We are delighted to announce that following an open call and recruitment process, Marlon Moncrieffe will be BERA President, starting his term in September 2024 when he will make his presidential address at our 50th anniversary conference.

Marlon has been a member of BERA Council since 2019, also serving on our Engagement Committee. He has previously been a convenor of the Race, Ethnicity and Education SIG. He currently works at the University of Brighton and is a Fellow of the Chartered College of Teaching.

Marlon’s international interdisciplinary research crosses the fields of social sciences, arts and humanities by using narrative and biographical methodological approaches with particular focus through the lenses of education, history, sociology, and sport.

He taught in primary schools from 1999 to 2013 and was a Head of Mathematics, Head of English and Deputy-Headteacher leading on curriculum, monitoring, and assessment. His research on curriculum development seeks to advance initial teacher education and primary school education practice for teaching and learning on race equality.

His research and knowledge dissemination is respected as world leading in education for Decolonising Curriculum Knowledge. He has written and presented individually and led symposia on this theme of education for leading networks and learned societies across the world. He has recently co-edited issues of Research Intelligence on Pandemic, protests, recovery, opportunities: Repositioning of educational research, teaching & learning and Decolonising the curriculum: Transnational perspectives.

His seminal international research on the history of cycling and particularly the involvement and lives of elite and professional Black champion cyclists over the last 100 years is respected as world leading interdisciplinary research in methodological design and analysis through arts and humanities and multiple social scientific theories. He has shared his groundbreaking work across the world for leading networks and via multiple publications in multiple formats and via multiple television broadcasts including the BBC, Eurosport, and ITV Tour de France coverage. His book, Black Champions in Cycling, won the Cycling Book of the Year at the 2022 Sunday Times Sports Book Awards and was shortlisted for the Sports Book of the Year.

We are delighted to be continuing our association with Marlon and look forward to working with him as he prepares to take up the presidency in BERA’s 50th anniversary year, beginning as Vice-President from September 2023.

As part of his application, Marlon supplied a statement about his plans which is produced below:

My commitment to BERA is to sustain and to advance on the already excellent work in place and ongoing in deliverance of the strategic plan. For me, this would mean continuing with the already outstanding leadership from the current and former President by our thorough and rigorous analysis of the state of the discipline. I would continue to lead in consultation with BERA governance, and Leadership team in strategizing our commissioning of further state of the discipline studies for publication and wide dissemination to the benefit of our educational research environment.

A key priority in my commitment to supporting the development of the next generation of researchers is to champion the work of our Early Career Researcher Network and its activities. I would connect with diverse and global educational research communities, to elevate BERA’s presence at world leading educational research conventions such as WERA and EERA, but also in seeking possibility for mutual engagements of interest with partners across the AESEAN and MENA regions of the world and across the Global South. Whilst always maintaining strongly BERA’s British cultural identity in all that we do, I see that this possibility of new global partnerships will also increase the presence of a more diverse and global research community in our membership, and in attendance at our annual conferences. This fits with BERA’s aspirational leadership in raising the profile of racial and ethnic diversity across the organisation.