Bridget Somekh
Professor of Educational Research in the Education and Social Research Institute, Manchester Metropolitan University
Bridget Somekh, BA, PGCE, Adv Dip Ed, MA, PhD is Professor of Educational Research in the Education and Social Research Institute at Manchester Metropolitan University and a former Deputy Director of the Scottish Council for Research in Education and Dean of the School of Education and Professional Development at the University of Huddersfield.
She is an Editor of the international journal, Educational Action Research, which is based at MMU, and on the editorial boards of the Journal of Technology, Pedagogy and Education (TPR, formerly JITTE), the Journal of Learning, Media and Technology, and the Journal of Teachers and Teaching: Theory and Practice. Currently she is editing, with Susan Noffke, the Handbook of Educational Action Research, to be published by Sage in 2008. She is a former member of the Council of the British Educational Research Association, and from time to time does advisory work for DG Research in the EU. She is a member of the coordinating group of the Collaborative Action Research Network, and a member of the BERA SIGs for Research and Policy Links, New Technologies in Education and Practitioner Research. Both the UK Economic and Social Research Council and the UK Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council call on her to review research proposals.
Her research interest is the process of innovation and the management of change, in particular the impact of ICT on users and their organizations, and the ways in which learning with ICT is enabled or constrained by curricular, pedagogical and organizational factors. Since 2000, she has directed a number of national evaluations studies, including the ImpaCT2 (DfES), ICT Test Beds (DfES) and Primary Schools Interactive Whiteboards (SWEEP) evaluations of the impact of the UK government’s investment in ICT for schools. She is very experienced in leading action research projects and between 2002-06 directed the Pedagogies with E-Learning Resources project sponsored by the General Teaching Council for England.
Bridget is internationally known for her work in both ICT in Education and Action Research and has been a keynote speaker at conferences in Brazil, Brussels, Hong Kong, Hungary, Norway, Portugal, Singapore, Venezuela, the UK and the USA.
