016, and he was a member of the ICLA Executive Council from 2010-2022. He served as an appointed member of the Peer Review College of the Arts and Humanities Research Council (AHRC) from 2007-2016, and has served on the boards of several academic journals. For the outstanding contribution of his scholarship to social science research and thinking, Professor Spurlin was nominated and named a Fellow of the British Academy for the Social Sciences (FAcSS) in 2017. Professor Spurlin's research has also addressed critically the pedagogical situation from the perspectives of cultural studies and queer theory. This work includes an edited volume Lesbian and Gay Studies and the Teaching of English: Positions, Pedagogies, and the Politics of Culture (2000) and an invited guest editorship of a special issue of the American journal College English on 'Lesbian and Gay Studies: Queer Pedagogies' in 2002. Both works attempt to engage (queer) difference(s) as a means of enabling radical re-readings of the public space of the classroom through which to envision more participatory spheres of critical deliberation. He continues to remain interested in, and dedicated to, this work both as a teacher and as a public intellectual, and he is especially concerned about the role of the humanities and queer studies in academic and public life. Professor Spurlin was named Fellow of the Higher Education Academy (FHEA) in 2009 for excellence in teaching. In 2016, he was awarded Principal Fellow (PFHEA), the most senior level of Fellowship conferred by the Academy, for his exceptional record of strategic leadership in teaching at institutional level, in the UK higher education sector, and internationally for the global reach and breadth of his published scholarship in queer pedagogy, which has influenced teaching practices worldwide evident through its sustained and continued international citation and review. Postgraduate Teaching Queer Theory Undergraduate Teaching Modern & Contemporary Lesbian Literature World Literature Modern Texts & Contexts
Ms Jou Yin Teoh Ms Jou Yin Teoh
Senior Lecturer (Education) in Occupational Therapy
My teaching, research and graduate student supervision is focused on digital, collectivist, community-centred approaches to develop and deliver cost-effective, high-value healthcare education and services which are just, equitable, and inclusive for populations with complex diversity. I am a recipient of the 2022 Council of Deans of Health Fellowship and was awarded BUL's highest accolades for exceptional contribution to teaching and student experience in 2020 / 2021: the Ken Darby-Dowman Memorial Prize as well as highest score for the Brunel Union of Students Student-Led Awards. Prior to my current appointment with the Occupational Therapy Division (also known as the London School of Occupational Therapy, est. 1934) at Brunel University London (BUL); I worked at Kuala Lumpur Metropolitan University College as a Lecturer and Professional Lead of Occupational Therapy - the first woman of minoritized ethnoreligious background to hold this position in the history of Malaysian Higher Education. Pre-academia, I was an occupational therapy entrepreneur with a special interest in social innovation for public health in the Global South; particularly in the integration of digital and community-centred approaches to build and run systems that contribute towards addressing disparities that affect health and well-being. I am an editorial board member for the following peer-reviewed academic journals: the Phillipine Journal of Allied Health Sciences, Neuroscience Research Notes and Sports & Health Research Notes. I am also a Member of the Royal College of Occupational Therapists, and Fellow of the Higher Education Academy (Advance HE). My PhD titled The Hidden Curriculum of Occupational Therapy Practice Education is pending completion, funded by BUL and the Elizabeth Casson Trust, and supported by the supervisory committee of Dr Sofia Barbosa Bouças (Division of Psychology), Dr Geeta Ludhra (Dept of Education), Dr Michael Iwama (Duke University, USA), and Dr Terry Roberts (Division of Bioscienes).