Executive Members

Emily Gray (she/her) is Associate Professor of Gender and Education at Monash Unversity, on the unceded lands of the Bunurong people of the Kulin Nation. She is a feminist scholar of gender, sexuality and education, with 2 interconnected programmes of work: inequalities for LGBTIQ+ educators in schools and higher education, and everyday sexisms in higher education. Emily’s work as an academic is driven by a feminist ethic of care that seeks to make a generous, generative and impactful contribution to research and to engage the wider public in innovative and participatory ways. Emily is co-convenor of #FEAS Feminist Educators Against Sexism with Mindy Blaise (ECU) and Jo Pollitt (ECU). #FEAS is a feminist collective committed to disrupting everyday sexism within the academy and other places. Using humour, irreverence, public pedagogies, and collective action, #FEAS generate a consciousness raising for our times that is responsive, affirmative, experimental, and insistent.

With Mindy Blaise (ECU) and Jaqueline Ullman (WSU) Emily is Co-editor of the Gender and Education journal. 

With Drew Pettifer (RMIT University), Emily co-convenes the Australasian Queer Research Network (AQuRN), an interdisciplinary network run by and for researchers who identify as LGBTIQA+ or who research in the field.

To join #FEAS or AQuRN please email: emily.gray2@monash.edu

Dr Carli Ria Rowell is an Associate Professor in Sociology and Senior Fellow
of the Higher Education Academy (SFHEA). She co-chairs GEA with Dr Emily Gray and is co-founder and co-convenor of the British Sociological Association Social Class Study Group (with Dr Hannah Walters). Carli is a working-class sociologist committed to issues of social justice. Her research is within the field of higher education, especially in relation to: working-class epistemology, methods and methodology, working-class experiences of higher education, the politics and pipeline of/to knowledge production and working class pedagogy (including co-creation and ‘adopting a view from within’).

Kali (kay-lee) holds a PhD in Educational Theory and Practice from the University of Georgia with a focus on teacher education and critical studies. Prior to beginning her graduate studies she was a elementary school teacher in the U.S. and teacher ambassador for an international educational technology company. In her research she uses feminist new materialist and Marxist feminist theories to explore topics such as the neoliberal capitalist entanglement between EdTech companies and schools, women’s labour within the context of education and digital spaces, and feminist pedagogical practices. She is currently a lecturer at the University of Lincoln in the School of Education and Communication where she engages in critical post qualitative inquiry and feminist teaching practices in hopes of crafting more humanizing ways of being with/in the world. 

Victoria Showunmi is Professor of Interdisciplinary Studies in Gender, Race and Identity at UCL. Professor Victoria is Vice Dean EDI and Chair of Athena Swan in the Faculty of the IOE.  Her interests are gender, identity, and race through the lens of intersectionality, focusing on leadership and the lived experience of Black women and girls. She develops fresh conceptual frameworks focusing on equity and social justice, especially the interplay between people and the sophistication of behaviours which lead to disengagement with the promotion of equality. Her work shows how culture and cultural background have the potential to disrupt power structures and lead to transformational change. She has an international profile based on the dissemination of her research through publication and teaching and was the recipient of BERA’s inaugural Academic Citizen of the Year award in 2023. This new award was created to honour a member of the wider academic community who has gone above and beyond in supporting colleagues and contributing to the wider discipline. She is a member of the Gender and Education Executive, Past Chair of the British Educational Leadership Management and Administration Society, Chair of the International Studies Special Interest Group (SIG) of the American Educational Research Association and co-convenor of the Gender Network of the European Educational Research Association.

References

Showunmi.V & Tomlin.C (2022) Understanding and Managing Sophisticated and Everyday Racism: Implications for Education and Work. Rowman & Littlefield.

Showunmi, V. (2023). Visible, invisible: Black women in higher education. Frontiers in sociology, 8, 974617.

Showunmi, V., Younas, F., & Gutman, L. M. (2024). Inclusive supervision: Bridging the cultural divide. Encyclopedia, 4(1), 186-200.

Dr Yuwei Xu is an Associate Professor in Early Childhood Education at the University of Nottingham, UK. Previously he has held academic positions at University College London (UCL) and the University of Portsmouth. With a PhD in gender and early childhood studies gained from the University of Glasgow, Yuwei’s research interests include gender and men’s participation in early childhood education and care (ECEC), child agency, 0-3 curriculum, child-centred pedagogy, parenting and family relationships, play-based pedagogy, and teacher professional development. He is co-editor-in-chief for British Educational Research Journal, Children & Society, and Pedagogy, Culture and Society, and editor for Teachers and Teaching: Theory and Practice. In addition to being a BERA council member, Yuwei is also membership lead on the executive committee of Gender and Education Association.

Dr Rachel Chapman (she/her) is an academic based in Naarm (Melbourne, Australia) whose research explores gender, feminism, queer theory, performativity, anti-racist pedagogies, AI and teaching practices and pedagogies. She is a senior lecturer and curriculum specialist in early childhood education at Melbourne Polytechnic. Her first book Gender Expansion in Early Childhood Education: Building and Supporting Pro-Diversity Spaces was published in 2023 by Palgrave Macmillan. She is deeply committed to justice-focused education and believes that critical pedagogy and relational practice are key to challenging normative gender discourses, fostering equity, and creating meaningful change across all educational spaces.

Dr Victoria (Tori) Cann’s teaching, research and outreach interests lay in gender politics and feminist theory and she is particularly interested in feminist knowledge production. As an interdisciplinary scholar, Tori works across the humanities and social sciences, drawing a particular critical focus on culture. As a teacher, Tori is keen for students to discover what they care about and to channel that passion into curiosity. As a working-class and neurodiverse scholar, Tori is particularly keen to elevate voices underrepresented in the academy.

Tori’s first book Girls Like This: Boys Like That was released with IB Tauris in 2018 and she has published chapters in edited collections and articles in journals such as Feminist Media Studies, Boyhood Studies, Girlhood Studies and Continuum: Journal of Media and Cultural Studies. She sits on the Editorial Board of the Journal of Gender Studies and Boyhood Studies. In 2020 she became a Senior Fellow of the Higher Education Academy.

Tori has been an executive member of GEA since 2018, her pronouns are she/her.

Mindy Ptolomey is an award-winning researcher and teacher and is currently ESRC Postdoctoral Research Fellow in the School of Education at the University of Glasgow. Building on a career as a community development leader, Mindy devises creative and inclusive approaches to research to facilitate personal, institutional, and cultural transformation. This work is supported by funders including the British Academy and the AHRC. Bluesky: @mindyptolomey.bsky.social

Charlotte Morris is Senior Lecturer in Education and Sociology at the University of Portsmouth with specialisms in gender and sexuality, higher education and feminist theory and pedagogies. Research interests relate to higher education cultures and gendered lives across the domains of work, care, intimacy and education. She is committed to inclusive, social justice orientated practices and pedagogies in higher education. She is a member of the Sociology and Social Theory, Higher
Education and Women and Gender Studies research groups at the university and, with Dr Ann Emerson, leads the Education, Social Justice and Transformation research group. She is also a School Governor with a focus on inclusion at a local Primary School. She previously taught across Sociology, Education and Gender Studies at the University of Sussex (2014 – 2020) where she completed a PhD Gender Studies in the Department of Sociology in 2014. She has also held posts as Research Fellow with the Centre for Higher Education & Equity Research and as a Researcher in the field of learning and teaching in higher education at Anglia Ruskin University and the University of Brighton (from 2005 onwards). During this time she led projects in the field of widening participation; undergraduate and postgraduate learning; student disabilities,
mental health, wellbeing and resilience; student parents and carers and experiences of early career women academics. Charlotte has published in a wide range of International academic journals and disseminated her research Internationally. Currently she is researching and writing on feminist pedagogical responses to ‘post-truth’ populist contexts and academic precarity in relation to gender and intersectional inequalities.

Dr. Payne founded the Queering Education Research Institute in 2006 and remains the institute’s director. Her career has been marked by a commitment to research-to-policy work advancing the well-being of LGBTQ+ students. She is currently completing a 10-year research project exploring implementation of LGBTQ-inclusive state anti-bullying law. Dr. Payne was the recipient of the 2022-2023 American Association for the Advancement of Science, American Educational Research Association Congressional Fellowship. She also serves on the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) Committee for Bullying and Cyberbullying. Her publications include Queer Kids and Social Violence: The Limits of Bullying, due out fall 2025 from University of Minnesota Press.

Ileana Jiménez is a recognized leader in the feminism-in-schools movement. She completed her PhD in 2024 in English Education at Teachers College, Columbia University and received the outstanding dissertation award from AERA’s Research on Women and Education SIG in 2025. She is currently in the English Department at Stony Brook University in New York. A recipient of both Fulbright and AAUW awards, her research focuses on Black and Latina feminisms, feminist and queer pedagogies, and digital feminist activism in schools. She has chapters in Gender in an era of post-truth populism: Pedagogies, challenges and strategies (2022) and Youth sexualities: Public feelings and contemporary cultural politics (2018), amongst other publications. She received her B.A. in English Literature at Smith College and an M.A. in English Literature at Middlebury College.

Cate Thomas has a diverse working and academic career in health, human services, leadership, and management. She has demonstrated leadership and influence in academic, government, and non-government arenas. Cate’s research is focused on intersectionality, gender equity in higher education, and intersectionality as a lens to practice and research. She is the founder of the Social Equality, Intersectionality and Inclusion Research Group (SEIIRG).

Dr Eunice Faustino Gaerlan is a migrant Filipina academic living in Aotearoa as tangata Tiriti. She is a Senior Lecturer at Auckland University of Technology and BiPOC representative on the GEA Board. Her research focuses on gender, sexuality, and intersectionality in education, drawing on precolonial Philippine feminisms, queer theory, and decolonial frameworks. She uses creative, relational methods to reimagine education as a space for belonging and transformation. Eunice teaches in postgraduate teacher education and centres cultural responsiveness, equity, and relational pedagogy. She is convenor of the GEA Conference 2026 and the Lighting the Academy Rainbow Symposium 2025 in Aotearoa New Zealand.

Qiaohui Xue is a PhD researcher in the School of Education at the University of Nottingham. Her research focuses on the transnational experiences of Chinese international students in UK higher education, with particular attention to gender subjectivities and dominant gender discourses. She is passionate about supporting student voices and building inclusive academic communities. As a GEA student representative, she aims to connect early-career researchers across borders and foster conversations around gender, education, and mobility.

Michaela Hall is a PhD student in Education, whose research explores the intersectionality of gender and class within higher education, with a particular focus on curriculum theory and socially just pedagogical approaches. Her work investigates non-derivative curriculum models that challenge traditional neoliberal western structures and promote equity. Michaela currently works in higher education and brings over 20 years of experience in the education sector, across a range of roles. She serves as the co-chair of her faculty’s Equality, Diversity and Inclusion (EDI) reading group, is treasurer of her university’s UN Women UK Society, and is an active member of the university-wide feminist network. Outside of work and study, Michaela is co-developing a feminist community initiative in her local city. As the student representative for the Gender and Education Association, she is committed to amplifying student voices and fostering inclusive academic spaces.

Yael Boim-Fein, a social and educational entrepreneur with expertise in education and gender, is the founder and executive director of the Institute for Gender Equity in Education. Yael Boim-Fein is a leading partner in the Master’s program in Gender and Jewish Education at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem and serves as a board member of the international research organization – Gender and Education Association (GEA). She was the chairperson of the board of directors of the Jerusalem Sexual Assault Crisis Center. She is a graduate of the Mandel School for Educational Leadership, Ashoka’s international Impact Transfer program, and the US State Department’s International Visitor Leadership Program (IVLP), and the Schusterman Fellowship. 

Chong Liu is the Equality, Diversity, and Inclusion (EDI) Lead on the Executive Committee of the Gender and Education Association. She recently completed her PhD in Sociology and Social Policy at the University of Leeds, where her research examined gender, social stratification, and sexuality education in China through an ethnographic lens. Chong’s work bridges academic research and public engagement, and she has collaborated with NGOs, educators, and artists to make sexuality education more inclusive and accessible. She has been interviewed by media outlets such as Reuters and ABC News Australia, and is committed to fostering equity within research and practice.