➡ Where: Online
➡ Date: Tuesday 14th October 2025
➡ Time: 11.00am – 1.00pm (UK time)
As part of our ECR Month line-up, we invite you to a joint event from the Emergent Researcher (ER) RIG and Leadership, Preparation and Development (LPD) RIG entitled, ‘Methodologies in Educational Leadership: Opportunities and
Challenges for Early-Career Researchers’.
During this event, we will dive into the opportunities and challenges that can exist and co-exist for researchers when choosing and engaging with various methodologies in educational leadership research. This is particularly relevant for early career researchers and for those interested in research on leadership, preparation and development in general.
We will be joined by two guest speakers: Professor Megan Crawford and doctoral candidate, Ella Grigoleit, who will outline their experiences of engaging with and navigating novel methodologies in the field of educational leadership with opportunities for further discussion on the topic from participants of the session.
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.
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 will close at midday (UK) on Monday 13th October 2025.
Megan Crawford
Professor Megan Crawford is a distinguished academic and Vice-President of BELMAS. Beginning her career in primary education, where she worked as a Deputy Headteacher, Megan transitioned into higher education, specialising in teaching and research where education policy meets practice. Her expertise lies in postgraduate education, with a particular focus on addressing the unique needs of part-time students.
Megan is a Fellow of the Academy of Social Sciences, and has taught and researched at five universities, including Cambridge, the OU and UCL/IOE. Throughout her career, she has led numerous research projects for the Department for Education (DfE) exploring topics such as school leadership, career progression from Deputy to Headteacher, and performance management, as well as projects on school governance, and the role of the middle tier in local areas. Megan has published over 50 articles and book chapters, two sole-authored books, and multiple edited volumes. Her current work focuses on the emotional dimensions of leadership in higher education.
Ella Grigoleit
Ella Grigoleit is a Doctoral Researcher at the University of Basel. Her research focuses on school leadership, distributed leadership and educational governance, with a particular emphasis on organisational development in schools. In her thesis, she employs an ethnographic approach, combining shadowing-type observations, qualitative interviews and document analysis within a grounded theory framework, to explore the complex dynamics of cooperation and sense-making in school development processes.
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 Tuesday 14th October, as part of our 2025 ECR Month line-up, the Leadership, Preparation and Development (LPD) RIG and Emergent Researcher (ER) RIG hosted ‘Methodologies in Educational Leadership: Opportunities and
Challenges for Early-Career Researchers’.
During this event, we dove into the opportunities and challenges that can exist and co-exist for researchers when choosing and engaging with various methodologies in educational leadership research. This topic is particularly relevant for early career researchers and for those interested in research on leadership, preparation and development in general.
We were joined by two guest speakers: Professor Megan Crawford and doctoral candidate, Ella Grigoleit, who outlined their experiences of engaging with and navigating novel methodologies in the field of educational leadership.
If you missed this event or would like a recap, you can now watch it in full below.
Thank you to the LPD and ER RIGs for hosting this fantastic event, to our incredible speakers, Megan and Ella, for their insightful contributions, and to everyone who joined us for this session.
