About the project
This project explores how schools and families shape migrant children鈥檚 academic resilience in the UK. Using participatory and sensory methods, it amplifies children鈥檚 voices to surface links between inclusion and embodied resilience. 福利着片ings aim to inform school and family practices and foster collaborative, inclusive environments that support migrant pupils鈥 resilience.
Migration in the UK is increasingly contested, leaving newly-arrived children exposed to precarity and marginalisation. This project investigates how academic resilience 鈥 the capacity to achieve positive educational outcomes despite challenges 鈥 is shaped not merely as an individual trait but as a shared, relational process involving schools, families, and children themselves. Drawing on inclusive education and embodiment scholarship, the study explores how institutional cultures and family practices foster resilience, and how children express and experience it through sensory and affective dimensions often overlooked in research. Using Student Voice approach, pupils will act a co-researchers, ensuring their perspective drive the inquiry.
You will work closely with primary schools in Southampton and surrounding areas through the School Voices Research-Practice Partnership, conducting school visits, interviews with teachers and parents, and working with teachers in training pupils to implement participatory methods. Sensory approaches will be employed to capture lived experiences of resilience, offering innovative insights into how inclusive practices foster migrant children鈥檚 resilience.
This project offers an opportunity for you to develop expertise in inclusive education, migration studies, and participatory research; hands-on experience with creative and sensory methodologies; strong supervisory support, access to established network, and the Centre for Research in Inclusion at the Southampton Education School; and potential impact to teaching practice. This project is ideal for candidates passionate about social justice, educational equity, and methodological innovation, aiming to make a tangible difference in the lives of migrant children.
Additional technical training or support
- Participatory, creative and sensory methodologies
- The School Voices Research-Practice Partnership regularly meets where updates and examples of projects implemented in participating schools are presented and discussed. We would expect the successful applicant to become a member of the network.
- Professor Messiou established and is co-convenor of the World Educational Research Association 鈥 International Research Network (IRN) on 鈥淪tudent Voice for Promoting Equity and Inclusion in Schools鈥. Dr de los Reyes is also a founding member of the IRN that the project is aligned with. We would expect the successful applicant to be active in this network and attend meetings and sharing regularly.
References
Messiou, K., de los Reyes, E. J., Potnis, C., Dong, P., & Rwang, V. K. (2025). Student voice: bringing about change in primary schools. International Journal of Qualitative Studies in Education, 38(3), 374鈥389. https://doi.org/10.1080/09518398.2025.2455982
Zembylas, M. (2021). Against the psychologization of resilience: Towards an onto-political theorization of the concept and its implications for higher education. Studies in Higher Education, 46(9), 1966鈥1977. https://doi.org/10.1080/03075079.2019.1711048
Lorimer, H. (2008). Cultural geography: non-representational conditions and concerns. Progress in Human Geography, 32(4), 551鈥559. https://doi.org/10.1177/0309132507086882
