Steve is a qualified geography teacher and was previously the head of department at a comprehensive secondary school in Oxfordshire, and Head of Programmes at Bishop Grosseteste University, Lincoln.He holds an MA in Educational Leadership and Innovation from Warwick University, an MSc in Educational Research Methodology and DPhil in Education from the University of Oxford which were funded by an ESRC Studentship. He is a Senior Fellow of the Higher Education Academy.He researches at the intersection between the academic discipline and school subject of geography, including recent collaborations developing through the Smart Cities Network for Sustainable Urban Future project which was shortlisted for the 2017 Newton Prize (India). He is currently leading research on Climate Change Education Futures in India (GCRF) in collaboration with colleagues at IISER, Pune, and on the role of cultural heritage in curriculum making in Kolkata.Collaborations with colleagues in the School of Geography and the Environment are contributing to anti-racist curriculum futures, including in the school subject, and in postgraduate teaching through the TDEP-funded Oxford-UNISA course ‘Decolonising Research Methods’.

His research on teacher education focuses on the contribution that geography education research offers to the conceptualisation and practice of teaching. This work includes ethnographic research on teachers’ curriculum making exploring the journeys through which information travels into school classrooms, beginning teachers’ experiences of school subject departments, and the role of written lesson observation feedback in constructing ‘good teaching’.

Steve serves on the editorial board of the journal Geography, and is Chair of the Geography Education Research Collective (GEReCo/IGU-CGE).