Our people

Richard Watermeyer

Co-Director, CHET

Email: richard.watermeyer@bristol.ac.uk

Richard Watermeyer is a professor of higher education and co-director of the Centre for Higher Education Transformations at the University of Bristol. His research is predominantly concerned with critical sociological analyses of change and disruption in higher education affecting the organisation and governance of universities and science, academic identity and research praxis, and the public role and contribution of universities and scientists.

Publications

Richard’s recent books include:

• Competitive Accountability in Academic Life: The Struggle for Social Impact and Public Legitimacy (Cheltenham: Edward Elgar, 2019);
• The Impact Agenda: Controversies, Consequences and Challenges (Bristol: Policy, 2020);
• The Handbook of Academic Freedom (Cheltenham, Edward Elgar, 2022).

He is currently writing a new book on the efficacy and impact of academics’ policy engagement, due November 2024. In his spare time, he is the father of Jack, Martha, and Gracie and is a committed fan of West Ham United.

Lisa Lucas

Co-Director, CHET

Email: lisa.lucas@bristol.ac.uk

Lisa Lucas is an Associate Professor in Higher Education and Co-Director of the Centre for Higher Education Transformations at the University of Bristol. Her research centres on the broad area of the Sociology of Higher Education and focuses specifically on higher education policy and funding in a global context, academic work, and social justice in higher education.

Lisa is passionate about working to ensure greater access and equity in higher education. Related projects include the ESRC/NRF funded Southern African Rurality in Higher Education (SARiHE) project looking at young people from rural backgrounds and their transitions into higher education in South Africa, with a range of publications including a book published in 2022 entitled Rural Transitions to Higher Education in South Africa: decolonial perspectives.

In addition, the EU funded ACCESS4ALL (A4A) project involved collaborators from six European countries and focused on institutional change around widening participation to higher education.

Currently, Lisa  is working on a GW4 funded project on Forcibly Displaced Students in Higher Education. She has also done extensive research on National Systems of University Research Evaluation and the impact on academic work and careers.

Collaborations with colleagues in Australia, have resulted in a range of publications on comparative higher education policies and academic work. This work is on-going with additional collaborations and a current advisor role on a Canadian Social Sciences Research Council (SSRC) funded project on Academic Researchers in Troubling Times (ARICT) with a chapter in a forthcoming book entitled The Social Production of Research: perspectives on funding and gender.

Simon Brownhill

Researcher, CHET

Email: simon.brownhill@bristol.ac.uk

Dr Simon Brownhill is a Senior Lecturer in Education (Teaching and Learning) at the School of Education, University of Bristol. As Pathway Lead for Teaching and Learning on the MSc Education programme, his teaching commitments are focused on directing units that are linked to creativity, learning, and assessment.

Simon also supervises a suite of research students at the master’s and doctoral levels (EdD and PhD). He is a founding co-director of the Research Centre for Teaching, Learning and Curriculum (TLC) in the School of Education, University of Bristol, and serves as a key English member of the editorial board for Pedagogical Dialogue, an information and methodical journal for educators in Kazakhstan.

With 20 years of experience working in Higher Education institutions in England (including the University of Cambridge and the University of Derby), Simon was a former Assistant Head Teacher of the Early Years (3-6), actively working as an award-winning class teacher in a number of educational settings in Derby/Derbyshire. His varied research and writing interests include supporting and training adult learners, children’s writing (fiction and non-fiction), effective behaviour management in the classroom (3-11), men who work in the Early Years (0-8), self-reflection, and creative assessment.

Simon has published his work in high-impact peer-reviewed journal articles (e.g., Gender and Education) and has presented his research at international conferences, serving as a Keynote speaker in Ireland, Portugal and Indonesia. He is the co-author of the award-winning book Men in Early Years Settings: Building a Mixed Gender Workforce (Jessica Kingsley Publishers, 2019).

Laurène Cheilan

Researcher, CHET

Email: laurene.cheilan@bristol.ac.uk 

Dr Laurène Cheilan worked in France in the theatre field before joining the world of science centres, where they facilitated arts and sciences collaborations and designed exhibitions and public engagement events. In 2015, they co-founded Culture Instable, which initially focused on co-creation, public engagement and arts/science/technology projects, before developing an activity around designing scenarios for interactive and immersive visits to heritage places and museums.

In 2022, they completed a PhD in education at the University of Bristol, funded by the Marie Skłodowska-Curie program. Their doctoral research was an auto/ethnography of public engagement institutionalisation in a science research network. They are now a researcher at the ESRC Centre for Sociodigital Futures, engaging in the production of interdisciplinary research interrogating the making of sociodigital futures.

Laurène is interested in STS, practice-based approaches, affective methods, more-than-human relationships of care, auto/ethnographical methods, and interdisciplinary collaborations.

Nicola Dandridge

Researcher, CHET

Email: nicola.dandridge@bristol.ac.uk

Nicola joined the University of Bristol as a part-time professor of practice in higher education policy in October 2022. She is currently researching higher education governance with a particular focus on sector-wide policy objectives, the teaching/research relationship, and the experience of students.

Previously, Nicola was the first chief executive at the Office for Students, the English higher education regulator established to promote and protect high-quality teaching and learning and student outcomes, equality and social mobility. She was chief executive of Universities UK, the membership organisation for the UK’s universities (2009-2017) and before that, chief executive of the Equality Challenge Unit, established to promote equality for staff and students in higher education across the UK (2006-2009).

Nicola originally qualified as a lawyer, working in England and Scotland, specialising in employment and equality law.

Gemma Derrick

Researcher, CHET

Email: gemma.derrick@bristol.ac.uk

Gemma’s research focuses of the political, cultural and behavioural approaches to knowledge production and research culture within universities. She is known as a leading expert in researcher behaviour under and as part of audit, with a focus on research evaluation audits, peer review, and the career and cultural consequences of EDI in research production and careers.

Gemma is an Associate Editor of Quantitative Science Studies, and Research Evaluation; maintains positions at the University of Oslo and Arizona State University, as well as leading many initiatives to promote better researcher behaviour and research culture. She is also a leading public voice on aspects of research evaluation and behaviour having published and being quoted in media articles and is regularly sought as a speaker on topics related to research.

Gemma has a perchance for coffee and hides chocolate in her desk for sharing.

Danielle Guizzo

Researcher, CHET

Email: danielle.guizzo@bristol.ac.uk

Danielle is an Associate Professor in Economics Education at the University of Bristol. She is the 2024 recipient of the Clarence E. Ayres Scholar Prize, awarded by the Association for Evolutionary Economics (AFEE). Her research expertise lies at the intersection between the history of economics, the political economy of knowledge and education, and pluralism, diversity, and inclusivity in economics.

Danielle is a non-traditional economist with expertise in historical and qualitative methods. At CHET, she is particularly interested in unpacking the ‘prestige economy’ behind higher education systems and its impacts on knowledge production and dissemination in specific disciplines and fields. She previously held positions at the University of the West of England (2016-2020) and the State University of Santa Catarina (2012-2015).

Danielle holds a PhD in Economics & Public Policy from the Federal University of Paraná, Brazil (2016). She is currently the elected Coordinator of the Association for Heterodox Economics (AHE) (2022-2024), a co-founder and steering group member of D-Econ, and an editorial board member of the Journal of Economic Issues.

Basma Hajir

Researcher, CHET

Email: bh452@cantab.ac.uk

Basma Hajir holds a PhD in Education and International Development from the University of Cambridge and two distinction-level master’s degree in education from the University of Cambridge and the University of Birmingham. Grounded in decolonial thinking, her scholarly pursuits centre on several key areas within Education and International Development, including Education in Conflict settings and Emergencies, and Education for Peacebuilding.

Themes

Throughout her engagements in these areas, she has explored, researched and published on a range of cross-cutting themes:

• Ethics
• Resilience
• Agency and Freirean Pedagogies
• Refugee education
• Higher education
• Peace education
• Virtual reality
• Gender-based violence
• Students’ wellbeing

Basma’s doctoral research raises questions about the role of a university in contexts of conflict and its potential contribution to post-conflict peacebuilding. Philosophically speaking, she is drawn to exploring the possibilities offered by Critical Realism in fostering more critical decolonial engagements.

Basma approaches the Education and International Development field both as a scholar and a practitioner. She worked in various roles within schools, academic institutions, and international educational NGOs, where she has provided consultancy services among other capacities. Before joining Bristol, she served as a Lecturer at the University of Bath, a Teaching Assistant at the University of Cambridge, and a Teaching Fellow at the University of Birmingham.

Cathryn Knight

Researcher, CHET

Email: cathryn.knight@bristol.ac.uk 

Dr Cathryn Knight is a Senior Lecturer in Psychology in Education at the University of Bristol. Her research is predominately focuses on neurodivergence in education. In particular, she is interested in system level approaches to inclusive education and the barriers towards this within the education system.

More recently Cathryn’s research has explored the impact of COVID-19 across the education system from early childhood education and care to higher education.

Cathryn uses mixed methods approaches to explore these topics and has a particular expertise in the use of secondary and administrative data.

Myles-Jay Linton

Researcher, CHET

Email: mj.linton@bristol.ac.uk

Dr Myles-Jay Linton is a Senior Lecturer at the School of Education at the University of Bristol. He is a Chartered Psychologist interested in the development and evaluation of mental health policy and practice in universities. In 2019, he was awarded an Elizabeth Blackwell Institute Vice Chancellor’s Fellowship to explore how universities might work with emergency contacts to share information when there are significant concerns about a student’s welfare.

Sarah Mclaughlin

Researcher, CHET

Email: sarah.mclaughlin@bristol.ac.uk

Sarah is the MSc. Health Professions co-lead and lecturer, and Foundations in Medical Education Programme lead at Bristol Medical School. She has taught sociology, research methods, marketing, and teacher training in further and higher education, and is a Senior Fellow of the Higher Education Academy.

Sarah’s Doctorate in Education research explored the lived experience of working-class women returning to education on an Access to Higher Education course. Her research interests include creative methods, widening participation, Bourdieu, and the sociology of education. Her current research focus relates to neurodiversity among health professions educators, and their journeys during their teacher training programme.

John McWilliams

Researcher, CHET

Email: john.mcwilliams@bristol.ac.uk

John McWilliams is Director of Civic and Alumni Engagement at the University of Bristol and is studying for an MSc Education Research (part-time) in the School of Education. Having completed the research methods units of this MSc, his dissertation project examines the recent civic university movement in the UK: something, as you can tell from his job title, that he has done a lot of work on in the day job.

John is especially interested in how this movement, which has picked up pace in the last five years, is impacting one of its key potential beneficiaries: the voluntary sector. The project involves a series of interviews with larger voluntary sector organisations across the UK that engage with universities. He is more generally interested in, and an advocate for the benefits of, this researcher-practitioner crossover. He is always keen to talk to others interested in any of his subject-areas.

Jo Rose

Researcher, CHET

Email: jo.rose@bristol.ac.uk

Jo is an Associate Professor in the School of Education at the University of Bristol, and Faculty Education Director for PGT students in Social Sciences and Law. Her research interests lie in the area of educational partnerships and collaborative working, combining social psychological and sociological perspectives to understand the impact that interactions in different contexts have on individuals.

Understanding how people with different types of expertise can come together to create new ways of thinking has been a key focus of Jo’s work over the last couple of decades. She particularly enjoys tangling with the myriad of ways that research methods can be combined to understand the complexity of collaboration in educational contexts, and is co-editor of the International Journal of Research & Method in Education.

Through her work, Jo has explored inter-disciplinary research processes, knowledge exchange and research/practice partnerships, and university partnerships to support widening participation initiatives. She is also interested in researching higher education pedagogy, particularly around research methods.

Felicity Sedgewick

Researcher, CHET

Email: felicity.sedgewick@bristol.ac.uk

Robert Sharples

Researcher, CHET

Email: robert.sharples@bristol.ac.uk

Manuel Souto-Otero

Researcher, CHET

Email: manuel.soutootero@bristol.ac.uk

Manuel Souto-Otero is a professor in the School of Education and a member of the Centre for Higher Education Transformations at the University of Bristol. His main research interests in higher education relate to policy analysis and evaluation, particularly in the areas of internationalisation (particularly international student mobility), access, social inequalities, and employability. He works with a wide range of methodologies, both qualitative and quantitative, to explore these topics.

He has undertaken a large body of work in these areas for the European Commission, the European Parliament, the OECD, UNESCO, various national governments and third-sector organisations. He has recently contributed to the independent evaluation of the Erasmus+ programme (the largest EU-funded programme in education) and the Marie Sklodowska-Curie program, as well as to a project exploring quality assurance and recognition systems in Europe, which supported the European Commission’s proposal for a European quality assurance and recognition system as part of its “2024 higher education package”.

He is an Executive Editor of the British Journal of Sociology of Education, an Associate Editor of the Journal of Education and Work, and a member of the Editorial Advisory Board of the Journal of Education Policy.

Sue Timmis

Researcher, CHET

Email: sue.timmis@bristol.ac.uk

Sue’s research focuses on higher education students’ lived experiences, particularly those from marginalised communities, investigating transitions, social and digital inequalities, and university cultures. Her work draws on sociological, socio-cultural, decolonial, and social justice theories. She has pioneered participatory research methods with undergraduates, working with them as co-researchers to research their own learning lives, which is particularly valuable for students from underrepresented backgrounds.

Sue was the principal investigator for the UKRI / Newton-funded (2016 – 2019) Southern African Rurality in Higher Education (SARIHE) project, which investigated undergraduate students from rural backgrounds and their transitions to higher education in South Africa. She collaborated with colleagues at the universities of Johannesburg, Fort Hare, Rhodes, and Brighton and 72 student co-researchers. Previously, she led or contributed to numerous national and international research projects and consultancy activities and has published widely.

Sue taught undergraduate, masters, and doctoral students in Bristol and Hong Kong and still supervises and examines international and UK doctoral researchers.

Sheila Trahar

Researcher, CHET

Email: s.trahar@bristol.ac.uk

Sheila Trahar is Professor Emerita of International Higher Education. The interdependent concepts of internationalisation of higher education and of social justice in higher education have long been the focus of her intellectual scholarship and her work is innovative for its use of narrative inquiry and autoethnography.

Recent publications explore the relationship between internationalisation and decolonisation, including critiques of ‘whiteness’ in the Academy. Forthcoming chapters focus on autoethnography as a methodology and the potential of Ubuntu to address racism in UK higher education.

Sheila has participated in several research projects including one funded by the EU that focused on internationalisation of higher education in Israel and that involved Palestinian Arab and Israeli partners. More recently, she was a co-investigator on the ESRC/Newton Fund Southern African Rurality into Higher Education (SARiHE) project that investigated, with three South African universities, the transition of students from rural areas of South Africa into higher education. The collaboratively written SARiHE book Rural Transitions to Higher Education in South Africa: Decolonial Perspectives was published by Routledge in 2022.

Despite being ‘retired’, Sheila has been working with colleagues in the School of Electrical, Electronic and Mechanical Engineering since 2021, exploring student learning experiences. Her role has been to advise on and conduct qualitative research. She is also involved with the CREATE programme as a mentor and assessor.

Sheila is an Associate Editor of Higher Education Research and Development (HERD) and was a co-editor of Compare from 2016 to 2022.

Charlotte Verney

Researcher, CHET

Email: charlotte.verney@bristol.ac.uk

Dr Charlotte Verney is Head of Assessment within the Division of Education & Student Success at the University of Bristol. Her professional background is in higher education administration, having held posts at six UK universities.

Charlotte has completed a joint honours undergraduate degree in history and sociology, a master in international higher education, and a professional doctorate in education.

Charlotte’s research interests include the changing nature of work in universities, the role of professional services staff in supporting learning, teaching and students, and practice-based research into university administrative work.

Charlotte is Joint Editor of Perspectives: Policy and Practice in Higher Education, co-convenor of the SRHE Newer Researchers Network, and involved in projects to make the academic research culture more inclusive for researching higher education professionals.