Cardiff School of Social Sciences

Career Profile

Chris came to the Cardiff School of Social Sciences in January 2000. Prior to that he was a lecturer in human geography at the University of Leicester. Chris was first employed in Cardiff on an ESRC-funded project (Measuring Markets) investigating the changing socio-economic composition of secondary school intakes in England and Wales since the introduction of the 1988 Education Reform Act. In particular this addressed issues such as open enrolment, school admission policies, residential and school segregation, local education ‘markets’, and school examination performances. Between 2001 and 2005 he was the manager of the ESRC-funded Teaching and Learning Research Programme (TLRP) Research Capacity Building Network (RCBN) . The RCBN was established to support the research capacity activities of the TLRP, and where possible extend these to the wider educational research community. In particular, the RCBN was established to facilitate the sharing of research skills, knowledge and expertise, largely by providing and brokering needs-directed research capacity-building activities on a voluntary and career-development basis. Chris has continued his interest in research capacity building as the Deputy Director of QUALITI - Qualitative Research Methods in the Social Sciences: Innovation, Integration and Impact, part of the ESRC National Centre for Research Methods.

In 2003 Chris was appointed as a lecturer in the Cardiff School of Social Sciences and was promoted to senior lecturer in 2006. Between 2003 and 2006 Chris was an elected member of the British Educational Research Association (BERA) Executive Council, with specific responsibility for training and development for members of BERA across the UK. This work also overlapped with his current involvement as a Fellow of the ESRC Teaching and Learning Research Programme (TLRP) in supporting their research capacity-building activities.

Chris is also the research convenor of the Education, Culture and Society Research Group within the Cardiff School of Social Sciences. He is also the convenor of the Cardiff University Education Research Seminar Series , a collaborative activity with the Welsh Assembly Government to organise public seminars designed to facilitate discussion between researchers, policy-makers and practitioners in Wales.