IOE students win awards for doctoral research

PhD researchers Sudha Vepa and Sharifa Al Battashi were individually awarded the Joshua A. Fishman Award, presented by De Gruyter Mouton, which recognises doctoral dissertations pushing intellectual boundaries to offer innovative perspectives on the sociology of language.

Sharifa’s research explores how young Muslim children used resources in different languages to navigate being a Muslim in an English Islamic primary school. Sharifa’s dissertation examined how these children creatively use multiple languages to determine who gets to be the ‘good’ Muslim, and its implications for excluding others based on gender, race, age or language. 

Sudha’s research analyses how English is perceived as an essential resource in the education and empowerment of women in so-called developing countries. Sudha’s dissertation focused on the lives of a group of factory workers who became students at a prestigious international university in Bangladesh. 

For her dissertation on the development of a pragmatics test to promote intercultural communication, PhD researcher Shishi Zhang received the 2024 Russell N. Campbell Award which is given to the candidate with the highest rated doctoral dissertation grant proposal accepted by the International Research Foundation for English Language Education. She was a recipient of the 2023 Duolingo English Test Doctoral Award, 2023 TOEFL Grant for Doctoral Research in Language Assessment funded by Educational Testing Service, and previous grant awards). 

Shishi’s research centres on the design of a second language pragmatic competence assessment tool for intercultural communication. Her work engages pre-sessional students in UK higher education to enhance their spoken communication skills and enable them to become better intercultural communicators.

Despoina Boli, who is currently studying on the Education EdD, received the British Society for Research in the Learning of Mathematics (BSRLM) ‘New Researcher’ Award for her work on the underrepresented heterogeneity of students who resit GCSE Mathematics. Despoina’s research explored the complex patterns of attainment for these students – particularly to illuminate the gendered nature of resits and the effect of resits on participation and confidence in mathematics.

A number of academic staff and doctoral students took home accolades for their presentations at the British Educational Research Association (BERA)'s annual conference:

Sam O'Sullivan, a Education EdD doctoral candidate, won 'best presentation' in the Educational Leadership special interest group. Sam presented work entitled "The tyranny of wellbeing initiatives in primary schools, in England".

PhD candidate Reem Ben Giaber won 'best presentation' in the Philosophy of Education special interest group. Reem presented her work entitled "Work on shifting sands: Libyan teachers articulate individual and shared aims".

PhD candidate Katie Kilian and a team of IOE staff (Professors Jane Perryman, Alice Bradbury, and honorary research fellow Dr Graham Calvert), won 'best presentation' in the Educational Effectiveness and Improvement special interest group. Their presentation "Beyond Oftsed: perspectives on inspection" gave insights from the inquiry of the same name.

Other IOE academics also won awards for their presentation at BERA; in the category for Educational Research and Educational Policy-Making, Professor Gemma Moss (Professor of Literacy) was part of a team presenting work on the intersection between research and policy which discusses perspectives, experiences and understandings of academic researchers and Ofsted. Karen Hanrahan (lecturer in Languages Education) won with her presentation to the History special interest group, entitled "You catch more flies with a spoonful of honey than a barrel full of vinegar’: the international recruitment of teaching nuns, 1930s-1960s".

Links

• Graduate research at IOE
• Centre for Applied Linguistics
• Centre for Doctoral Education
• Department of Culture, Communication and Media
• Department of Curriculum, Pedagogy and Assessment
• Department of Education, Practice and Society
• Department of Learning and Leadership

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Mat Wright for UCL IOE.