About Maker{Futures}

Dr Alison Buxton is a Senior Innovation Fellow specialising in Makerspace Education in the School of Education. 

She has over 20 years of experience in developing and delivering STEAM and maker education through non-profit organisations, universities, schools and libraries. She has written several practical maker books and sits on international advisory boards for FIRST LEGO League and Vedanya International School, India.

Liz has over 30 years' experience as a teacher and school leader for children aged 4 to 11, in the UK and overseas. 

Liz is passionate about practical education in schools and is keen to bring her love of STEAM to all settings. She believes that adopting a Maker Mindset improves children's critical thinking and team-building skills and enables them to acquire and apply knowledge and skills through independent work.

Emma has 13 years experience as a teacher and school leader using technologies and active learning approaches to enhance curriculum design and support learning in the classroom.

Saman has a background in manufacturing and electronic engineering. 

She has organised and delivered bilingual engineering and coding workshops in schools and community centres and she is interested in empowering children to see themselves as makers and creators.

Sarah has 15 years experience as a secondary Design and Technology teacher.

Sarah is passionate about everything design and making using a wide variety of materials, machines and technologies. She likes to discover and use new technologies whilst appreciating the value and enjoyment of traditional practical skills.

Sarah is committed to fostering design thinking abilities in young minds. She is an advocate for allowing and providing opportunities for young people to explore their imagination, problem solving, ideation, prototyping and evaluating skills. 

Katherine has a background in project management, research support in Higher Education and digital media design.

Louise is a qualified teacher and has worked across all three primary key stages, with the majority of her career spent teaching in the early years. Her research interests include pedagogy in the early years, curricular and assessment frameworks, and the impact policy has on children and teachers.

Angela is committed to shaping socially just policies and practices in relation to children's education and is a founder member of the UK Literacy Association's Digital Literacies Task Group. She has participated in  APPG meetings relating to Media Education and STEAM and has engaged in numerous governmental consultations related to curriculum design. She is currently working with the Digital Futures Commission to support them in their mission to ensure that the digital world is designed in line with children's rights, interests and needs and created the Playful by Design Tool to support this work.

Jennifer has conducted research with children and young people in primary and secondary schools and community hubs for 25 years. Her research expands definitions of literacy through multimodal and maker-oriented perspectives on teaching and learning. She is Lead Editor of Reading Research Quarterly and Co-Series Editor of the Routledge Expanding Literacies in Education book series. She has published widely and her most recent book is The Comfort of Screens: Literacy in Post-Digital Times (Cambridge University Press).

Yinka's research and teaching focus on discourses and histories of childhood, play and education, and on the co-construction of environments for children’s play and creative engagement. She is interested in children’s creative and digital literacies and the inter-generational co-construction of play and storytelling.