Top billing for BERA bound researchers
Mon, 18 Aug 2014 11:48:00 BST
Educational researchers Claudia Bordogna and Kate Lavender have been asked to present their papers at the British Educational Research Association main conference
AS one of a team of University of Huddersfield lecturers who regularly travel to China to teach a special degree course, Claudia Bordogna has gained expertise and insights that have earned her the opportunity to speak at a major educational research conference.
Her topic is the increasingly important field of trans-national educational partnerships between the UK and China. Not only does the Senior Lecturer – in the University of Huddersfield’s Business School – take part in a Sino-British partnership herself, she is also conducting academic research in the subject. It will be the basis of her PhD thesis and she plans to publish a book.
Meanwhile, she has been presenting her findings at conferences and she submitted a proposal for a paper to the British Educational Research Association (BERA), which holds its 2014 conference on 23-25 September. Initially, Claudia applied to the Early Career Researcher segment of the event. But when experts read her abstract, they decided to “promote” her to the main conference.
“I was quite shocked, but delighted!” she said, whose paper will be based on a segment of her PhD, for which she is supervised by the University of Huddersfield’s Professor James Avis.
Claudia Bordogna was an experienced professional in the event and hospitality industry before she became a lecturer in 2009, joining Huddersfield’s Department of Logistics Operations and Hospitality Management.
For the past five years she has been one of the six Huddersfield lecturers who regularly visit the Sino-British College in Shanghai to deliver a degree course in logistics and hospitality management. She began to realise that although trans-national educational partnerships had burgeoned over the past 15 years, there had not been much detailed research on their operational aspects and the challenges faced in building academic relationships across vast distances.
The Year Two tutor is deeply committed to trans-national education, and the opportunities it provides to students who are unable to relocate overseas for their studies. And when students do come to Huddersfield – for postgraduate study in many cases – they add greatly to the cultural diversity of the campus, she believes.
Her students in Shanghai are “engaging, insightful and inspiring”.
PhD researcher Kate Lavender
Kate Lavender – who is in the final year of PhD studies at the University of Huddersfield – has also impressed the British Educational Research Association. She too submitted a paper to the Early Career Researcher section of the annual conference, but was told that her material warranted inclusion in the main event.
“It is a little but daunting but highly flattering!” said Kate Lavender, who is an academic skills tutor at a college of Further Education.
Her degrees include a University of Huddersfield MSc in Social Research and Evaluation. Now she has moved on to doctoral research, supervised by Professor Helen Colley, which incorporates an ethnographic case study of mature students studying HE in an FE college. Her BERA paper will deal with a key aspect of her research – the “accidental” participation or serendipitous factors that influence the educational paths taken by mature HE students.
Both Professor James Avis and Professor Helen Colley are the co-directors of the Centre for Lifelong Learning and Social Justice at the University of Huddersfield.
