Dr Carol Azumah Dennis

Professional biography

Professor of Education, Policy and Practice

I have worked in Higher Education since 2010, first at the University of Hull where I was employed initially as a Lecturer in Education: Programme Director for Post-16 Teacher Education and later as Programme Director for Postgraduate Taught provision. I have worked for the Open University as a Senior Lecturer: Education, Leadership and Management since 2017.  My current post with the OU is  PRAXIS: Director. I was Programme Leader for the Doctor in Education (EdD) from 2020 - 2023. I am a Senior Fellow of the HEA.

Other appointments:

• Lead Editor: British Educational Research Association (BERA) Curriculum Journal
• Visting Professor Canterbury Christchurch University
• Editor: Book Reviews Board Widening Participation and Lifelong Learning
• Editor: Book Reviews  Management in Education, British Educational Leadership, Management and Adminsitration Society (BELMAS)
• Member: SAGE’s Pedagogy Advisory Board
• Educational Leadership Special Interest Group Co.Leader: British Educational Research Assocoation (BERA)
• Co.coordinator: EdD Directors' National Network

Prior to working in Higher Education, I had worked for a number of years in Further Education Colleges where I was responsible for teaching, training and managing adult basic skills. I completed my EdD at the UCL, Institute of Education in 2010, with a thesis exploring leading and managing quality in adult literacies provision. 

Equity, Diversity and Inclusion in Research

An important aspect of my current work with the Open University, is exploring Equity, Diversity and Inclusion in Research. This has included drafting a positonaility statement to assert the ways I which we orient ourselves within a research space.

My statement is as below: 

I position myself as the unmarked scholar.   What I say is more important than who I am. The unmarked scholar speaks from that place which is just there, that place which is no place.  

But, my attempts to assume this position, if such a position exists,  are thwarted. It is already filled by some other body. I try write as the unmarked scholar but I am restless, accusatory, emotional and aware that I occupy the wrong body.  I am immediately recognized as not occupying the space of disembodied neutrality. I am embodied in alignment to this or that struggle.  My being there is a strange defiance. I am a strange defiance.

Occupying that just there space is an accomplishment denied to non-traditional bodies (we are Black, we are female, we are gay, we are transgendered, we are poor, we are disabled). We are so penetrated by the wild, that the just there space is beyond our ontological status.  

I could say, ‘I am a diasporan’  with the same inflection others say ‘I am a Fanti’ or ‘I am a Yoruba’, signaling a past both mythologized and reclaimed; a past that refuses erasure. But this shows my unbelonging.

When I write from a position, I assume a right to be just there. When I write about a position, it implies my scholarly self requires an explanation, a qualification, a marker of some sort. It requires I make my invisibility visible.  

Research interests

I have published in a wide range of peer reviewed international journals including Educational Management Administration & Leadership, International Journal of Lifelong Education and Research in Post Compulsory Education.

My research interests centre around three areas of specialization:

• Post-16 policy, professionalism and practice
• Leading and managing quality in vocational education
• Teacher education, critical pedagogy, ethics and social justice

Research Projects:

2021 - 2022 Principal Investigator: Knowldge Landscapes

2020 - 2021 Principal Investigator: 50 naratives @ 50: Research Report

2016  Principal Investigator, University Council for the Education of Teachers, Adult Learners at Cape Coast University, Ghana

2014 to 2016 Principal Investigator, Further Education Trust for Leadership, Leadership and Ethics in Further Education 

Pubications

• Dr Azumah Dennis | OU people profiles (open.ac.uk)

Research Group

• Lifelong Learning, Further and Higher Education (LiFHE)

Teaching interests

My research interests are in postgraduate education. I have taught research methods on both an MA (Masters) and EdD (Professional Doctorate) programme. Prior to my current post of Porgramme Leader for the Professional Doctorate in Education, I was chair of two MA modules in Educational Leadership and Management. One module focusses on strategy; the other is concerned with agency, professional learning and change. I am also an EdD Co-ordinator for students on the Leadership and management pathway.

I have supervised PhD students and EdD students in diverse areas including

• Neo-colonial tensions and identity conflict amongst international students – completed PhD 2015
• Teenage pregnancy and motherhood as a positive turning point – completed PhD 2015
• Marketization of Higher Education
• Reflective practice as capacity building for leaders in Higher education
• Academic Writing amongst HE students
• Human Rights Education in Thailand secondary schools

I currently supervise three EdD PostGraduate Researchers

• The Role of Educational Leadership and Management in Educational Cultures in a Workplace Setting
• A case study of how higher education providers (HEIs) create alliances with small and medium sized businesses (SMEs).
• Post Pandemic Educational Leadership: Rebuilding Communities of Learning in the Scottish Further Education