Professor Vicky Duckworth

Vicky teaches on a wide range of modules, which include strong theoretical and practically based specifications, from level 5 to level 7 MA delivery. Vicky is also a supervisor for PhD study. She is passionate about feeding research into her teaching in a manner which challenges disembodied theory and in doing so demystifies theoretical applications so it makes it meaningful and accessible.

Vicky’s research and teaching spans over two decades, in this time she has developed a national and International reputation for research in Adult Education and Literacy. As such, Vicky has developed considerable expertise in Adult Education and Literacy and is deeply committed to challenging inequality through critical and emancipatory approaches to education, widening participation, inclusion, community action and engaging in research with a strong social justice agenda. She has drew on a critical perspective, applying Bourdieu’s work as the theoretical framework, as well as using a range of feminist, sociology of education, literature on the ethics of care and critical literacy pedagogy, including the New Literacy Studies to explore and add to the debate on the impact of violence and trauma on learning, possibilities, resistance and transformation and its link to class, gender, ethnicity, health and literacy.

She has advised on policy and is a member of a number of National and International networks, which includes her role as trustee of the Helena Kennedy Foundation (http://www.hkf.org.uk/) (http://www.unaglobal.org/) and membership of the board for the Association for Research in Post-Compulsory Education (http://arpce.org.uk/about/)

Throughout her career Vicky has published widely which consists of authoring and editing books, most recently this includes: Learning Trajectories, Violence and Empowerment amongst Adult Basic Skills Learners (Routledge, 2013); Landscapes of Specific Literacies in Contemporary Society: Exploring a social model of literacy (Routledge 2014); Adult Literacy Policy and Practice: From Intrinsic Values to Instrumentalism (Palgrave 2015).