We are delighted to welcome two new colleagues to ESRI. Starting on 1st October Dr Kim Allen will be joining us as a new Research Fellow and Geoff Bright is starting as Research Associate, having been a Visiting Research Associate for the last academic year.
Kim Allen joins ESRI from London Metropolitan University where she has developed an impressive publication record writing on young people’s identity, aspirations and transitions. Kim is co-PI on a new Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC) project ‘The Role of Celebrity in Young People’s Classed and Gendered Aspirations’, with Dr Heather Mendick, a Reader in Education at Brunel University. The project has just started and will build on Kim and Heather’s previous work on celebrity culture (in Discourse, 2012) and on social class and Reality TV (in Sociology, 2012) as well as Kim’s PhD research. You can read more about the project’s theme in a recent blog post on the Gender and Education Association website.
Geoff Bright brings to ESRI his considerable and varied experience of practical and academic engagement with social justice in marginalised communities, especially focusing on young people in former coal-mining communities in Derbyshire. Geoff’s work is mainly conducted using an ethnographic approach. He is currently finishing a book based on his PhD study, to be published by Tufnell Press, entitled ‘Youth and Educational Disaffection in an English Coal-Mining Community: an intergenerational ethnography’. Geoff will initially put his energies into further developing projects in which he is already involved. A first step will be to pick up on the legacy of July’s Space, Place and Social Justice in Education seminar (see his previous post about the event) by pursuing publication and network opportunities that have emerged.
Everyone at ESRI is looking forward to working with Kim and Geoff and, once again, we offer them a warm welcome.