Group members

Dr Michael Thomas I am a Senior Lecturer in Social Work. My research interests focus on sexualities, equalities and the interplay between public services and personal life. I am interested in subjective experiences of loneiness among older people and people in minority groups. I am also interested in professionalism and values in Social Work. My research interests focus on investigating the diversity of contemporary family life and the interplay between public policy and personal life, with a particular focus on Social Work. I am interested in the impact of ageing on LGB identities and in using narrative approaches to understanding identity and experience. I am module leader for the following modules on the MSc in Social Work: SW5635: The Dissertation, and SW5629: Social Justice: Theory, Policy and Practice. I was awarded 'Lecturer of the Year' and 'Best Small Module' across the College of Health and Life Sciences at the 2019 Student-Led Teaching Awards. Student Testimonials, 2019/20 Lecturer challenges students in a positive way and encourages discussion during the lessons. Lectures are engaging and interactive, group work and discussions are very helpful. The tutor engages us in an interesting way that makes us want to participate in every activity. The module is very interesting and I also like how it is linked to social work practice This module is brilliant...moreso because of the way it is delivered and the lecturers knowledge and engagement style. Student Testimonials, 2018/19 “Michael always comes down to student's level in his interaction with learners. He is approachable and very liberal in his interaction with students. All his lectures are delivered with real-life examples. His method of teaching has made me x-ray my life and see the application of social work to virtually everything that goes on in any human society.” “Dr Mike Thomas is an outstanding teacher! he has the ability to see the hidden skills students have and explore them, and make the student shine through them. He has helped me know my potential and how far I can go, regardless of where I come from.”

Dr Laura Hills Laura is the Division Lead for Sport, Health and Exercise Sciences. My research has always focus on sporting inequalities with particular attention to gender and, more recently, social disadvantage. I have conducted a number of evaluations with charities exploring how to engage girls and women in sport and understanding how sporting opportunities can best lead to positive outcomes for young people. I have an ongoing project with the Football Association exploring mixed gender football policy and recently completed a project evaluating Street League's sport and employability programme. Sport and social change Sporting inequalities - especially gender Mediated sport Engaging young people from diverse backgrounds in sport Qualitative research Sociology of sport Laura is currently leading two modules that she developed based on socio-cultural understandings of sport. Young people, Sport and Identity The module aims to: Provide an understanding of sociological theories of identity and how they can be used to help understand young people’s sporting experiences. The module explores the relationship between identity and inequality, links identity in sport and physical education to broader social contexts; and, consider the relevance of the politics of difference and identity to different sporting and (physical) educational contexts. In this module, students conduct an analysis of the representation of young people and sport in film. Media, Sport and Society This module aims to: Increase students’ understanding of contemporary social theories and their application to sport; Develop students ability to critically analyse social and cultural discourses and practices; Enhance students’ appreciation of different theoretical perspectives; to consider and evaluate possibilities for social change. Part of this module is taught with the Brunel University London Media Production Centre. In the first part of the module students’ explore sociological issues and theories and use them to conduct semiotic and discourse analyse of a sports film. In the second part of the module students create a video based on a contemporary controversial issue in sport. This includes access to industry standard equipment and training in camera work and editing using Final Cut Pro.

Dr Eliza Kania Brand’s success is a combination of a thoughtful strategy, substantive analysis, and effective communications – this is what I believe and put into practice. I hold a PhD in Political Science and work as a research communications specialist at Brunel University London and for Political Studies Review – one of the Political Studies Association’s flagship journals, published by Sage Publishing. I am a member of the Social Justice Research Group and Brunel Public Policy project. My research interests cover new social movements and the process of precarisation of labour.

Professor Adrienne Milner Dr Adrienne Milner is Professor of EDI Strategy and Practice in Brunel Business School. She is an expert in culture and policy change addressing race-ethnic, sexual, and other types of inequity to improve organisational outcomes. Professor Milner has been an EDI survey designer and policy analyst for Google, Kellogg's, Universal Music, as well as governing bodies and the NHS. Her work empowers leaders to launch EDI initiatives for maximum impact on both individual and structural levels. She is passionate about driving EDI to improve organisational performance, reputation, and talent pipelines, as well as employment experiences and outcomes for minoritised groups. Professor Milner is also Director of EDI and Insights at Unthink where she utilises advanced statistical analysis in conjunction with qualitative methodology to audit global companies' demographics, EDI maturity, and needs of minoritised groups, providing strategic guidance for targeted interventions. Professor Milner graduated from Emory University with a double major in Sociology and Women's Studies and went on to complete her MA and PhD in Sociology at the University of Miami. Prior to her roles at Brunel in Business, Global Public Health, and Sport and Exercise Sciences, she was a Teaching Assistant Professor of Sociology and African American Studies at the University of Alabama at Birmingham and Lecturer in Social Determinants of Health at Queen Mary University of London. Professor Milner has completed EDI research for some of the most prestigious companies in the world across industries such as tech, fintech, FMCG's, luxury, shipping and logistics, and entertainment, sport, and gaming. She received the Emory University 40 Under Forty Award (2022) for her significant impact in business, research, and leadership. Professor Milner has authored 40+ peer-reviewed publications related to EDI issues. She is co-author with Professor Jomills Henry Braddock II of the monograph, Sex Segregation in Sports: Why Separate Is Not Equal, which uses a socio-legal approach to compare racial and sexual policy and argue that sex segregation in sport should be eliminated. Specifically, Milner and Braddock II focus on why large-scale sex integration in sport would result in a number of social benefits, such as increased safety and access to athletic participation and decreased prevalence of violence against women, eating disorders, and use of performance-enhancing substances. She is also co-editor with Prof Braddock of the collection, Women in Sports: Breaking Barriers, Facing Obstacles. Dr Milner is a dedicated teacher with fifteen years of experience designing and delivering more than twenty different modules in US and UK universities. She is a Fellow of the Higher Education Academy and her published works on race/ethnicity, sex/gender, and inequity include a wide variety of teaching materials. She firmly believes in the teacher-scholar model and has co-authored a number of publications with students.

Professor Royona Mitra Royona Mitra (she/her) is Professor in Dance and Performance Cultures and the author of Akram Khan: Dancing New Interculturalism (Palgrave, May 2015). Her first monograph was awarded the 2017 de la Torre Bueno First Book Award by the Dance Studies Association (DSA) and it was runner-up for the 2016 New Career Research in Theatre/Performance awarded by the Theatre & Performance Research Association (TaPRA). Her forthcoming monograph Unmaking Contact: Choreographing South Asian Touch is in press and due for publication in spring 2025 with Oxford University Press. The monograph's conceptual premise was published in an article titled "Unmaking Contact: Choreographic Touch at the Intersections of Race, Caste and Gender", and was awarded Dance Studies Association's Gertrude Lippincott Award in 2022 for the Best English Language Journal Article. Royona's co-edited journal special issue titled "Outing Archives/Archives Outing" for Contemporary Theatre Review journal, alongside Profs Bryce Lease and Melissa Blanco Borelli, was awarded the Theatre and Performance Research Association's Edited Collection Prize in 2022. Prior to joining the Theatre Department at Brunel in 2013, Royona was a Senior Lecturer in the Drama Department at University of Wolverhampton where she was also the MA Drama Course Leader. She has also taught in the Theatre and Performance Department at the University of Plymouth. Royona served as a member on the REF2021 Sub Panel 33 (2018-2022). She is Co-Chair of the Theatre and Performance Research Association (2022- ) alongside Dr Broderick Chow. She was elected as Secretary to join the Executive Committee for SCUDD (Standing Conference for University Drama Department) from 2013-2016. She was also an elected member of DSA’s (Dance Studies Association) Board of Directors (2018-2022), and a Working Group Convenor for the Bodies and Performance WG of TaPRA (2015-2018). She has served on the editorial board for DSA's Studies in Dance History series (2015-2018), was a co-editor for the Training Grounds section of Theatre, Dance and Performance Training Journal (2015-2018), and is on the editorial board for Contemporary Theatre Review. Royona's research examines systems of oppression in dance and performance cultures at the intersections of bodies, social power regimes, and choreography as resistance, and she contributes to the fields of diaspora and performance, South Asian dance and performance cultures, critical dance studies and performance studies. Her first monograph Akram Khan: Dancing New Interculturalism analyses the relationship between this British-Asian dance artist's complex identity-positions and his art through the lens of ‘new interculturalism’. Through seven key case studies from Khan’s oeuvre, this book demonstrates how Khan’s philosophy and aesthetic of ‘new interculturalism’ is a challenge to the 1980s predominantly western ‘intercultural theatre’ project, as a more nuanced and embodied approach to representing Othernesses, from his own position of the Other. Additionally, the book challenges popular perception of Khan’s art as contemporary South Asian dance by suggesting that, instead, Khan uses South Asian dramaturgical principles to transform the western contemporary dance landscape in intercultural ways. Offering the first full-length investigation of Akram Khan’s work, this book is essential reading for students, researchers, practitioners and fans of Khan’s work. Her current book project titled Unmaking Contact: Choreographing South Asian Touch contracted with Oxford University Press and scheduled for publication in 2025, interrogates the politics of choreographing touch at the intersections of race, gender, caste, faith, sexuality, new interculturalisms and decoloniaity, and reframes contact in choreography beyond tactility through foregrounding transnational South Asian choreographic practices. Royona is currently working alongside Dr. Prarthana Purkayastha (Royal Holloway University, UK) and Dr. Anusha Kedhar (University of California, Riverside) on a project titled “South Asian Dance Equity (SADE): The Arts British South Asian Dance Ignores,” which is being funded by the Arts and Humanities Research Council as a Dance Research Matters Network Grant project. She is also working on a double volume co-edited anthology project alongside Drs Anurima Banerji (UCLA, USA) and Jasmine Johnson (UPenn, USA) titled The Oxford Handbooks of Dance Praxis, contracted with Oxford University Press. She completed a British Academy Small Grant funded project titled ‘Contemporary Dance and Whiteness' alongside Drs Simon Ellis (Coventry) and Arabella Stanger (Sussex) in 2019. The project’s aim was to examine race and racism in British contemporary dance and to critique whiteness as part of a commitment to the field’s anti-racist futures. The project examines whiteness as a structure of racism that exists in the relationships between personal prejudice, cultural norms, and the lived conditions of inequality and racial violence. Working in coalition with UK and US colleagues from across theatre and dance studies, Royona has been leading conversations on anti-racism for these disciplines as a scholar and an educator, with a strong commiment to dismantling their whiteness. Interculturalism and Performance Studies Critical Race Theory and Performance Studies Postcolonial Studies, Decolonialities and Theatre, Dance and Performance Studies Dance, Performance and Diaspora Studies South Asian Dance Studies Royona’s teaching specialisms are in the fields of physical theatre/dance–theatre, live art practices, dance and embodiment, intercultural performance, critical theory and anti-racism and performance. She would be keen to supervise PhD projects in the above areas and also projects that interrogate the relationships between bodies, cultures, gender, race, sexuality and identity in performance.

Dr Ben Parker Academic with research interests in Design and Analysis of Experiments; Statistics of Networks and related areas. Design of Experiments, particularly optimal design; statistics of networks, specialising in data communications networks and social networks; statistical inference of queues; computer simulation. Computational statistics, particularly algorithms for design. Biostatistics.

Professor William Spurlin William J Spurlin is Professor Emeritus and Honorary Professor of English and Comparative Literature in the College of Business, Arts & Social Sciences; prior to his retirement in 2022, Professor Spurlin was Professor of English and Vice-Dean in the College of Business, Arts & Social Sciences where he held the portfolio for teaching and learning. Professor Spurlin has written extensively on the politics of gender and sexual dissidence and is widely known for his research in queer studies and modern and contemporary comparative literature which spans the 20th and 21st centuries. His latest monograph, Contested Borders: Queer Politics and Cultural Translation in Contemporary Francophone Writing from the Maghreb (2022) broadens understandings of dissident sexualities in Africa throgh examining representations of same-sex desire emerging in recent francophone autofictional writing from the Maghreb complicated and nuanced by the experience of emigration and settlement by the writers concerned in France. His previous monograph, Lost Intimacies: Rethinking Homosexuality under National Socialism (2009), uses queer theory as a hermeneutic tool with which to read against the grain of hetero-textual narratives of the Holocaust and as a way for locating sexuality at its intersections with race, gender, and eugenics within the National Socialist imaginary. His book also challenges prevailing assumptions in the received scholarship that lesbians were not as systematically persecuted by the Nazis. The research for Lost Intimacies was funded by the Arts and Humanities Research Council (AHRC), and the book is widely cited and has been reviewed in such journals as Men and Masculinities; German Studies Review; International Review of Social History; and Zeitscrift für Geschichtswissenscaft. Professor Spurlin’s research also investigates sexuality as a significant vector of social organisation and cultural arrangement in colonial and postcolonial Africa. His earlier book, Imperialism within the Margins: Queer Representation and the Politics of Culture in Southern Africa (2006), examines the politics of sexuality that emerged in South Africa’s transition from apartheid to democracy and analyses its effects in the region. This work, funded by the US National Endowment for the Humanities, led to his theorisation of the racialisation of sexuality under the Third Reich, given that the framers of apartheid in South Africa visited Nazi Germany, in the years prior to the outbreak of the Second World War, to study Nazi eugenics and fascist hierarchies of race, which engendered, in both regimes, the policing of sexuality through the regulation of gender norms and racial policies. Professor Spurlin has also co-edited, with Jarrod Hayes and Margaret R. Higonnet, Comparatively Queer: Interrogating Identities across Time and Cultures (2010), and he has written extensively on postcolonial/queer theory, African studies, queer translation studies, modern and contemporary comparative literature, and the biomedicalisation of sexuality in more than 50 essays in international journals and as chapters in volumes, most recently in The Wiley-Blackwell Companion to Holocaust Studies (forthcoming 2020), Journal of Medical Humanities (2018), Queer in Translation (2017), Research in African Literatures (2016), The Future of Postcolonial Studies (2015), Comparative Literature Studies (2014), and Studies in Ethnicity and Nationalism (2013). He is currently writing a book on representations of sexual dissidence in new queer francophone life writing from the Maghreb. Professor Spurlin has given invited lectures on his work in queer Holocaust studies across New Zealand at universities, the Auckland Museum, and the National Library in Wellington sponsored by the New Zealand Holocaust Centre. He has given invited lectures in queer studies, postcolonial studies, and translation studies around the world in English and in French, most recently in South Africa, China, Australia, and across Europe and North America. He holds a Ph.D. in Comparative Literature from Columbia University. For the outstanding contribution of his research in queer studies to social science scholarship, Professor Spurlin has been named a Fellow of the Academy of Social Sciences (2017) and Principal Fellow of the Higher Education Academy (2016) in recognition of exceptional leadership and scholarship in teaching. Professor Spurlin's interdisciplinary research in queer studies, postcolonial studies, and critical/cultural theory encompasses the analysis of a broad range of literary, cultural, and critical texts ranging from the fin de siècle through the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. Trained in comparative literature and critical theory, the texts with which he works cross national, geographic, and linguistic borders and include not only British and American texts, but those located within francophone and Germanic cultures, southern Africa, and the wider African diaspora. His recent work, particularly his book Imperialism within the Margins: Queer Representation and the Politics of Culture in Southern Africa (2006), funded by the US National Endowment for the Humanities and a Visiting Fellowship at the University of Cape Town, has contributed to the formulation new theoretical thinking at the nexus of postcolonial and queer enquiry. His latest monograph, Lost Intimacies: Rethinking Homosexuality under National Socialism (2009), builds on his postcolonial work by focusing specifically on the interwar period, marked by the decline of European imperialism in the colonies and the simultaneous rise of totalitarianism within Europe, especially German fascism. This book examines the racialisation of homosexuality in another racist regime, that of National Socialism, which was also underwritten by a politics of gender and eugenics in a similar, but not reducible, way that it was under colonialism and apartheid in South Africa, and within some forms of postcolonial nationalism in Africa and elsewhere that continue to racialise homosexuality as a vestige of empire. This project was supported by a one-year sabbatical in 2004 whilst at Cardiff University and by a research grant from the Arts and Humanities Research Council (AHRC). His recent monograph project Contested Borders: Queer Politics and Cultural Translation in Contemporary Francophone Writing from the Maghreb, published in 2022 by Rowman & Littlefield, analyses how writers such as Rachid O., Eyet-Chekib Djaziri, Abdellah Taia, and Nina Bouraoui foreground translation and narrative reflexivity around incommensurable spaces of queerness in order to index their crossings of negotiations of multiple languages, histories, and cultures, alongside crossings of gender and sexuality. By writing in French, the book argues that the writers are not merely mimicking the language of their former coloniser, but inflecting a European language with discursive turns of phrase indigenous to North Africa, thus creating new possibilities of meaning and expression to name their lived experiences of gender and sexual alterity--a form of (queer) translational practice that destabilises received gender/sexual categories both within the Maghreb and in Europe. Professor Spurlin has published over sixty essays in queer studies, postcolonial studies, African studies, feminist theory, and comparative literature and culture. His work has been instrumental in formulating the new discipline of queer translation studies, especially through guest-editing, by invitation, a special issue of the journal Comparative Literature Studies in 2014 on the gender and sexual politics of translation. He has given invited lectures on his work in France; most recently at Univ de Paris XIII, at the Centre d' Études des Discours, Images, Textes, Écrits, et Communications at Univ de Paris XII, at the College International de Philosophie, and at the Sorbonne, as well as in South Africa, Singapore, China, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, across North America, and in other parts of the world. Professor Spurlin has also lectured in medical/clinical contexts on queer theory and biomedical practice at NHS Trust-funded symposia on sexual health, and in medical research centres and hospitals, on topics pertaining to the cultural politics of biomedicine and sexuality, STIs, and HIV/AIDS care. He chaired the Comparative Gender Studies Committee at the International Comparative Literature Association (ICLA) from 2010-2016, and he was a member of the ICLA Executive Council from 2010-2022. He served as an appointed member of the Peer Review College of the Arts and Humanities Research Council (AHRC) from 2007-2016, and has served on the boards of several academic journals. For the outstanding contribution of his scholarship to social science research and thinking, Professor Spurlin was nominated and named a Fellow of the British Academy for the Social Sciences (FAcSS) in 2017. Professor Spurlin's research has also addressed critically the pedagogical situation from the perspectives of cultural studies and queer theory. This work includes an edited volume Lesbian and Gay Studies and the Teaching of English: Positions, Pedagogies, and the Politics of Culture (2000) and an invited guest editorship of a special issue of the American journal College English on 'Lesbian and Gay Studies: Queer Pedagogies' in 2002. Both works attempt to engage (queer) difference(s) as a means of enabling radical re-readings of the public space of the classroom through which to envision more participatory spheres of critical deliberation. He continues to remain interested in, and dedicated to, this work both as a teacher and as a public intellectual, and he is especially concerned about the role of the humanities and queer studies in academic and public life. Professor Spurlin was named Fellow of the Higher Education Academy (FHEA) in 2009 for excellence in teaching. In 2016, he was awarded Principal Fellow (PFHEA), the most senior level of Fellowship conferred by the Academy, for his exceptional record of strategic leadership in teaching at institutional level, in the UK higher education sector, and internationally for the global reach and breadth of his published scholarship in queer pedagogy, which has influenced teaching practices worldwide evident through its sustained and continued international citation and review. Queer studies Gender studies Postcolonial studies (with an emphasis on gender, queer, and/or Africa) Critical theory African or African-American studies Comparative literature or translation (with an emphasis on gender or queer) Diaspora/migration/border studies (with in an emphasis on gender or queer) 20th century/modernist/postmodernist literatures/cultures Postgraduate Teaching Queer Theory Undergraduate Teaching Modern & Contemporary Lesbian Literature World Literature Modern Texts & Contexts

Ms Jou Yin Teoh I am the Senior Tutor for the London School of Occupational Therapy, with a track record of enhancing student experience through Racial and Cultural Equity, Digital Accessibility, as well as International Student Support. My work in this regard has received the University's highest accolades for ‘exceptional contribution to teaching and student experience’ - winning the Brunel Student-Led Awards and Ken Darby-Dowman prize. Additionally, my research on co-producing inclusive learning was featured in the Council of Deans of Health report on Anti-Racism in Allied Health Professions Education, shortlisted for the BUL Research Impact Awards in the Educational Impact category; as well as the NHS England Chief Allied Health Officers' Award for Leadership in Equality, Diversity and Inclusion. I use co-production and participatory methologies including the Kawa Model to research power dynamics and level the playing field for occupational therapy workforce learning and development in the UK; through scrutinising, challenging, resisting and repairing systemic injustices. My PhD exploring the Hidden Curriculum of Occupational Therapy Education is pending completion, supported by the supervisory committee of of Dr Sofia Barbosa Bouças (Division of Psychology), Dr Geeta Ludhra (Dept of Education) Dr Terry Roberts (Division of Bioscienes) and Dr Michael Iwama (Duke University, USA). Some of my career highlights include: Chair of the Royal College of Occupational Therapists Learning and Development Board (2023-2024) Fellow with the Council of Deans of Health, first occupational therapist to be appointed as part of the inaugural cohort (2022-2023). Professional Lead for Occupational Therapy at Kuala Lumpur Metropolitan University College (2016-2017), first woman of minoritized ethnoreligious background to be appointed in this position in the history of Malaysian Higher Education Pre-academia: occupational therapy entrepreneur with a special interest in social innovation for public health in the Global South; particularly in the integration of digital and community-centered approaches to build and run systems that contribute towards addressing disparities that affect health and well-being. I also contribute towards the wider academic and professional community via the following: Editorial Board member for peer-reviewed journals: the Phillipine Journal of Allied Health Sciences and Neuroscience Research Notes. Mentoring with Academic Intersectionality Mentoring in Medical Schools and BAMEOTUK Network occupational therapy workforce learning and development global public health and health promotion relevant to occupational therapy practice co-production and participatory approaches, including the Kawa Model