Dr Lucy Barker

Assistant Professor

School: Communities and Education

Dr Lucy Barker is an Assistant Professor in Education in the Department of Social Work, Education and Community Wellbeing at Northumbria University, Programme Leader for the MA Education (campus-basedprogrammes), and Academic Strategic Lead for Universal Design for Learning (UDL). Holding a PhD, MA (Commendation), and B.Ed. (Hons) in Education and Fine Art, and recognised as a Senior Fellow of the Higher Education Academy (SFHEA), she brings together deep scholarly expertise and over three decades of professional experience to advance inclusive education at institutional, national, and international levels.

Before entering higher education, Lucy built a distinguished 21-year career in schools within North Tyneside Local Authority, progressing from primary classroom teacher and Special Educational Needs Co-ordinator (SENCo) to Assistant Headteacher and Local Authority Advisory Teacher for Inclusion and SEND. As an accredited Specialist Leader of Education (SLE) in SEN and facilitator of the Outstanding Teacher Programme for OLEVI International, she led regional continuing professional development across the North East. A British Council/Fulbright Scholarship in the United States and sustained Erasmus engagement across six European countries established the international foundations of her practice and influence.

Since joining Northumbria in 2015, Lucy has held a series of strategic leadership roles, most recently as Programme Leader for the MA Education and as the university's Academic Strategic Lead for UDL a position through which she drives institutional transformation in teaching and learning, partnering with Student and Library Academic Services (SLAS) and Education Strategy colleagues to embed equality, diversity, and inclusion and universal design principles across all faculties. Her NURTURE framework (Northumbria University Responsive Teaching for Universal Reach and Engagement), grounded in critical pedagogies and disability justice, is now embedded in institution-wide CPD and PGCAP provision and has been integrated into the university's draft QED Framework, directly contributing to Northumbria's aims for TEF Gold status.

As the sole UK Co-ordinator for the European Teacher Education Network (ETEN), Lucy represents Northumbria internationally, facilitating strategic partnerships and actively shaping ETEN's development across Europe. As Lead Convenor of BERA's Arts-Based Educational Research SIG (elected 2025–28), she brings together researchers, practitioners, and emerging scholars to advance methodological innovation in arts-based inquiry, editing BERA Bites publications and coordinating knowledge exchange events reaching delegates across six continents.

Lucy's scholarly identity as an A/R/Tographer, an academic who inquires simultaneously through the interconnected roles of Artist, Researcher, and Teacher, underpins a body of creative scholarship that disrupts traditional paradigms of knowledge production. Her research pioneers visual methodologies, most notably collage-as-inquiry, as rigorous and inclusive tools for professional learning, pedagogical transformation, and qualitative research. These methodologies have achieved international adoption at Karel de Grote Hogeschool Antwerp, Hanzehogeschool Groningen, and across schools in Beijing, reshaping the education of hundreds of future teachers annually and influencing training programmes internationally.

Her forthcoming Palgrave Macmillan monograph, Re-Imagining Pedagogy: Threads of Change through Literature, Art and Metamorphosis (September 2026), assessed as a potential 4* REF2029 contribution, positions Northumbria as a significant international contributor to pedagogical innovation. Her 2023 doctoral thesis, Myth, Metaphor, Materialism and Metamorphoses: An A/R/Tographic Inquiry into the Inclusive Pedagogy of Student Teachers, represents a paradigm shift in understanding how pre-service teachers develop expertise in inclusive pedagogy, deploying myths, poetry, novellas, and artists' voices as analytical lenses within a postmodern, feminist, and new materialist theoretical framework. Further research spans Universal Design for Learning, curriculum development in alternative school settings, school absenteeism, and neurodiverse students' experiences of university spaces.

Lucy's research and practice have generated over £148,000 in external income from the European Commission Erasmus+, Turing, ESRC, and international CPD partnerships, funding mobility programmes for 150+ students across Europe and the United States, and specialist professional development for educators in China. Her influence on national policy is evidenced through advisory contributions to UCET and the DfE/NASEN SEND Gateway ITE Resource, and through direct citation in parliamentary debates in Hansard (June and November 2025) on dyslexia provision in initial teacher training.

Her leadership of inclusive education provision across Northumbria's ITE partnership directly influencing the development of over 3,000 trainee teachers was specifically commended in consecutive Ofsted 'Good' ratings (2018; 2024), with inspectors highlighting high expectations in inclusive teaching and trainees' confident pedagogical adaptation for pupils with SEND. Her work is sustained by an unwavering commitment to social justice: as leader of the Inclusive Education Research Group she works to dismantle structural barriers in learning environments, ensuring that the voices and experiences of neurodivergent and marginalised learners shape both research and institutional practice.

Campus Address

Block D Department of Social Work, Education and Community Wellbeing
Coach Lane Campus West, Northumbria University
Newcastle upon Tyne
NE7 7XA

Email Lucy

Research Themes and Scholarly Interests

Dr Lucy Barker's research sits at the intersection of inclusive education, arts-based methodologies, and social justice, spanning the following interconnected areas:

Arts-Based and Visual Research Methodologies Lucy pioneers the use of visual and arts-based methodologies, most notably collage-as-inquiry as rigorous tools for knowledge production in educational research. As an A/R/Tographer, she inquires through the interconnected roles of Artist, Researcher, and Teacher, challenging traditional paradigms of knowledge acquisition and advancing feminist new materialist approaches to qualitative inquiry. Her methodological innovations have been adopted in doctoral training and research programmes internationally.

Inclusive Pedagogy and Adaptive Teaching Drawing on over three decades of practice and scholarship, Lucy's research examines how educators develop confidence and expertise in inclusive pedagogy. Her doctoral thesis, Myth, Metaphor, Materialism and Metamorphoses (2023), illuminates the complex power dynamics, embodied intra-actions, and calculated risks inherent in enacting inclusive practice, reframing pre-service teachers as agentic participants in the learning space rather than isolated practitioners.

Universal Design for Learning and Higher Education Inclusion Lucy's research investigates the implementation of Universal Design for Learning (UDL) as both a pedagogical framework and an organisational change model in higher education, most recently through the development of the NURTURE framework at Northumbria University. Her work addresses urgent sector-wide challenges in accessibility, equity, and outcomes for disabled and neurodiverse students.

Neurodiversity and Educational Spaces Lucy leads collaborative research examining neurodiverse students' lived experiences of university spaces and environments, ensuring marginalised voices shape institutional decision-making on campus design, learning environments, and accessibility.

Special Educational Needs and Disability (SEND) in Teacher Education A sustained area of research and practice, Lucy's work explores how initial teacher education can better prepare trainee teachers to meet the needs of pupils with SEND, contributing to national policy through advisory roles with UCET, the DfE/NASEN SEND Gateway, and parliamentary consultations.

Curriculum Development and Educational Equity Lucy's research examines how curricular autonomy and alternative educational models can advance equity, democratise cultural capital, and challenge traditional subject hierarchies with a particular focus on free schools and holistic curriculum design.

School Absenteeism and Marginalised Learners Lucy contributes to collaborative research addressing the global challenge of chronic school absenteeism, examining relational dynamics and the lived experiences of persistently absent pupils, with attention to the systemic and relational factors that exclude the most vulnerable young people from education.

Key Publications

Please visit the Pure Research Information Portal for further information
Exploratory analysis of inter-connected factors related to secondary school absenteeism: Caregivers’ perspectives, Carrick, A., Chen, R., Littlefair, D., Friedman, S., Mulholland, K., Hudson, K., Graham, P., Graham, P., Davies, C., Barker, L., Cordier, R. 1 Jan 2026, In: International Journal of Educational Research
Curriculum Beyond Constraint: Stakeholder Perspectives on Innovation and Autonomy in a Free School, Barker, L., Littlefair, D., Million, C. 30 Oct 2025, In: ELA Journal of Educational Leadership in Action
Collage as a Co-Created Site of Inquiry for Becoming Inclusive, Barker, L. 9 Jan 2024, ECQI2024, Leuven, Belgium, European Network for Qualitative Inquiry (ENQI)
Born Free: How to create a School, Barker, L. 20 Jun 2023
Born Free: How to create a School, Littlefair, D., Barker, L., Million, C., Khatib, M. 20 Jun 2023, In: Journal of the European Teacher Education Network (JETEN)
‘A day in the life’: Supporting trainee teachers in finding the ‘Keys to inclusion’ though a case study of one mainstream school’s inclusion of a child on the autism spectrum, Barker, L. 17 May 2021
Working with your teaching assistant, Barker, L. 19 Feb 2021, Early Careers in Education, Bingley, Emerald
What next? Beginning teaching and moving forward, Barker, L. 2018, Primary Teaching , London, SAGE

Professional Activity

Please visit the Pure Research Information Portal for further information
Invited talk: Collage as method of research inquiry 2025
Oral presentation: Collage as inquiry: Embodying the space of the mainstream classroom for the enactment of inclusive pedagogy. European Teacher Education Network (ETEN - Hasselt, Belgium 2025) 2025
Oral presentation: Whose School Is It Anyway? Oxford University Global Conference on Children and Youth 2025
Invited talk: Community for Innovation in Teaching and Education (CITE) Celebration of Education 2025
Invited talk: Creative Approaches to Qualitative - University of Bath Qualitative Research Symposium 2025
Oral presentation: European Congress of Qualitative Inquiry 2025
Oral presentation: 7th European Congress of Qualitative Inquiry Presentation: COLLAGE AS A CO-CREATED SITE OF INQUIRY FOR BECOMING INCLUSIVE 2024
Oral presentation: European Teacher Education Network (ETEN) 2019
Oral presentation: BERA Annual Conference Newcastle 2018 2018

PGR Supervision

Andrea Carrick Empowering Home–School Partnerships: A Co-Created Intervention for Addressing School Attendance Problems Linked to SEN(D) Start Date: 01/10/2024

Further Information

Dr Lucy Barker's roles:

Programme lead for the MA Education campus based programme and the MA Distance Learning Programme (Leadership and Learning).

Academic strategic lead for Northumbria University in Universal Design for Learning (NURTURE) framework.

PUBLICATIONS & OUTPUTS

Re-Imagining Pedagogy: Threads of Change through Literature, Art and Metamorphosis Palgrave Macmillan (under contract, due September 2026). Assessed as potential 4* REF2029 contribution.
"Becoming through Collage: A Feminist New Materialist Inquiry into Pre-service Teachers' Pedagogy" London Review of Education (in press, 2025)
"Reimagining Inclusion: Developing the NURTURE Framework through Universal Design for Learning at Northumbria University" Journal of Learning Development in Higher Education (in press, 2025)
"Curriculum Beyond Constraint: Stakeholder Perspectives on Innovation and Autonomy in a Free School" Journal of Educational Leadership in Action, Vol. 10(1), 2025. Assessed 3*.
"Born Free: How to create a School" Journal of the European Teacher Education Network (JETEN), 2023
Doctoral thesis: 'Myth, Metaphor, Materialism and Metamorphoses: An A/R/Tographic Inquiry Into The Inclusive Pedagogy Of Student Teachers', Northumbria University, 2023 a paradigm-shifting examination of how pre-service teachers develop inclusive pedagogy, deploying myths, poetry, novellas, and artists' voices as analytical tools within a postmodern, feminist, materialist framework.
"'A Day in the Life': Supporting trainee teachers in finding the 'Keys to inclusion'" Journal of European Teacher Education Network, 2021
"Working with your teaching assistant" — in Gillespie (ed.) Early Careers in Education, Emerald, 2021
"What next? Beginning teaching and moving forward" — in Carden (ed.) Primary Teaching, SAGE/Learning Matters, 2018
Exploratory analysis of inter-connected factors related to secondary school absenteeism: Caregivers' perspectives — International Journal of Educational Research (in press)
"Al/luring possibilities to Qualitative Inquiry" collaborative paper with Professor Carol Taylor et al. (awaiting peer review)

RESEARCH FUNDING (EXTERNAL)

Cleaswell Hill Special School Inclusive Practice CPD for SENDCos (PI, £3,000–£6,000, 2025–26)
ESRC Festival of Social Science "Collaging Inclusion" (PI, £500, 2023)
Erasmus+ BE-IN Teachers' Competencies for Social Inclusion of Migrant and Refugees (Co-PI, £52,895 to NU, 2019–22)
Erasmus+ Inclusive Education in Early Childhood (Co-PI, £45,246 to NU, 2016–19)
Chaoyang District Beijing Innovative Teaching and Learning CPD (Co-PI, £29,000, 2016)

KNOWLEDGE EXCHANGE & IMPACT

Policy influence: advised UCET on dyslexia and dyscalculia pedagogy, cited in Hansard (June and November 2025); contributed to DfE/NASEN SEND Gateway ITE Resource (2022); contributed to ASCL SEND training integration focus group (2025)
Institutional transformation: NURTURE framework embedded in institution-wide CPD and PGCAP provision, reaching hundreds of academic staff across all faculties; UDL principles integrated into draft QED Framework
International curriculum adoption: collage-as-inquiry methodology embedded at Karel de Grote Hogeschool Antwerp and Hanzehogeschool Groningen; inclusive pedagogy co-created with teachers and headteachers in Chaoyang District, Beijing
CPD delivery to 60 educators and headteachers across schools in Beijing; 150+ students across Belgium, Lithuania, Netherlands, and Spain through COIL and mobility programmes
ESRC FOSS public engagement "Collaging Inclusion" engaging 50 participants from special schools, sixth forms, and ITE (2023)
Consultancy with Gosforth Group, Northumberland Local Authority, and multiple North East academy trusts (Nunthorpe, Dyke House, Cleaswell Hill)
External Examiner, Leeds Beckett University Primary Education (2025–28)
Co-production of research between school stakeholders including children, young people, mentors, governors, and school leaders — and PGR students, advancing inclusive outcomes across educational settings

RESEARCH LEADERSHIP & EXTERNAL ROLES

Lead Convenor, BERA Arts-Based Educational Research SIG (elected, 2025–28)
Sole UK Co-ordinator, European Teacher Education Network (ETEN)
Leader, Northumbria Inclusive Education Research Group
Co-founder, SPHERE (Socio-material Perspectives in Higher Education Research and Enquiry) research team
PhD supervision: Principal Supervisor Second Supervisor
Internal PhD VIVA panel examiner
Peer reviewer, BERA

KEY CONFERENCES (selected)

BERA Annual Conference, University of Sussex (invited workshop leader, 60 delegates from 12 countries, 2025)
European Teacher Education Network (ETEN), Belgium (2025)
University of Bath Qualitative Research Symposium (invited, bursary award, 2025)
Oxford University Global Conference on Children and Youth (2025)
Leeds Beckett Global Conference with UNESCO (2025)
European Congress of Qualitative Inquiry (ECQI), Edinburgh (2024) and Helsinki (2023)