About Me

I am Associate Professor of English and Literacy Education at the University of Oxford. I work primarily in the fields of secondary English; I also have a substantial interest in research methods, particularly qualitative research methods. 

I am currently research lead for the Penguin and Runnymede Trust project Lit in Colour. 

You can find me on twitter @veldaelliott and on LinkedIn.

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Lit in Colour research

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Very late to posting this, but the Lit in Colour research report launched at the end of June. One of the most exciting things about working with Penguin on this research was the expertise of their communications team. I've learned a lot about ways to get research picked up, but also it is so exciting to see beautiful graphics conveying some of the main points of what the research found.  The most shocking (and yet not that surprising finding) was that fewer than 1% of GCSE students answer on a text by a writer of colour in their literature examination. That drops to 0.1% when we bring gender in as well. (Overall between 6 and 7% of students answer on a novel or play by a woman - 6% of 19th century novel answers were on the female-authored texts, although they make up c. 40% of the options. The 1% of answers on modern female-authored texts might be an entirely different cohort of students, or it might overlap entirely with the 6%, hence the uncertainty.) The other really exciting pa...
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Applying for a PGCE in the UK? Read these

1. Natives by Akala This is essential reading - particularly the chapter about schooling - for anyone in teaching in the UK right now. It will make you examine the way you relate to kids in your classroom and more broadly. If you're going to be going into schools and observing, or need to show in interview that you can think about the reality of lives in schools today, this is a must-read. (I actually think EVERYONE should read this. It should be compulsory reading before you get a license to be an adult. Along with the washing machine manual.) 2. That Asian Kid by Savita Kalhan This is a great teen novel. If you're applying to teach English, it's a good idea to have read some YA - tick! It centres kids of colour and a great moral dilemma for our YouTube time, which for once is not about sending naked snapchats. It's a romp but it also has a serious issue at the centre: how racism can affect kids, go uncalled out, and undermine even the most dedicated of students, ...
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Career change

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Yesterday I read an essay about being a book publicist.  "I think I've missed my calling," I said to my husband.  "What's a book publicist do?" he said. "They make up exciting boxes to send out to publicise a book, with little packages of..." "Sausages?" he said.  "Not usually." "So I was thinking about what a book publicity pack for Knowledge in English would look like. The best thing I came up with was - " "Scrabble tiles." Ooh, a little personalised nameplate made of scrabble tiles.  The best thing I had actually come up with was a Tunnock's Caramel Wafer.  "Why?!" he asked. (This is a man who has proofread and therefore in theory read the book.) "They get a name check in the last chapter." After that I was basically into copies of other people's books, which seems to defeat the point, and a little wind up Shakespeare like the one we got from the NATE conference about 10 years a...
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