Staff profile

Anna is a PhD student at Durham University School of Education. Her PhD attempts to use participatory methodology in a way that positions visually impaired children as knowledge producers. This research constitutes a natural progression from her professional background as Qualified Teacher of Children with a Vision Impairment and MA research (also undertaken at Durham) on facilitating collaborative practitioner research to promote inclusive education. Her PhD project also benefits from the support of collaborative partners, UK charity Royal National Institute for the Blind (RNIB) and Thomas Pocklington Trust. 

Anna is also:

- ESRC-funded via NINE DTP

- An affiliate member of the iHuman research collective

- A member of the UK Participatory Network (UKPRN)

- A member of the British Educational Research Association (BERA)

- A member of the British Sociological Association (BSA) 

• Co-production
• Collaborative practitioner-led educational research
• Critical Disability Studies
• Inclusive education
• Initial Teacher Education
• Participatory Action Research (PAR)
• Special Educational Needs and Disability

Chapter in book

• Pilson, A. (2020). Critical Disability Studies and Participatory Action Research: Antidotes to educational research's inherent 'othering'?. In D. Goodley, K. Runswick-Cole, & K. Liddiard (Eds.), Interventions in Disabled Childhood Studies (49-54). iHuman, University of Sheffield

Conference Paper

• Pilson, A. (2019, December). Participation to Emancipation to Inclusion? Developing an active participatory research model with children with a visual impairment to promote educational inclusion, through improving teacher training provision on SEND. Presented at Imagining Better Education, Durham, England

Journal Article

• Rutter, N., Pilson, A., & Yeo, E. (2024). ‘Yeah, embrace your anger. Fuck them.’: using feminist collaborative autoethnography and an ethics of care to (re)imagine our position as disabled women in academic spaces during the COVID-19 pandemic and beyond. Feminist Review, 137(1), 53-70. https://doi.org/10.1177/01417789241249629
• Albin-Clark, J., Ovington, J. A., Isom, P., Platt, L., Harding, L., Carley, F., Elwell, A., 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. https://doi.org/10.33182/joph.v3i3.3015
• 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. https://doi.org/10.1177/16094069231180166
• Rutter, N., Hasan, E., Pilson, A., & Yeo, E. (2023). “It’s the End of the PhD as We Know it, and We Feel Fine…Because Everything Is Fucked Anyway”: Utilizing Feminist Collaborative Autoethnography to Navigate Global Crises. International Journal of Qualitative Methods, 22, https://doi.org/10.1177/16094069211019595
• Pilson, A. (2022). ‘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, 40(2), 335-350. https://doi.org/10.1177/0264619620984218
• 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. https://doi.org/10.16993/sjdr.843