Like rivers in the sky: cyclical hope toward education of British Pakistani and Bangladeshi families

Dr Stephanie Nowack is a Research Associate in the Department. She is Co-Investigator on the John Fell-funded Oxford Hope Project, where she explores culturally sensitive methods to understand how marginalised students conceptualize hope for education in contexts of precarity. Her efforts are focused on exploring the hopes and aspirations of British Pakistani and Bangladeshi heritage students toward elite universities.

As a LEGO Foundation and Cambridge Trust Scholar, she holds a PhD in Education from the University of Cambridge, within the Play in Education, Development and Learning (PEDAL) Research Centre, Cambridge Network for Disability and Education Research (CaNDER), Research for Equitable Access and Learning (REAL) Centre and Play & Communication Lab. Her doctoral research focused on neurodivergent and geo-political manifestations of learning through play. In particular, she explored a South African pedagogy of play for autistic learners.

Stephanie has a decade’s experience leading multi-stakeholder research projects in international contexts. Her research interests are underpinned by a social – & epistemic justice lens, focusing on education on the margins. She is passionate about contextually-grounded understandings of playful learning, teacher professional development, and gender – & disability inclusive education. At the heart of her research lie the questions: whose ‘voices’ are heard, whose knowledge counts, and whose childhoods matter?

Previously based at the NPO Care for Education, she led research focused on playful educational resources for children in low-income settings. This included the Foundation Phase Initiative, a cross-sector partnership between the LEGO Foundation, UNICEF and the South African Department of Basic Education. She also led the OECD & PISA Creative Thinking Pilot as well as the Six Bricks and Playbox evaluations.

As Researcher with Harvard Graduate School of Education’s Project Zero Pedagogy of Play team, she collaboratively explored playful learning in South African mainstream classrooms and co-created the ‘Indicators of a South African Pedagogy of Play’.

Stephanie is a member of the Cambridge Network for Disability and Education Research (CaNDER), and an Advisory Council Member of the Winford Centre for Children and Women in Nigeria.