The Research Team

Toby Greany is Professor of Education and Convener of the Centre for Research in Education Leadership and Management (CRELM) at the University of Nottingham.  In the past he has worked at the UCL Institute of Education, National College for School Leadership (NCSL) and as Special Adviser to the Education and Skills Select Committee.  Toby’s research is focused on understanding the ways in which educational policy and practice interact and the roles of system governance, leadership agency and evidence in this process.  His Nuffield-funded research into England’s ‘self-improving school-led system’ reforms was described by the Observer as “a seminal analysis” (30.6.18).  The second edition of School Leadership and Education System Reform,which he co-edited with Peter Earley, is published by Bloomsbury in September 2021.  Toby has extensive international experience and has advised the OECD, EU and ministries in several countries on issues relating to educational leadership.
Nick Martindale is a Postdoctoral Prize Research Fellow in Sociology at Nuffield College, University of Oxford. He completed his DPhil on the Academies programme in 2020. His first article, on the presence of teachers without Qualified Teacher Status in Academies, was published in the British Journal of Sociology of Education in 2019. His current research focuses on the governance and performance of Academy trusts, the class structure of modern Britain, and protest in the gig economy.
Pat Thomson PhD PSM FRSA FAcSS is Professor of Education in the School of Eductaion, The University of Nottingham. She convenes the Centre for Research in Arts Creativity and Literacies. She was for twenty years a serving senior school leader in disadvantaged schools in South Australia, and a senior civil servant in the Department for Education and Children’s Services. She is a life member of the South Australian Secondary School Principals Association and a former President. Her research focuses on socially just school change in a number of sites including alternative settings, museum and gallery programmes, and arts education. She maintains and academic writing blog patter and is active on social media as @ThomsonPat. Her most recent books are School Scandals: Blowing the whistle on the corruption of our education system (Policy Press, 2020) and Why garden in schools? (Routledge 2021, with Lexi Earl). 

Dr Susan Cousins is now working on interviews with headteachers.