Dr Alexandra Georgiou

Alexandra is a Lecturer in Education (Primary) and a Fellow of the Higher Education Academy. She holds a PhD in Language and Education from UCL-IoE (2020), following completion of an MA on Literacy Learning and Literacy Difficulties at the same University (2014), and a BA (Hons) in Primary Education from the University of Cyprus (2013).

Alexandra’s research focuses on inclusive education and multilingual teaching and learning drawing on sociocultural perspectives. In her PhD she examined the linguistic and multicultural practices of refugee children in mainstream education in Cyprus. She followed a classroom ethnographic approach and discursively analysed classroom discourse, interviews with children and practitioners and multimodal artefacts. Her findings indicate that when children participate in environments where their repertoires come together holistically, they show evidence of metalinguistic awareness, vocabulary and phonological development. The study also suggests that when refugee children’s cultural resources come to the foreground, then the power positions between majority and minority children are being reversed. Such findings can inform educational policies at national and international level when it comes to designing inclusive curricula for vulnerable multilinguals.

Alexandra has been involved in numerous research projects working with multilingual and multicultural families and communities in the UK (British Academy) as well as with community-based organisations in Europe (European Erasmus+). She is a fully qualified teacher (QTS) and has worked as a primary school teacher in London’s mainstream schools and Greek complementary schools.

Alexandra has recently been awarded funding from BAAL-Cambridge University Press Seminars to co-organise an event at UWL titled: “Researching vulnerable multilinguals: Developing an inclusive research practice”. In 2021 she received funding from the Association of Commonwealth Universities to co-organise a two-week online Summer School titled: “Sharing Good Practice in Multilingual and Intercultural Virtual Learning Spaces” with Dr Sara Ganassin from Newcastle University.

She is module leader for three undergraduate modules: Communication and Interpersonal Skills for Professional Practice, Using Research to Investigate Education and Educational Settings and Foundation Skills for Investigating and Presenting Research. In the past, Alexandra has taught both undergraduate and postgraduate modules at UCL (Language Literacy and Communication), University of Reading (Language and Migration, Language Teaching Portfolio) and the University of Nicosia (Pedagogies of Inclusion).

See Dr Alexandra Georgiou's publications list in the UWL Repository.