Research Knowledge Exchange Strategy Group
Mission Statement
To support the next generation of graduate professionals to make positive contributions to the care and education of babies, young children and their families, through research and dissemination.
Full Statement
- To encourage and support knowledge production and co-production between early childhood students, academics and researchers, research participants, and policy makers and implementers.
- To enhance student capacities to disseminate research findings in different formats and for a wide range of audiences.
- To promote the value of early childhood research for informing policy and improving practice.
The Research and Knowledge Exchange Strategy Group leads the ECSDN student publications and conferences.
Click below for further information:
Vice Chair and Members
Dr Jackie Musgrave
co-Vice Chair
Student Development
Jackie is Programme Lead for Early Childhood and Education Studies (Primary) at The Open University. Her research brings together her experiences as a Registered Sick Children’s Nurse and as a teacher of early childhood and explores the intersection of health, early education and inclusion. Jackie has published extensively, a sole authored book, several co-authored and co-edited books, as well as many chapters. Jackie has been Vice-chair of the ECSDN with responsibility for Research and Knowledge Exchange. Her work within the Network is focused on developing students’ voice as researching professionals. Jackie manages the ECSDN Student Publishing Opportunity
See Jackie's publications here: http://www.open.ac.uk/people/jm39645#tab2
Dr eva mikuska
co-Vice Chair
Professional Development
Dr Eva Mikuska is a senior lecturer in the Department of Education, Health and Social Science at the University of Chichester, UK. Her work seeks to broaden current views on early childhood education and care in England with the aims to produce a more generative, ethical, and political way to enact ECEC research. Her language skills (native Hungarian, and Serbo-Croat) and her research enables her work to have synergy with a national and international set of ECEC researchers.
Find out more about Eva's work here: https://orcid.org/0000-0003-2486-9643
Dr Jo Josephidou
Leading Student publications
Dr Jo Josephidou is Programme Lead of Early Childhood at The Open University. She was a primary school teacher (Early Years) for many years before entering Higher Education in 2009. Her PhD focused on appropriate pedagogies with young children and how practitioner gender may impact on these. Currently, Jo is working collaboratively on a piece of research which focuses on babies’ and toddlers’ opportunities to engage with the outdoor environment and nature funded by The Froebel Trust.
Dr Tim Clark
Dr Jo Traunter
Dr Tim Clark is a Senior Lecturer in Education and Childhood and an Early Career Researcher at the University of the West of England, Bristol. He has 20 years’ experience of working in early years education, including 12 years leading and managing early education provision for a community organisation in Bristol. Tim’s research focuses on different aspects of researcher development, primarily exploring doctoral pedagogy. He Is particularly interested in student’s methodological decision-making, including approaches to research with children and engagement with creative research practices.
Dr Jo Traunter is a Senior Lecturer at the University of Hull where she leads on the Education and Early Years programmes in the Faculty of Arts, Culture and Education. Jo’s research interest focuses on the professional training and identity of the early years workforce both in the Uk and in Sth East Asia. Recently her research has explored how we support young children's learning through environments of inquiry, in particular creative and natural environments.
Zoe Lewis
Zoe is a senior lecturer at Birmingham City University where she leads the undergraduate Early Childhood Studies course. Zoe has worked as an early years teacher and leader and is currently studying for an EdD where her research seeks to understand the role of the material environment in children’s creativity.
Dr Carla Solvason
Dr Theodora Papatheodorou
Carla is senior lecturer at the University of Worcester and leads on the MA Education Early Childhood pathway and takes a lead on research in her department. Before this post she spent twelve years as a primary teacher and also worked as a researcher and consultant for I CAN, the communication charity for children. Carla’s research focus is ethics within practice and research; this has also filtered into an interest in relationships, particularly between practitioners and parents.
Theodora Papatheodorou (PhD) is Research Fellow and Manager at Norland in Bath, UK. She is an experienced senior academic, researcher and teacher in early childhood education. She has worked in several universities in the UK and abroad and been an early childhood adviser for Save the Children UK and consultant for UNICEF Tanzania, Kosovo, and Rwanda. In her early career, Theodora was a preschool and special education teacher in her native country, Greece. She has conducted extensive research in the field of early childhood. Theodora is passionate and committed to the provision of high-quality education and research for achieving social and educational inclusion, adhering to principles of equity and equality.
