I work in undergraduate education studies and taught doctoral programmes at the University of Birmingham. I have a number of doctoral students working on various topics from prison education to language acquisition. I am a founder member of the DOMUS group. My research interests include history and cultural politics of the curriculum, the history of the school as social technology, governance and governmentality and poststructuralist and postmodern perspectives on education. I am currently engaged in a national research project on the reformation of children’s services. Recently I have published articles on Heidegger and Derrida and the implications of their thought for knowledge in the fields of history and education.

Not yet published / in progress:

• Governmental graftings: new and old technologies of person management in the school
• The history of the idea of community in education
• Bernstein and the recent history of English teaching
• Heidegger, assessment and ‘technological enframing’
• Heidegger, Sure Start and the World
• Lacan – symbolic, imaginary and real – and media studies within English
• Ofsted / inspection: a Lacanian perspective - ego-ideal and ideal ego
• From Vygotsky to Engestrom: ‘Deontologizing Activity Theory’

Forthcoming research projects include ‘Schooling and inclusion: the dimension of culture’ and ‘New formations of governance: multi-agency working and the construction of social capital’.