Research

Current Research Projects

I’m currently working on the following live projects:

  • Oxford Brookes Research Excellence Award (with Dr. Carol Brown): Exploring young peoples perceptions of self and the future in relation to A-Levels (£10,000)
  • Remembrance in School Project: exploring how schools engage in acts of remembrance.

Current writing projects

At present I’m writing about the following:

  • rituals of remembrance in schools
  • masculinity and imagining the future after school in the Bronx
  • the concept of quantum personhood

 

Recent Talks

Some of my recent conference presentations and invited papers include:

  • ‘Working and Reworking the Future: Narratives of Work at the End of Schooling in London and New York City’, talk by invitation at Brunel University, 11/2018
  • Panel co-organiser, ‘Temporalities of work, money, and fantasy’, Association of Social Anthropologists (ASA) Annual Conference, Oxford 9/2018
  • Panel co-organiser, ‘Remembrance in Schools’, British Educational Research Association Annual Conference, Newcastle 9/2018
  • Organiser,Teaching Through Ethnography: Process, Product, Practice. Royal Anthropological Institute/Oxford Brookes University, 12/2017
  • ‘Imagining a Future After High School: Imagining a Future After Schooling: Young People Navigating Uncertain Citizenship in Contemporary Britain’, American Anthropological Association (AAA) Annual Conference, Washington DC, 11/2017
  • ‘Imagining the Future: An Art-Research Installation’, Oxford University Carnival of Curiosities(Ashmolean Museum), 09/2017
  • ‘Narratives of Partial Resistance to the Neoliberal Colonisation of the Future’, Keynote atEducated People and Disciplined Bodies: Self-Governance(s) and Local Re-appropriations of Schooling. University of St. Andrews, 9/2017
  • ‘Anthropology in Schools: Teaching About Culture and Difference in Uncertain Times’, World Humanities Conference(UNESCO), Liege, Belgium, 08/2017
  • Co-organiser,Care, Commitment and the Life Course, AAGE Biennial Conference (American Anthropological Association), Oxford Brookes University, 06/2017
  • ‘Imagining a Future After Schooling: Young People Navigating Uncertainty in Contemporary Britain’, by invitation at Oxford University Department of Education Public Seminar Series, 01/2017 (with Prof. Graham Butt)
  • ‘Imagining a Future After Schooling: Anthropology and Public Engagement’, by invitation at University of East London, 01/2017
  • ‘Imagining A Future After Schooling: Quantum Personhood in the Lives of Young People in London and New York City’: ASA Annual Conference, Durham University, 07/2016
  • ‘Figuring Quantum Personhood: Imagined Futures in London and New York City’, CAE New Scholar Panel, Familiar Strange: AAA 116thAnnual conference, Denver, CO, 11/2015
  • ‘Imagining a Future After High School: An Ethnographic Account of Schooling in London and New York City’, presented by invitation at John Jay College, City University of New York, 4/2015
  • ‘Coming of Age in High School: Imagined Futures, Quantum Personhood and Age Imaginaries’, presented by Invitation at New York University, 3/2015
  • ‘Imagining the Future in London and New York City: preliminary findings’, presented by invitation at Teachers College, Columbia University, 2/2015
  • ‘Imagining the Future: Aspiration, Inequality and Age Imaginaries in a Comparative Ethnography of Schooling in the US & UK’, Producing Anthropology: AAA 115thannual conference, Washington DC, 12/2014
  • ‘Everyday Age Imaginaries’, Researching Children’s Everyday Lives: socio-cultural contexts, University of Sheffield, 06/2014

Recent grant and bid funding success

ESRC Impact Acceleration Award (in collaboration with Oxford University and the Royal Anthropological Institute): £2500.00 (10/2016)

Oxford Brookes University Events Fund (in support of a conference focusing on age and the life course in collaboration with the American Anthropological Association): £3000.00 (6/2016)

Oxford Brookes Central Research Fund (in support of research into urban and rural youth imaginings of the future): £14000.00 (3/2015)

Daiwa Foundation (in support of research into teacher education in collaboration with Kyoto Education University): £7000.00 (5/2015)

Oxford Brookes Events Fund (in support of academic writing groups): £1000.00 (5/2014)

Oxford Brookes Central Research Fund (in support of research into remembrance practices in schools): £1000.00 (3/2014)

Fulbright-Peabody Scholarship: £40,000 (2014-2015)

Recent consultancy and contract research success

2019: Principal Investigator, ‘A Word in Your Beer: Beer Consumption and Masculinity’, funded by the British Beer and Pub Association. Commissioned by the Social Issues Research Centre (£29,000).

2019: Academic Advisor for Curriculum Review of Anthropology, International Baccalaureate

2018: Special Advisor on Social Mobility, FE Learners and Apprentice Survey, Department for Education/Kantar Public (a national survey of access and attrition in FE and technical education; total budget £520,000)

2017-2019: Project Manager, Khebrat: Leadership for Change through School Immersion, Ministry of Education of the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia (training programme for leaders of change in the Saudi Arabian education system; total budget across two cohorts: £730,000).

2016: Project Manager, Skills for Researcher Development. British Council Mexico (developing national best practice in doctoral education; budget: £23,000)

Research group membership

Patrick is an active member of the Humanistic Perspectives Research Group in the School of Education.

He is also a board member of the Children and Young People Research Network at Oxford Brookes.

Patrick is a former board member of the Council on Anthropology and Education and the Anthropology of Childhood and Youth Special Interest Group of the American Anthropological Association.

Research impact

Patrick leads an ESRC Impact Accelleration project exploring how teachers can engage with anthropological questions about culture and difference in schools. Patrick is working closely with the Interational Baccalaureate (IB) and colleagues teaching in IB Schools to develop this project (2016-2018).

Patrick delivers regular talks and workshops to schools both in the UK and internationally, with a focus on aspiration, imagined futures, and transition to life after school.  If you would like Patrick to speak at your school or organisation, please email palexander@brookes.ac.uk

In 2017 Patrick devised FutureYou2020, an immersive mutli-media art-research installation aimed at engaging young people with questions about their futures and how the future is imagined. The installation has been seen by thousands of people in locations including The Ashmolean Museum, Pegagus Theatre (Outburst), the Oxford Science Bazaar, and eslewhere.

Further information

@patgalexander

http://www.teachinganthropology.org

https://podcasts.ox.ac.uk/imagining-future-after-schooling