Dr Tamsin Bowers-Brown BA (Hons), MA, MA, PhD, PGC LTHE, FHEA.
Principal Lecturer
Summary
I am the Head of Post-Graduate Courses for the Department of Education, Childhood and Inclusion. Through my teaching I aim to foster strong student engagement and co-develop creative pedagogies. My research interests are in inequalities in education specifically in relation to socio-economic class and widening participation in higher education.
About
Principal Lecturer, Head of Postgraduate Taught Courses, Education, Childhood and Inclusion.
Positive student engagement is at the heart of my teaching philosophy in which I aim to co-create a space for open debate and critical analysis through opportunities for students to understand the application of what they are learning. I have been awarded both College and University recognition for Inspirational Teaching which reflects my approach to putting student experience at the centre of my approach to learning and teaching.
As a sociologist of education I have a particular interest in analysing educational policy and practice in relation to societal inequalities; specifically the impact of socio-economic class and the work of Pierre Bourdieu. My PhD study explored 'how girls 'do' secondary education: achievement, choice making and hopes for the future'; through qualitative methods I explored how policy and dominant discourses shape girls' ways of understanding themselves and their futures.
Teaching
Department of Education, Childhood and Inclusion
College of Social Sciences and Arts
Policy and the politics of education
Educational identities
Critical social theory
Inequalities and disadvantage
Research
Publications
A list of publications is available from the institutional repository, SHURA
Bowers-Brown, T. (Forthcoming, 2017) Austerity and Aspiration: Willing the Inevitable? Supergirls, Girls' Talk and Bourdieu's toolkit in International Perspectives on Theorizing Aspiration: Applying Bourdieu's Tools. Bloomsbury.
Bowers-Brown, T. (Forthcoming 2017) Working-class girls, self-adaptation and belonging in secondary education e in Langmead, D (editor) Interrogating belonging among young people in schools. Palgrave-McMillian
Bowers-Brown, T. (2016) ‘It’s like if you don’t go to uni, you fail in life’: Bourdieu, decision making and the forms of capital in Ingram, N. Burke, C. and Thatcher, J. (2016) Bourdieu: The Next Generation.
Sphorer, K, Stahl, G & Bowers-Brown, T (Forthcoming) The Aspiration Discourse: a policy analysis.
Other activities
I am Book Review Editor along with Dr Garth Stahl for the International Studies in the Sociology of Education Journal.
Member of the British Sociological Association Bourdieu Study Group.