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I am an Early Years specialist, researcher, and Forest School Practitioner whose work explores how education can nurture belonging, voice, and wellbeing from early childhood through to young adulthood. With a professional background as an Early Years Teacher and Head of Early Years in both the UK and international schools, I am now a Senior Lecturer in the Carnegie School of Education at Leeds Beckett University.

Over the past two years, I have been co-researching with Dr Lisa Stephenson on a collaborative action research project titled What is a Curriculum for Life? This interdisciplinary study brings together children, young people, and undergraduates as co-researchers to reimagine education through their lived experiences of school and mental health. Using arts-based and youth-led methodologies, we co-created a visual manifesto that amplifies young people’s voices and offers educators and policymakers new insights into what truly matters in education.

My doctoral research builds on this commitment to equity and voice, exploring how early years educators can draw on children’s funds of knowledge to foster inclusive and responsive pedagogies for young learners with English as an Additional Language (EAL). The planned study will use a co-participatory action research design, engaging practitioners as co-researchers in a cyclical process of developing and refining guiding principles to extend and embrace the language repertoires of young EAL learners in early education.

Across my teaching and research, I seek to create authentic, creative, and inclusive learning environments that foster motivation, active engagement, and meaningful social interaction, working towards a more compassionate and equitable education system for children and young people.