Dr Sondra Cuban

PhD Supervision Interests

new media and technologies, Adult learning and education, women's studies/gender studies, migration studies, qualitative research, ethnographic studies.

Research Interests

My current research projects are: an ESRC study, called, Home/Work: the roles of education, learning, and literacies in the networks and mobilities of migrant carers. It focuses on the gendered geographies of skilled migration at the intersections of labour, care, and rurality. The other project is a European Commission evaluation study focusing on the changing learning needs of trade union representatives (with Sweden, Latvia, Bulgaria, and Portugal). My writing focuses on: women, learning and literacies; community technologies; non-formal and informal education; workplace learning; and, the feminisation of migration and education.

Current Teaching

I tutor and convene modules for doctoral students in the TEL programme on globalisation and interculturality as well as in the taught doctoral programme on in-practice learning and development. I am also a PGR research tutor for Educational Research. Additionally I sometimes teach at other European universities (see for example: http://www.nordkalender.org/nikk_en/arrangement.html?id=6289&back=index.html). I use action research as part of my teaching practice. I will be teaching in the Social Justice and Education doctoral programme in 2013 with a focus on understanding international social justice education issues and approaches.

Career Details

I am a former adult basic education and English to Speakers of Other Languages (ESOL) tutor, and have volunteered as well as conducted research in many types of different programmes and with marginalised groups including inmates, immigrants, homeless women, and workers. For six years, I studied learners in community-based programs (libraries) and their lifelong learning, educational histories, and literacy practices within their social networks. I also did an ethnographic study over a two year period in Hawai'i focusing on women's learnings and literacies. More recently I spent two years studying immigrant women in England and another two years studying trade union study organisers in a collaborative project based in Sweden, Latvia, Portugal, and Bulgaria.

• IOM's forthcoming publication: Crushed Hopes

  14/03/2011
  IOM's forthcoming publication "Crushed Hopes: Underemployment and Deskilling in Skilled Migrant Women", The International Organisation for Migration (IOM) recently commissioned Sondra Cuban to write a ... Read more»