➡ Where: Online (Update: This is now an online-only event)
➡ Date: Wednesday 11th March 2026
➡ Time: 4.00pm – 6.00pm (UK time)
We invite you to an upcoming event entitled, ‘Dark Times, Dark Ideas: Education Leadership and EDI, the View From Here’. The event will take place online only.
We will be joined by a panel of academics who will share their understanding of EDI perspectives for educational leadership. This will take the form of current political contexts which inform EDI concerns and education leadership, current research which should informs educational leadership and current research which focuses on educational leadership and EDI.
Find out more about our panel and their presentations below.
Please note, this event is free to BELMAS members and £5.00 for non-members. To ensure you receive your free ticket, please log in on the BELMAS website before booking. Members of the University of Derby can attend this event for free.
If you pay the non-member fee to attend and then become a BELMAS Member within a month of the event taking place, please let us know and we will refund the £5 fee.
Registration for attendance will close at midnight (UK) on Monday 9th March 2026.
Chair – Dr Karen Healey
University of Manchester
Dr Karen Healey is a Lecturer in Education Leadership at Manchester Institute of Education, University of Manchester. Her teaching is focused around contemporary issues in educational leadership policy and practice in the pursuit of socially just societies. Karen’s research interests are concerned with education leadership and the governance of schools. Currently her research is exploring firstly the role of educational and school governance in a context of plurality and secondly the experiences of succession and transition in the governance of executive roles.
Prior to completing her PhD at the University of Manchester, Karen spent over twenty years working with and in senior leadership roles in schools in both England and Wales. Alongside her teaching and research role at the University of Manchester she is also the Managing Editor of the Belmas Blog Editorial Team, Co-Convenor of the Educational Leadership SIG for BERA and Co-Convenor of the BELMAS Social Theory in the Field of ELMA RIG.
Discussant – Professor Azumah Dennis
Professor Carol Azumah Dennis is a leading scholar of education, policy, and practice whose work spans higher education, professional learning, decolonisation and the ethics of educational leadership. She has worked in higher education since 2010, beginning her academic career at the University of Hull, where she served as Lecturer in Education and later as Programme Director for both Post‑16 Teacher Education and Postgraduate Taught provision.
Since 2017, Professor Azumah Dennis has been a key member of The Open University, initially as Senior Lecturer in Education, Leadership and Management, and currently as Director of PRAXIS, the University’s Centre for Scholarship and Innovation within the Faculty of Wellbeing, Education and Language Studies. She also previously led the Doctorate in Education (EdD) programme from 2020 to 2023.
Her research draws on Arendtian political anthropology to explore concepts of ethical action, professionalism, and the intersections of policy, practice, and educational futures. This includes influential work on decolonial pedagogies, adult literacies, and leadership in further and higher education. She completed her EdD at the UCL Institute of Education in 2010, focusing on quality and leadership within adult literacy provision.
A Senior Fellow of the Higher Education Academy, Professor Azumah Dennis holds several editorial and advisory roles, including Lead Editor of The Curriculum Journal and membership on SAGE’s Pedagogy Advisory Board. Her broader professional reach includes contributions to BERA’s Educational Leadership community and national networks supporting EdD programme development.
Her scholarship, teaching, and leadership continue to shape contemporary debates on equity, ethics, and the future of education
Prof Charlotte Chadderton
University of Derby
Professor Charlotte Chadderton is professor of education and research lead for education at the Institute for Education and Skills, University of Derby. Her research focuses broadly on social justice and inequalities in education, and she has a particular interest in racial (in)equality. She has published widely on this topic, and her book, ‘Judith Butler, Race and Education’ was published by Palgrave Macmillan in 2018. She is currently leading a project funded by the Society for Research into Higher Education on ‘Exploring the experiences of students originally from the EU newer member states in Eastern Europe in UK Higher Education’.
Title: Racialised Culture Wars in Education
Professor Chadderton will talk about the so-called ‘culture wars’ in education, with a particular focus on their racialised nature. ‘Culture wars’, understood as a conflict or debate between groups with different values and philosophies – often, liberal versus conservative, although not necessarily along political party lines, impact upon many different areas of life and shift over time. A key focus of these debates is race and racialised issues, both directly and indirectly. Although ‘culture wars’ have played out for decades in some form across both Europe and the US, they have recently become heightened. In England, this has resulted in considerable recent interventions and pronouncements in education by central government and policy-makers, many focusing overtly on issues of race. This talk will consider some of the implications of these developments for educators and those researching education.
Prof Kat Mansfield
University of North Texas
Katherine Cumings Mansfield (Ph.D. University of Texas) left full-time academe as Professor and Mike Moses Endowed Chair at the University of North Texas, USA. A first-generation college graduate, Mansfield has 40 years’ experience as a teacher and administrator across the preschool to post-secondary pipeline. Mansfield’s research spans across primary, secondary, and tertiary sectors and centres on the intersection of social identities, politics, policy, and practice. Mansfield is passionate about student voice and the importance of including students as educational leaders and policy actors in local, state, national, and global arenas.
Dr Brenda Rubio
University of North Texas
Brenda Brenda Rubio is an Assistant Professor in Educational Leadership at the University of North Texas, USA. She holds a doctorate in Educational Policy and Planning from The University of Texas at Austin, and a master’s in Cultural Studies. Dr. Rubio’s work draws from critical qualitative methodologies to center the lived experiences, knowledge, and agency of people who were and continue to be excluded, silenced, and erased within the education system. As an action researcher, she supports the development of community-led educational spaces where educators and leaders can examine and strengthen how they navigate, resist, and transform inequitable school systems.
Title: Navigating the Professional Leadership Standards in an Era of Authoritarian Politics: Forcing Square Pegs into Round Holes?
This panel presentation from Katherine Cumings and Brenda Rubio will consider an overview of Professional Standards for Educational Leadership, in Texas and a summary of the new State policies in relation to this. the presentation will also consider a summary of the university’s guidance. Finally, we will try make sense of conflicting demands and consider ‘where to next?’
Dr Mario Jackson
Florida State University
Dr. Mario Jackson is an Assistant Professor of Educational Leadership & Policy Studies at Florida State University. His major research explores the efforts of principal preparation programs to prepare school leaders for equity and social justice. Mario’s other interests include crisis leadership, attending to the experiences, leadership, and priorities of principals during school disruptions. Mario’s research has been published in highly respected peer-reviewed journals including Journal of Educational Administration, Journal of School Leadership, Educational Administration Quarterly, Educational Policy, Leadership & Policy in Schools, among others.
Title: Preparing School Leaders for Equity During Dark Times
Dr Jackson will present an exploration of Principal Preparation Programs (PPPs) as Gatekeepers, and what does ‘Preparing School Leaders for Equity’- look like in practice? Furthermore, Dr Jackson will present current Anti-DEI Legislations in the US, and Anti-DEI Legislation & Efforts to Prepare School Leaders for Equity. The discussion will be drawn from three contexts:
US Landscape / federal (Supreme Court’s decision on Affirmative Action, Dismantling the DoE)
North Carolina (UNC System Compelled Speech)
Florida (Senate Bill 226, general context)
Broader Impact of Anti-DEI Legislation on PPPs
Prof Catherine Lee
Anglia Ruskin University
Professor Catherine Lee MBE is Pro Vice-Chancellor and Dean of the Faculty of Arts, Humanities, Education and Social Sciences at Anglia Ruskin University in Cambridge. She has published extensively on the theme of LGBTQ+ inclusion in schools and universities, and her research has attracted national and international interest. Her own experiences as a secondary school teacher under the homophobic law, Section 28 inspired the BAFTA nominated feature film, Blue Jean. In 2023 Catherine received an MBE for Services to Equality in Education.
Title: The Importance of LGBTQ+ Leadership Development in this Risk-Averse Education climate.
Catherine will examine how equality, diversity and inclusion in education are being quietly eroded through risk averse cultures in education. Drawing on research into LGBTQ+ leadership development in schools and universities, Catherine will explore how visibility, authenticity and inclusion are more important than ever but are becoming increasingly costly for minoritised educators.
Weiyuan Wu
University of Manchester
Weiyuan Wu is a PhD researcher in Education at the University of Manchester. Funded by the President’s Doctoral Scholar Award, his doctoral research explores the experiences of LGBTQ teachers and leaders in Chinese schools. His work has been published in highly regarded journals, including Sociology, British Journal of Sociology of Education, Gender and Education, and Discourse. Before coming to the UK, he worked as a Chinese language instructor in Shanghai for six years.
Title: Transformative Leadership Under Constraint: A Case Study of a Lesbian School Leader in China
In this talk, I present my recent collaborative research on educational leadership in relation to gender and sexuality. The study examines a qualitative case of a closeted lesbian school leader in China, exploring how she subtly disrupts gender and sexual norms within and beyond the school through her everyday teaching and leadership practices. Drawing on Shields’ framework of transformative leadership through a feminist and queer lens, alongside de Certeau’s theorisation of tactical power, the study highlights how seemingly minor actions can function as tactical forms of resistance in contexts of political and cultural constraint. Conceptually, the study extends understandings of transformative leadership by situating it within queer, feminist, and non-Western perspectives, showing how educational leadership can emerge in subtle, tactical, and deeply contextual ways. Empirically, it brings visibility of queer school leaders in China – a group largely absent from existing research – while contributing to broader conversations on EDI, queer agency, and the politics of educational leadership.
Prof Victoria Showunmi
University College London (UCL)
Victoria Showunmi is Professor of Interdisciplinary Studies in Gender, Race and Identity at the Institute of Education (IOE), University College London (UCL). Her research interests are gender, identity, and race through the lens of intersectionality, focusing on leadership and the lived experience of Black women and girls. She develops fresh conceptual frameworks focusing on equity and social justice, especially the interplay between people and the sophistication of behaviours which lead to disengagement with the promotion of equality. Victoria is Associate Editor for the following: British Educational Research Association (BERA); Gender, Work and Organisation; Emerald Books Series: Transforming Education through Critical Educational Leadership, Policy, and Practice; Interdisciplinary perspectives on equality and diversity: An International Journal; International Journal in Educational Leadership; and an editorial board member of the Bloomsbury Book Series: Critical Educational Leadership. She has also been editor of a number of special editions, such as for Management in Education and the European Educational Research Association.
She is a member of the Gender and Education Executive, Past Chair of the British Educational Leadership Management and Administration Society, Chair of the International Studies Special Interest Group (SIG) of the American Educational Research Association and co-convenor of the Gender Network of the European Educational Research Association.
Title: When the Lights Go Out: What Educational Leadership Reveals in Difficult Times
We are living through times that feel heavy, uncertain and demanding. These conditions expose the ideas and practices that quietly influence who is valued, whose voices carry weight and whose wellbeing is overlooked in educational spaces. This talk examines what it means to lead with integrity, awareness and courage when familiar patterns no longer support equity, diversity and inclusion. Drawing on research and lived experience, I explore how individuals who navigate the intersections of race, gender and identity continue to generate insight, resilience and possibility, even within structures that do not always recognise their contribution. By paying attention to what institutions often ignore, leaders can foster cultures rooted in honesty, care and accountability. The courage to imagine better is not a distant aspiration but a daily commitment. The view from here is clear: transformative leadership begins when we choose purpose over comfort, and justice over quiet acceptance.
Joining instructions will be sent out the day before the event, so please keep an eye on your inbox for these. We look forward to seeing you at the event!
On Wednesday 11th March 2026, BELMAS hosted an event online entitled, ‘Dark Times, Dark Ideas: Education Leadership and EDI, the View From Here’.
We were joined by a panel of academics who shared their understanding of EDI perspectives for educational leadership.
This took the form of current political contexts which inform EDI concerns and education leadership, current research which should inform educational leadership and current research which focuses on educational leadership and EDI.
See below for details on the panel and their presentations.
If you missed this event or would like a recap, you can now watch it in full below.
A huge thank you to our panel and organisers for hosting this engaging and eye-opening event, and to everyone who joined us online.
Chair – Dr Karen Healey
University of Manchester
Dr Karen Healey is a Lecturer in Education Leadership at Manchester Institute of Education, University of Manchester. Her teaching is focused around contemporary issues in educational leadership policy and practice in the pursuit of socially just societies. Karen’s research interests are concerned with education leadership and the governance of schools. Currently her research is exploring firstly the role of educational and school governance in a context of plurality and secondly the experiences of succession and transition in the governance of executive roles.
Prior to completing her PhD at the University of Manchester, Karen spent over twenty years working with and in senior leadership roles in schools in both England and Wales. Alongside her teaching and research role at the University of Manchester she is also the Managing Editor of the Belmas Blog Editorial Team, Co-Convenor of the Educational Leadership SIG for BERA and Co-Convenor of the BELMAS Social Theory in the Field of ELMA RIG.
Discussant – Professor Azumah Dennis
Professor Carol Azumah Dennis is a leading scholar of education, policy, and practice whose work spans higher education, professional learning, decolonisation and the ethics of educational leadership. She has worked in higher education since 2010, beginning her academic career at the University of Hull, where she served as Lecturer in Education and later as Programme Director for both Post‑16 Teacher Education and Postgraduate Taught provision.
Since 2017, Professor Azumah Dennis has been a key member of The Open University, initially as Senior Lecturer in Education, Leadership and Management, and currently as Director of PRAXIS, the University’s Centre for Scholarship and Innovation within the Faculty of Wellbeing, Education and Language Studies. She also previously led the Doctorate in Education (EdD) programme from 2020 to 2023.
Her research draws on Arendtian political anthropology to explore concepts of ethical action, professionalism, and the intersections of policy, practice, and educational futures. This includes influential work on decolonial pedagogies, adult literacies, and leadership in further and higher education. She completed her EdD at the UCL Institute of Education in 2010, focusing on quality and leadership within adult literacy provision.
A Senior Fellow of the Higher Education Academy, Professor Azumah Dennis holds several editorial and advisory roles, including Lead Editor of The Curriculum Journal and membership on SAGE’s Pedagogy Advisory Board. Her broader professional reach includes contributions to BERA’s Educational Leadership community and national networks supporting EdD programme development.
Her scholarship, teaching, and leadership continue to shape contemporary debates on equity, ethics, and the future of education
Prof Charlotte Chadderton
University of Derby
Professor Charlotte Chadderton is professor of education and research lead for education at the Institute for Education and Skills, University of Derby. Her research focuses broadly on social justice and inequalities in education, and she has a particular interest in racial (in)equality. She has published widely on this topic, and her book, ‘Judith Butler, Race and Education’ was published by Palgrave Macmillan in 2018. She is currently leading a project funded by the Society for Research into Higher Education on ‘Exploring the experiences of students originally from the EU newer member states in Eastern Europe in UK Higher Education’.
Title: Racialised Culture Wars in Education
Professor Chadderton will talk about the so-called ‘culture wars’ in education, with a particular focus on their racialised nature. ‘Culture wars’, understood as a conflict or debate between groups with different values and philosophies – often, liberal versus conservative, although not necessarily along political party lines, impact upon many different areas of life and shift over time. A key focus of these debates is race and racialised issues, both directly and indirectly. Although ‘culture wars’ have played out for decades in some form across both Europe and the US, they have recently become heightened. In England, this has resulted in considerable recent interventions and pronouncements in education by central government and policy-makers, many focusing overtly on issues of race. This talk will consider some of the implications of these developments for educators and those researching education.
Prof Kat Mansfield
University of North Texas
Katherine Cumings Mansfield (Ph.D. University of Texas) left full-time academe as Professor and Mike Moses Endowed Chair at the University of North Texas, USA. A first-generation college graduate, Mansfield has 40 years’ experience as a teacher and administrator across the preschool to post-secondary pipeline. Mansfield’s research spans across primary, secondary, and tertiary sectors and centres on the intersection of social identities, politics, policy, and practice. Mansfield is passionate about student voice and the importance of including students as educational leaders and policy actors in local, state, national, and global arenas.
Dr Brenda Rubio
University of North Texas
Brenda Brenda Rubio is an Assistant Professor in Educational Leadership at the University of North Texas, USA. She holds a doctorate in Educational Policy and Planning from The University of Texas at Austin, and a master’s in Cultural Studies. Dr. Rubio’s work draws from critical qualitative methodologies to center the lived experiences, knowledge, and agency of people who were and continue to be excluded, silenced, and erased within the education system. As an action researcher, she supports the development of community-led educational spaces where educators and leaders can examine and strengthen how they navigate, resist, and transform inequitable school systems.
Title: Navigating the Professional Leadership Standards in an Era of Authoritarian Politics: Forcing Square Pegs into Round Holes?
This panel presentation from Katherine Cumings and Brenda Rubio will consider an overview of Professional Standards for Educational Leadership, in Texas and a summary of the new State policies in relation to this. the presentation will also consider a summary of the university’s guidance. Finally, we will try make sense of conflicting demands and consider ‘where to next?’
Dr Mario Jackson
Florida State University
Dr. Mario Jackson is an Assistant Professor of Educational Leadership & Policy Studies at Florida State University. His major research explores the efforts of principal preparation programs to prepare school leaders for equity and social justice. Mario’s other interests include crisis leadership, attending to the experiences, leadership, and priorities of principals during school disruptions. Mario’s research has been published in highly respected peer-reviewed journals including Journal of Educational Administration, Journal of School Leadership, Educational Administration Quarterly, Educational Policy, Leadership & Policy in Schools, among others.
Title: Preparing School Leaders for Equity During Dark Times
Dr Jackson will present an exploration of Principal Preparation Programs (PPPs) as Gatekeepers, and what does ‘Preparing School Leaders for Equity’- look like in practice? Furthermore, Dr Jackson will present current Anti-DEI Legislations in the US, and Anti-DEI Legislation & Efforts to Prepare School Leaders for Equity. The discussion will be drawn from three contexts:
US Landscape / federal (Supreme Court’s decision on Affirmative Action, Dismantling the DoE)
North Carolina (UNC System Compelled Speech)
Florida (Senate Bill 226, general context)
Broader Impact of Anti-DEI Legislation on PPPs
Prof Catherine Lee
Anglia Ruskin University
Professor Catherine Lee MBE is Pro Vice-Chancellor and Dean of the Faculty of Arts, Humanities, Education and Social Sciences at Anglia Ruskin University in Cambridge. She has published extensively on the theme of LGBTQ+ inclusion in schools and universities, and her research has attracted national and international interest. Her own experiences as a secondary school teacher under the homophobic law, Section 28 inspired the BAFTA nominated feature film, Blue Jean. In 2023 Catherine received an MBE for Services to Equality in Education.
Title: The Importance of LGBTQ+ Leadership Development in this Risk-Averse Education climate.
Catherine will examine how equality, diversity and inclusion in education are being quietly eroded through risk averse cultures in education. Drawing on research into LGBTQ+ leadership development in schools and universities, Catherine will explore how visibility, authenticity and inclusion are more important than ever but are becoming increasingly costly for minoritised educators.
Weiyuan Wu
University of Manchester
Weiyuan Wu is a PhD researcher in Education at the University of Manchester. Funded by the President’s Doctoral Scholar Award, his doctoral research explores the experiences of LGBTQ teachers and leaders in Chinese schools. His work has been published in highly regarded journals, including Sociology, British Journal of Sociology of Education, Gender and Education, and Discourse. Before coming to the UK, he worked as a Chinese language instructor in Shanghai for six years.
Title: Transformative Leadership Under Constraint: A Case Study of a Lesbian School Leader in China
In this talk, I present my recent collaborative research on educational leadership in relation to gender and sexuality. The study examines a qualitative case of a closeted lesbian school leader in China, exploring how she subtly disrupts gender and sexual norms within and beyond the school through her everyday teaching and leadership practices. Drawing on Shields’ framework of transformative leadership through a feminist and queer lens, alongside de Certeau’s theorisation of tactical power, the study highlights how seemingly minor actions can function as tactical forms of resistance in contexts of political and cultural constraint. Conceptually, the study extends understandings of transformative leadership by situating it within queer, feminist, and non-Western perspectives, showing how educational leadership can emerge in subtle, tactical, and deeply contextual ways. Empirically, it brings visibility of queer school leaders in China – a group largely absent from existing research – while contributing to broader conversations on EDI, queer agency, and the politics of educational leadership.
Prof Victoria Showunmi
University College London (UCL)
Victoria Showunmi is Professor of Interdisciplinary Studies in Gender, Race and Identity at the Institute of Education (IOE), University College London (UCL). Her research interests are gender, identity, and race through the lens of intersectionality, focusing on leadership and the lived experience of Black women and girls. She develops fresh conceptual frameworks focusing on equity and social justice, especially the interplay between people and the sophistication of behaviours which lead to disengagement with the promotion of equality. Victoria is Associate Editor for the following: British Educational Research Association (BERA); Gender, Work and Organisation; Emerald Books Series: Transforming Education through Critical Educational Leadership, Policy, and Practice; Interdisciplinary perspectives on equality and diversity: An International Journal; International Journal in Educational Leadership; and an editorial board member of the Bloomsbury Book Series: Critical Educational Leadership. She has also been editor of a number of special editions, such as for Management in Education and the European Educational Research Association.
She is a member of the Gender and Education Executive, Past Chair of the British Educational Leadership Management and Administration Society, Chair of the International Studies Special Interest Group (SIG) of the American Educational Research Association and co-convenor of the Gender Network of the European Educational Research Association.
Title: When the Lights Go Out: What Educational Leadership Reveals in Difficult Times
We are living through times that feel heavy, uncertain and demanding. These conditions expose the ideas and practices that quietly influence who is valued, whose voices carry weight and whose wellbeing is overlooked in educational spaces. This talk examines what it means to lead with integrity, awareness and courage when familiar patterns no longer support equity, diversity and inclusion. Drawing on research and lived experience, I explore how individuals who navigate the intersections of race, gender and identity continue to generate insight, resilience and possibility, even within structures that do not always recognise their contribution. By paying attention to what institutions often ignore, leaders can foster cultures rooted in honesty, care and accountability. The courage to imagine better is not a distant aspiration but a daily commitment. The view from here is clear: transformative leadership begins when we choose purpose over comfort, and justice over quiet acceptance.
