Reader in Politics and International Politics in the School of Politics and International Relations.
Nick will be working with the Queen Mary Academy as a Fellow 2020-21. He is working on the teaching and learning of academic literacy and inquiry within the discipline of politics, Nick is exploring how seminar teaching practice on a core first year module can better support learning practices and independent studentship.
Currently a Reader in Political Theory and International Relations in the School of Politics and International Relations (SPIR), Nick has long-standing theoretical and practical interests in how modern social relations and processes positively and negatively shape the conditions for, and nature of, learning and thinking. Nick’s Fellowship project is intended to make contributions in two areas: SPIR’s understanding of how wider social and cultural processes impact on the development of academic political literacy and inquiry; and developing the School's teaching so that it supports students in becoming more effective at learning and inquiring within the discipline. Nick’s work draws together political, cultural, pedagogic and psychological research, with a view to SPIR’s teaching practices becoming more adequately theoretically grounded. Central to Nick’s thinking are Alasdair MacIntyre’s accounts of social practice, internal goods and common goods, and their conditions of possibility. MacIntyre’s work supports a strong version of pedagogic approaches based on conceptions of communities of practice. It also grounds an understanding of how learning takes place through authentic practice, in contrast to ersatz and technicised practices. A key aim of the project is a re-orientation of both classroom teaching practices and student self-understanding away from the latter and towards helping students make progressive changes to their learning practices outside the classroom.