About
I’m a writer and a teacher. I currently teach at University College London where I'm an affiliate at the Sarah Parker Remond Centre for the Study of Racism and Racialisation and sit on the steering group of the Centre for Critical Childhood Studies. Prior to this, I taught for a number of years on the BA Education Studies at the UCL Institute of Education. I taught in primary schools for over twenty years and continue to work with schools on policy, curriculum and pedagogy. In 2024, I completed my PhD on Philosophy for Children and Antiracism.
I offer courses and workshops on a number of topics (see ‘Speaking’) including Philosophy for/with Children, Children’s Literature, Education, and Antiracism.
As well as my academic research, I write for a general audience. I contributed to the best-selling book The Good Immigrant (Unbound) with a chapter entitled ‘You Can’t Say That! Stories Have to Be About White People’. I co-authored, with Adam Ferner, How To Disagree: Negotiating Difference in a Divided World (Quarto). I co-edited, with Hanan Issa, Grug Muse and Iestyn Tyne, Welsh (Plural): Essays on the Future of Wales (Repeater).
For younger readers, I co-authored, with Jeffrey Boakye, What Is Masculinity? Why Does It Matter? And Other Big Questions (Wayland) and contributed to The Mab: Eleven Epic Stories from the Mabinogi edited by Matt Brown and Eloise Williams. My first picture book I’m Going To Make A Friend, illustrated by Sandhya Prabhat, will be published in the UK and US in 2025.
I've judged the Blue Peter, YA, The Week Junior, CLiPPA, and Little Rebels book awards and the BookTrust Lifetime Achievement Award. I provided training for the Carnegie Award judges and advise on the CLPE Reflecting Realities research and Penguin / Runnymede Trust Lit in Colour project.
Since 2018, I've written a regular column for Books for Keeps with Professor Karen Sands O’Connor examining Black & racially minoritised characters in children’s literature, entitled 'Beyond the Secret Garden'. A book based on the column was published by the English Media Centre in 2024.