M. Mahruf C. Shohel

Biography

Dr Mahruf Shohel is an experienced educator, academic researcher and leader with a demonstrated history of working in the higher education sector. Currently, he is working as a Visiting Academic at the University of Roehampton. He is also a Country Delegate of the International Higher Education Teaching and Learning Association (HETL) and leading an international collaborative research project on teaching and learning in higher education. He worked as a Researcher Development Officer at the Doctoral College, University of Surrey and as an ODL Course Convenor at the Institute of Development Studies (IDS), University of Sussex. Before working for IDS, he was a Lecturer in Education (Education and International Development) at the School of Education, Aberystwyth University. He also worked as an Honorary Research Fellow at the College of Social Sciences, University of Glasgow, an Honorary Visiting Fellow at the Faculty of Social Sciences, University of Leicester, a Researcher at the Faculty of Education, University of Cambridge and a Visiting Scholar at the Centre for Pedagogy, Faculty of Education and Society, University of Sunderland.

Prior to these above-mentioned positions at different British universities, he worked as a Research Fellow at the Centre for Research in Education and Educational Technology (CREET), Faculty of Education and Language Studies, The Open University (OU), UK. During his tenure at the OU, he worked on the ‘English in Action’, a large-scale DFID-funded project from January 2009 to May 2011. Then from 2011 to 2014, he was awarded a University Research Fellowship to make contribution to the CREET's REF submission and other international development projects including TEMPUS (EC funded), YOTS (CREET funded) and INSPIRE (British Council funded). During his doctoral study, he was a Residential Tutor and Graduate Teaching Assistant (GTA) at the University of Manchester.

Dr Shohel carried out his postgraduate research on computer-assisted language learning (CALL) and doctoral research on school transition, especially focusing on the transition from nonformal to formal education sector using Bronfenbrenner’s ecological theory as a theoretical framework. He also worked with BRAC, the world's largest NGO in terms of programmes and employees, several times as a Research Intern during his doctoral research. He initiated and co-facilitated a research group which was focusing on fieldwork research in the global south based in Manchester. The group worked on fieldwork research as well as inclusive education and contributed to different conferences. Dr Shohel has written extensively on development issues in the Global South and conducted research on disadvantaged children including socioeconomically deprived children, street children, and sex workers' children.

Dr Shohel was a Guest Lecturer at the University of Helsinki, Finland (2007) and the University of Geneva, Switzerland (2021). He was a Visiting Fellow at the Innocenti Research Centre (IRC), UNICEF Office of Research, Florence, Italy in 2012. He has special interests in education and international development, sustainable development, learning journey, teacher education, mobile technologies, ecological systems theory, school transition, education for sustainable development, and visual methods. His current research focuses on students learning journey in higher education, teachers’ professional development in the global south, mobile technologies in education, English language teaching and learning, childhood poverty and educational exclusion, and social science research methods.