Philosophical issues of education; critical thinking; mental health education; the value of the humanities (literature and philosophy in education); political education and education for democracy; phenomenology, post-structuralism, ordinary language philosophy, psychoanalysis.

I joined the Education Studies Department in Warwick in 2015. My work is in Philosophy of education. I came to this field as a result of my previous studies in Philosophy and Continental Philosophy and my work as a philosophy teacher (and Philosopher-in-Residence). A distinctive feature of my research and teaching about education is that I work between different philosophical traditions, and explore the productive tensions between these traditions. My work also takes seriously questions of philosophy's relation to neighbouring subjects such as literature and psychoanalysis. At Warwick, I teach modules on 'Introduction to Philosophy of Education' (undergraduate) and 'Rethinking Wellbeing and Education' (postgraduate). I am Director of Research Impact for the Education Studies department.

RESEARCH

Much of my recent research has focused on issues of mental health and education. My work adopts a philosophical approach to thinking about the relationship between mental health, therapy and education. My work has been funded by the British Academy, the Great Britain Sasakawa Foundation and the Philosophy of Education Society of Great Britain. I am a member of a project on 'Political Education for Living with the Other', which involves collaboration with philosophers and educational researchers in Japan, France and Finland. In addition to this, I am also currently co-leading a collaborative project on education and violence against women and girls, being funded by UN-Women. I am currently working on two monographs: one provisionally entitled 'Education Without Cure', which builds on my work on mental health. The other is provisionally entitled 'J.M. Coetzee and the Fiction of Education' and develops research I conducted as part of a project on 'Philosophy, Literature and Education' (funded by a grant from the Philosophy of Education Society of Great Britain). My first monograph 'The Ways We Think: From the Straits of Reason to the Possibilities of Thought' was published by Wiley-Blackwell in 2015.

I am Co-Editor for Regular Issues of the Journal of Philosophy of Education. At Warwick, I am a member of the Centre for Research in Post-Kantian Continental Philosophy.

IMPACT AND ENGAGEMENT

I am the host of the podcast series 'Disquieted Life.' I talk to leading thinkers from the worlds of philosophy, literature and the arts about mental health, and how different thinkers and writers have approached and challenged the topic. Episodes are freely available on a variety of podcast platforms including Apple Podcasts.

At Warwick, I run the annual 'Thinking Philosophically' workshop, which is open to A Level students in the local area. The workshop is co-designed with undergraduate students from the departments of philosophy and education studies. If you are a school interested in being involved in the workshop please get in touch via email.

PHD STUDENTS

Milena Cuccurullo: 'Questioning managerial rationality in education. A project of Hermeneutic Philosophy.'

Yoonji Kang. 'Rethinking Educational Justice: Exceeding Rawls with Cavell?'

Sojin Lee (Funded by Warwick International Chancellor's Scholarship): 'Global citizenship education and its reception in South Korea.'

Malcolm MacQueen (Funded by ESRC Doctoral Grant) (Co-Supervised with Ana Chamberlin, Sociology). 'Philosophy in Prison: Critical Pedagogy and Marginal Standpoints.'

I would welcome applications from doctoral students in philosophy of education.

EDUCATION

I received my BA (1st Class) in Philosophy and MA (with Distinction) in Continental Philosophy from the Univeristy of Warwick. For my MRes and PhD in Philosophy of Education I was at the UCL Institute of Education. My project was funded by a doctoral studentship from the Economic and Social Research Council.