PGR supervision: Dr Barbara Cooke and Dr Kathryn Brown

 

Sophia completed a BA in English from Royal Holloway, University of London, in 2013 (First), and an MA in Modern and Contemporary Literature, Culture and Thought from the University of Sussex in 2015 (Distinction and thesis prize).

She was then based in Aarhus, Denmark, where she taught English literature and language at Aarhus University and as a freelance tutor. During this time, she founded the Århus Feminist Reading Group, an initiative that has grown into the long-term culture and learning project Århus Feminist Collective.

In October 2018, Sophia started a PhD scholarship at Loughborough University. Drawing on her experiences as an educator both inside and outside of the higher education institution, her thesis interrogates the concept of feminist pedagogy through close reading, political theory, and self-reflection.

Sophia’s PhD research concerns the concept of feminist pedagogy. Through close reading of key texts, critical interrogation of central ideas and discursive norms in the field, and self-reflection on her own teaching practice, she examines and problematizes the ways in which feminist pedagogy is theorised, portrayed, historicised and practised. The thesis focuses on four primary ideas that underpin feminist pedagogical discourse (origins, resistance, collectives and alternatives), which act as points of entry into an in-depth consideration of what is at stake ethically, philosophically and relationally in feminist pedagogical thinking and practice.

Prior to her interest in feminism and education, Sophia’s primary research interest was the short story form and its relationship to visual technologies, primarily photography. Parts of this research have since been published in Short Fiction in Theory and Practice.

A publication list, as well as a portfolio of activities and projects, can be found at this link.