Project Team

Cathy Burnett, the project’s principal investigator, is a Professor of Literacy and Education at Sheffield Hallam University. She has published extensively on literacy education with a particular focus on relationships between children, digital technologies and literacy in classrooms. She has extensive experience of facilitating teachers’ professional learning and engagement with research through initial teacher education, continuing professional development and collaborative research projects. 

Terrie-Lynn Thompson is a senior lecturer in Digital Media and Professional Education at the University of Stirling. Her research examines the digital mediation of work and learning, in both the global south and north; the innovative use of more-than-human theory and methods to understand the politics and ethics of what digital things do; changes to professional work-learning as AI and data systems change the distribution of labour; and data activism particularly as related to data-bodies and data about (female) bodies. This focus highlights new mobilities in ways of knowing and knowledge, including the impact of public pedagogies through the mobilization of research.  

Gill Adams is a Reader in Education in the Sheffield Institute of Education. Her research interests include understanding the socio-cultural and individual factors influencing professional and adult learning, particularly in relation to mathematics teacher learning and to doctoral researchers’ experience. Recent projects include narrative studies of experiences of learning on the professional doctorate and analysis of policy and workplace factors influencing opportunities for engagement in mathematics professional learning.

Julia Gillen is a Professor of Literacy Studies in the Department of Linguistics and English Language and Director of the Lancaster Literacy Research Centre. She is currently Associate Dean, Engagement in the Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences and the Institutional Academic Lead for Lancaster University in the North West Social Sciences Doctoral Training Partnership. Her work explores and expands the boundaries of literacy studies. Recent interests and projects are related to the digital literacy practices of very young children in the home and research mobilities in primary literacy education.

Anna Cermakova is a Senior Research Associate in Corpus Linguistics and Sociomaterial Methodologies in Linguistics and English Language at the Lancaster University. Previously, she was a researcher at the Faculty of Education, University of Cambridge and Marie Curie Fellow at the University of Birmingham. Her research focuses on the language of children’s literature and classroom discourse. Recent projects include research of dialogic communication and cultural literacy and cognitive corpus stylistic research of gender in children’s fiction.

David Ben Shannon is a Researcher at Sheffield Hallam University and a Lecturer at Manchester Metropolitan University. His research explores neurodiversity in early childhood education, with a particularly focus on literacy and autisms. He draws from queer-feminist theories of the materiality of disability, colonisation, and race. He is a former primary and special education teacher.

Parinita Shetty is a postdoctoral researcher and children’s book writer who has worked with young people in India in various ways. She has previously researched children’s literature, young people’s agency, critical literacies, online fan communities of popular media, fan podcasts, public pedagogy and intersectionality. She is passionate about co-creating knowledge, including diverse voices in academic spaces, and finding creative ways to make academic research as accessible as possible to non-academic audiences.