Doctoral Researchers within the Centre are individuals who are currently conducting their thesis research within the Department of Educational Research. While the Centre is proud to maintain our links with the PhD in E-Research and Technology Enhanced Learning, Doctoral Researchers within the Centre are also drawn from across the wider department. Doctoral Researchers from any of the department’s programmes are eligible for Centre membership once they have had their PhD status confirmed (for the four structured programmes, this means that Doctoral Members must be in Part Two of their programmes).
Doctoral researchers
Bushra Baboo Rally
Bushra’s research expertise lies in the collaborative construction of a conceptual framework with a specific emphasis on curriculum evaluation and development in higher education (HE). She is particularly interested in leveraging artificial intelligence (AI) to enhance personalised learning experiences, especially within the context of Mauritius. Bushra’s work aims to bridge the gap between traditional educational approaches and cutting-edge technology, fostering an environment where AI facilitates tailored learning experiences for students. By focusing on curriculum evaluation and development, her research seeks to optimise the integration of AI tools to meet the unique educational needs of learners in the Mauritian HE landscape, ultimately contributing to the advancement of personalised learning methodologies.
Amanda Cassar
Amanda Cassar is a researcher in the field of higher education focusing on transitions from compulsory education to further education, curriculum, students' psychosocial and economic difficulties, educators' relationships and perceptions with students, educational policies and teacher training. Currently she is a Students' Transitions Manager and Lecturer MCAST, Malta, within the Masters course for teacher training. Her duties include supervising dissertations (with the Institute for Education, Malta), mentoring new teachers (with the University of Malta), and delivering training sessions in schools and further education. In addition, she has been involved in Erasmus+ projects and other international projects that focus on developing training programmes for educators and upskilling, reskilling youths.
Margaret Chawawa
Margaret Chawawa has an interest in Digital Technologies that impact on educators, learners, digital pedagogies, curriculum, policies and practices in higher education. Emerging technologies has critical digital pedagogies in higher education as well as critical impact in the modern real world, therefore understanding these to aid the continuous transformation is crucial. Her current research includes understanding the role that Big Data might play as a critical pedagogy in higher education, starting with how academic staff experience this using phenomenography approach within the interpretivist paradigm. Her other research interests entail databases, big data analytics, strategic information systems in teaching.
Franci DaLuz
Franci is the Associate Director of Admissions at Salem State University in the US with a decade long career in enrollment management. Franci is especially passionate about underrepresented student populations in higher education, especially in the areas of persistence and retention; and currently serves in the Hispanic Serving Institution-Minority Serving Institution (HSI-MSI) Working Group for Salem State University. Franci is a PhD researcher in e-Research and Technology Enhanced Learning at Lancaster University and her research interests include digital affordances and informal learning through social media platforms. When not immersed in work and/or PhD study, Franci loves to travel and spend time with her chihuahua ChaCha.
Leone Gately
Leone Gately is an experienced higher education professional who works as an Educational Technology Coordinator in UCD Teaching and Learning at University College Dublin, Ireland. Leone is passionate about improving teaching and learning in higher education, particularly within digital learning contexts. Current research interests include online pedagogies, generative artificial intelligence in academic and research practice and higher education third space professionals.
Luke Halpin
Luke’s research is around designing systems to support students with disabilities when undertaking academic assessment. Luke comes at this from a human computer interaction perspective to hopefully learn about innovative approaches to designing systems for assessment in ways that are beneficial to conditions such as ADHD and anything else that might impact focus or memory recall. Luke plans to try to make the most of the technology we are lucky enough to have around us due to the vast amount of unexplored opportunities and possibilities when it comes to technology enhanced assessment.
Matthew Homewood
Matthew Homewood is an academic lawyer and established author specialising in European Union Law, with a particular focus upon rights of free movement. Matthew has an international reputation in legal education as an expert in the use of technology enhanced learning and the impact that educational technologies can have on student engagement and outcomes. Matthew’s expertise has been recognised by the higher education sector through a number of high-profile awards, including in 2016, a Higher Education Authority National Teaching Fellowship, a Highly Commended ALT Learning Technologist of the Year Award and the Association of Law Teachers Teaching Law with Technology Prize. He is currently undertaking research in the use of educational technologies to teach and assess traditional oral legal skills.
Jolanta Hudson
Jolanta Hudson is a lecturer at the University of Glasgow, where she teaches the English for Academic Purposes in-sessional and pre-sessional courses, and the MSc TESOL teacher training modules. She also supervises TESOL dissertations. In addition, she provides support and staff training on the use of educational technologies. Her research interests focus on learning and teaching English with technology, EAP pedagogy and Intercultural Communication Competence in Academia. She is a doctoral researcher and currently doing her PhD studies in E-Research and Technology Enhanced Learning at Lancaster University.
Thomas Leach
Thomas Leach is a Training and Development Senior Specialist in the UAE. In this varied role he has delivered numerous training workshops, including lecturing on the use of generative artificial intelligence to an audience of over three thousand teachers, and has worked alongside global industry leading organisations to develop numerous projects for the betterment of education in the UAE. As an educational researcher, Thomas's main interests revolve around self-regulated learning and online learning environments. Outside of these main research interests, Thomas also enjoys research on instructional design, graphic design and multimedia design for education.
Yuhong Lei
Yuhong Lei is a PhD student with interests in the fields of technology-enhanced learning and the design of educational products and places. Her current research focuses on identifying what elements contribute to university students' academic procrastination in mobile learning. Due to the development of technology and the Internet, mobile devices have become an essential part of our life, and mobile learning allows students to access education anywhere and anytime. However, studies also indicate that a large number of university students have procrastinative behaviours in the mobile learning environment. Yuhong wants to explore the reasons behind this phenomenon.
Sayed Mahmoud
Sayed Mahmoud is currently a Makerspace specialist at Albayan Bilingual School, Kuwait, where he leads on STEAM, project-based learning and maker-centred learning. He is a Google Certified Trainer, Google Certified Administrator, Apple Certified Teacher and Makerspace leader. Sayed teaches 3D printing, coding, laser cutting and CNC routing and supports teachers in exploring how they can integrate Makerspaces into their courses. He has two master’s degrees from University College London, in Digital Learning and Library Sciences, has attended Design Technology training at Eton College, London, and has worked or trained in Turkey, KSA, UAE, Qatar, Finland, India and Kuwait. Sayed’s current research includes examining learning in school makerspaces, 3D printing and maker-centred learning in K-12 schools.
Yiyi Mao
Yiyi Mao is interested in the application of online learning to international higher education. Yiyi’s current research explores international students’ experience of online learning, based on “literacy as social practice” perspective and with a particular focus on digital literacy practices. The purpose of Yiyi’s research is to assist higher education institutions to evaluate the possibility of conducting large-scale online learning in international education. At the present stage, Yiyi is focusing on investigating Chinese overseas students’ online learning experiences.
Sophia Mavridi
Sophia Mavridi is a lecturer in educational technology and English language teaching at De Montfort University in Leicester, UK, working at the intersection of digital pedagogy, second language acquisition, and teacher education. She is currently investigating how the use of AI is reshaping L2 student linguistic and academic development in internationalised higher education and what opportunities and dilemmas this may present. Sophia has extensive experience in training for major organisations such as the British Council and NILE and is a former coordinator of the IATEFL learning technologies special interest group. She has authored several publications, including Teaching Experiences during COVID-19 (British Council) and English for 21st Century Skills (Express Publishing) and likes networking and learning with peers at conferences and through social media. When not engaged in academic pursuits, she enjoys reading, travelling, and taking long walks by the sea or along the river. Her Twitter handle is @SophiaMav, and she welcomes connections with fellow educators and researchers.
Eugenie Phyu Aye Thwin
Eugenie Phyu Aye Thwin has extensive experience of conducting action research projects in the field of health professional education, and her area of research interest is the use of smartphones and other mobile devices among health professional students and practitioners for the provision of comprehensive healthcare to patients. She has been trained in quantitative research on epidemiology and public health. She is a PhD student of the Technology-Enhanced Learning and E-research at the Department of Educational Research, Lancaster University.
Naureen Rahnuma
Naureen Rahnuma is a senior lecturer in the department of English and Modern Languages at Independent University, Bangladesh.
Her Ph.D. research work focuses on the ways higher education students conceptualize and experience learning in institutions through English as medium of instruction (EMI) within communities where English is not the primary language of communication. Through her research, she explores the effects of EMI in content teaching and learning through digital pedagogy, delivery, quality of education and inequalities of access. Her research interests also include language learning and teaching through various eLearning tools and resources besides language across the curriculum and issues of quality assurance and enhancement in higher education.
Reya Saliba
Reya Saliba is a researcher in technology enhanced learning. Her current research interests also include incorporating information fluency skills into higher education curricula, fostering critical thinking competencies, and developing lifelong learning skills. Reya collaborates with faculty members to design courses, interactive activities, and assessment tools for online and blended learning. Passionate about engaging the local community, Reya is actively involved in community outreach and development through designing blended and online workshops for future students and creating professional development opportunities for healthcare practitioners in Qatar.
Felipe Sanchez
Felipe Sanchez is a psychologist from the Pontificia Universidad Católica de Chile and Master in Educational Psychology from the same University. He is currently a PhD student in Educational Research at Lancaster University. Felipe teaches learning and development for future educators in Chile and he is currently interested in research in adult learning, socio-constructivism, reflection, emotionality and affection in learning, faculty development, social media and art-based qualitative methodologies.
Yurou Song
Yurou Song is a product manager providing online English learning courses for adults in China. Her current work involves natural processing language technologies, intelligent tutoring systems, and diverse sources of human expertise. Yurou is interested in inter-professional teaching collaborations, blending expert elicitation from people with artificial intelligence-based technologies. She is fascinated by Activity Theory, and the potential of the Change Laboratory methodology in research projects, to maximise the ability of participants to envision and enact systemic reforms for themselves. Yurou is passionate about researching technology enhanced learning, with a goal to empower practitioners themselves to take control of continually evolving educational technologies.
John Stanfield
John Stanfield is a Dental Hygienist based in Cheshire and a student on the Technology Enhanced Learning doctoral programme. His doctoral research project is to investigate Informal Learning using Hybrid Social Learning Networks (HSLN) for Professional Development Amongst Dental Professionals in the UK, through a lens of complexity theory. John is also interested in the use of emerging technologies such as VR and AR and how they may be used to distribute teaching practices in dentistry and the wider healthcare community. He has also been involved in Communities of Practice since 2000 for the UK’s Dental Hygienist community.
Annette van Rooij-Peiman
Annette van Rooij-Peiman currently works at the Computer Sciences undergraduate programme at Rotterdam University of Applied Sciences in the Netherlands. As a lecturer with a non-technical background she is responsible for subjects relating to personal, professional, project and research skills.
Annette's expertise and research interests are related to student retention/ student drop out, student success, student motivation, widening participation in HE, especially in STEM study programmes. Her PhD is a qualitative research project that focuses on the role of Psychological Capital on the retention of first year Computer Science students.
Jinchen Wang
Jinchen Wang's research is to analyze the discourse and the relationship between discourses in internationalization policies and the effects of these policies on the development of universities. Her research questions include: how and under which social and cultural condition the discourses emerged and became dominant at a certain moment; how the discourses and the power relationships between the discourses changed over time; which legitimate knowledge and norms have been produced under the discourse; how the internationalization policies and strategies are written and developed, and whose preference they represent; and effects on the development of universities.
Xiaoxia Wang
Xiaoxia Wang is a distance learning developer at the University of Lancaster and a student on the E-Research and Technology Enhanced Learning Doctoral Programme. She has over 12 years’ experience in online course instructional design and providing technical and pedagogical advice to higher education academics in distance learning design and delivery. Her research interests include online learning and teaching experience, online course instructional design, MOOCs, online learning assessment and evaluation.
Puiyin Wong
Doctoral Researchers representative
Puiyin Wong is a senior learning designer in a UK university and a Trustee of ALT (Association for Learning Technology). She has worked in the intersection of creative arts education and digital technology since 2006. Puiyin’s current research focuses on how technology can enable and support the development of learning networks, subsequently how learners can benefit from the dissemination of knowledge in these networks. She is also interested in exploring the interplay and tension between pedagogies and technology: does one element have to be more important than the other? She is totally partial to anything Threshold Concepts related. Puiyin has founded a successful webinar series, #TELresearchers, where respected TEL (and sometimes HE) Researchers are invited to talk about their research journeys. The uniqueness of the series is its focus—it is about the researchers not the research. This is a collaboration with CTEL and it is coordinated by a small group of peers currently on the PhD in e-Research and TEL programme. Puiyin’s cat Patch is her co-pilot in all of her adventures.
Mengting Yu
Mengting Yu is a full-time PhD student in the Department of Educational Research. Mengting’s broad research interests are concerned with higher education, digital learning, language education, interdisciplinary and technological pedagogies, and innovation in education. Her current study is about how technology-supported classrooms, together with the trend to move from traditional teaching to student-centred teaching methodologies, impact the learning experiences of international students. Technology is increasingly integrated into such teaching environments, with one aim being to enhance students’ engagement and motivation. Mengting’s research aims to understand and find ways to enhance the learning experience of international students in such settings, with a particular emphasis on examining relationships between students’ study motivation and those learning experiences. Mengting welcomes people with similar research interests to approach her to explore possibilities for collaboration.
Jiangye Zhu
Jiangye Zhu currently works at the International Office of Xi'an Eurasia University in China and also serves as a teaching assistant for English courses. She is a PhD student in Educational Research at Lancaster University. Jiangye's current research focuses on comparing the quality assurance in higher education between China and the United States. Her research interests include international education, comparative education, educational quality assurance, and educational accreditation.