Anna Pilson

Ms Anna Pilson

School of Education
Lecturer in Education of Children and Young People with Vision Impairments

Contact details

Telephone: +44 (0)121 414 6735
Email: a.pilson@bham.ac.uk
Twitter

Address: School of Education
University 麻豆精选
Edgbaston
Birmingham
B15 2TT
UK

Anna is a Lecturer in the Education of Children and Young People with Vision Impairments in the Department for Disability, Inclusion and Special Needs, School of Education.

The department has the largest course in the UK for providing training for qualified teachers who wish to gain the Mandatory Qualification for Teachers of Children with Vision Impairments (MQVI), and Anna is the Programme Co-ordinator.

Anna is a member of the Vision Impairment Centre for Teaching and Research (VICTAR). Her research interests include: Critical Disability Studies, Participatory Action Research, Autoethnography, Vision Impairment, Teacher Education, Conceptualisations of Voice.

Qualifications

PhD in Education, (ESRC-funded), University of Durham (due to submit 2023)
PGCert Research Methods (2019)
PGDip Mandatory Qualification for Teachers of Children and Young People with Vision Impairments, University 麻豆精选 (2014)
MA Education, University of Durham (2012)
PGCE QTS Secondary History, University of Durham (2005)
BA (Hons) History, University of Liverpool (2002)

Biography

Anna joined the Department for Disability, Inclusion and Special Needs as a Lecturer in Education of Children and Young People with Vision Impairments in January 2022, following a decade working as a Qualified Teacher of Children and Young People with Vision Impairments (QTVI).

She is Programme Co-ordinator for the Mandatory Qualification for Teachers of Children and Young People with Vision Impairments. This course (approved by the National College for Teaching and Leadership) is the largest of its kind in the UK.

Anna is also currently undertaking her doctorate at the University of Durham, School of Education, where her ESRC-funded research involves working with visually impaired young people in a collaborative autoethnographic project. She is interested in conceptualisations of ‘voice’ in educational policy, practice and research, how educators and researchers can best centre the ‘voices’ of visually impaired young people in their practice, and, most importantly, how visually impaired young people can direct the impact of their own ‘voice’.

Anna’s research is concerned with challenging the oppressive and marginalising forces of dis/ableism in education and society. Her research interests include: Critical Disability Studies, Participatory Action Research, Conceptualisations of Voice, Autoethnography, Vision Impairment, Teacher Education.

She is a member of the Vision Impairment Centre for Teaching And Research (VICTAR) (birmingham.ac.uk), an affiliate member of the University of Sheffield iHuman multidisciplinary research collective, and works in an advisory capacity for the Standards and Testing Agency, Department of Education.

Teaching

Course Leader of Mandatory Qualification for Teachers of Children and Young People with Vision Impairments MA/Postgraduate Diploma.

Postgraduate supervision

Anna is not currently undertaking supervision activities.

Research

Research interests:

Critical Disability Studies
Participatory Action Research
Autoethnography
Vision Impairment

Current projects:

Doctoral research utilising collaborative autoethnography with visually impaired children and young people (ESRC-funded via NINE DTP).

Other activities

Affiliate member of iHuman research collective, University of Sheffield. 2019-present.
Inclusion Expert role, Standards and Testing Agency, Department for Education. 2019-present.
Member of British Sociological Association and British Educational Research Association. 2018-present.

Publications

Journal articles:

Baglady, Albin-Clark, J., Ovington, J. A., Isom, P., Platt, L., Harding, L., Carley, F., Elwell, A., Antipas, P. N., Pilson, A., Marshall, C. E. & Smith, S. L. (2023), Locking and Unlocking: The Potentialities for Intra-Storying-Activism in “This” Baglady Collective, Journal of Posthumanism, 3(3): 251-268. DOI:

Yeo, E., Pilson, A., Rutter, N. & Hasan, E. (2023), We need to be as a group: Using and evaluating the Listening Guide in Feminist Collaborative Autoethnography with an affective ‘Fifth Listen’ as a tool to (re)construct Identities, International Journal of Qualitative Methods, 22: 1–11. DOI:

Rutter, N., Pilson, A., Yeo, E. & Hasan, E., (2023), “It’s About Channelling that Anger, Isn’t It?” Postgraduate Researcher Resistance through Collaboration and Care, New Sociological Perspectives, 3(1): 50-62. DOI:

Olsen, J., & Pilson, A., (2022). Developing Understandings of Disability through a Constructivist Paradigm: Identifying, overcoming (and embedding) Crip-Dissonance. Scandinavian Journal of Disability Research, 24(1), 15–28. DOI:

Rutter, N., Hasan, E., Pilson, A., Yeo, E. (2021), “It’s the end of the PhD as we know it, and we feel fine... Because everything is fucked anyway”: Utilising feminist collaborative autoethnography to navigate global crises. International Journal of Qualitative Methods, 1-12. Available online:

Pilson, A. (2021), ‘We’re on their side, aren’t we?’ Exploring Qualified Teacher of Children and Young People with Vision Impairment (QTVI) views on the role of supporting the emotional well-being of visually impaired children, British Journal of Visual Impairment. Available online:

Pilson, A. (2019). [Review] ‘Free your mind’ – and your research. entanglements, 2(2): 115-121. . ISSN 2516-5860.

Book Chapters:

Pilson, A. (2021), “Inclusive education and social justice in the post-Covid world”. In: Goodley, D. & Martin, P. (eds.) Being Human during Covid-19. Bristol: Bristol University Press. (In press).

Pilson, A. (2020), “Critical Disability Studies and Participatory Action Research: Antidotes to educational research’s inherent ‘othering’?” In: Goodley, D., Runswick-Cole, K., & Liddiard, K. (eds.), Interventions in Disabled Childhood Studies Sheffield: iHuman Press. pp. 49-54. Available online: Interventions in Disabled Childhood Studies.