Dr Yinka Olusoga
BA (Hons), PGCE, SFHEA, PhD
School of Education
Programme Director of the BA Education, Culture and Childhood
+44 114 222 8183
Full contact details
School of Education
Edgar Allen House
241 Glossop Rd
Sheffield
S10 2GW
- Profile
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Dr Yinka Olusoga is a Lecturer in Education and Course Director of the BA in Education, Culture and Childhood. Her research interests focus on the social construction of children and childhood in the educational policy, political debate, art and popular culture, in the present and in the past. Her doctoral study, ‘Moral Training’ and ‘The Formation of Character’: Constructions of the Working-Class Schoolchild, 1861 and 1905, drew on historical, textual data from the 19th and early 20th centuries to undertake a critical discourse analysis of the role of personal, social and citizenship education in the social construction of the working-class schoolchild in England.
- Research interests
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Yinka’s current research interests focus on discourses and histories of childhood, play and education and on the co-construction of environments for children’s play and creative engagement. She is interested in children’s creative and digital literacies and the inter-generational co-construction of play and storytelling.
Current Research Projects
Yinka is Director of 'Childhoods and Play: The Iona and Peter Opie Archive', funded by the British Academy, 2021-2026 (PI Dr Yinka Olusoga, Co-Is Dr Julia Bishop and Professor John Potter). This is a long-term project which exists to surface the Iona and Peter Opie archival collection and make the research materials contained in it freely accessible for research and public engagement. Established in 2012, the project is a collaboration between the University of Sheffield, University College London, the Bodleian Libraries, the Folklore Society and the British Library. It has the status of a British Academy Research Project.
Recent Research Projects
Yinka was a Co-Investigator, leading the University of Sheffield team on the ESRC funded UKRI COVID Rapid Response project 'A National Observatory of Children’s Play Experiences During COVID-19', known as the 'Play Observatory' 2020-2022. This project brought together researchers from UCL Institute of Education, the School of Education at the University of Sheffield, and The Bartlett Centre for Advanced Spatial Analysis at UCL. The project was partnered by the British Library, the V&A Museum of Childhood, and Great Ormond Street Hospital.
Yinka was a Co-Investigator on the projects ‘XR StoryBox: Multimedia storytelling using mixed reality technology, in a box’ and ‘Storyland’, both funded by the Arts and Humanities Research Council in 2020.
Public Engagement/Knowledge Exchange Activity
Corona Pirates and COVE-IT! Capturing Children’s Play in the Pandemic. ESRC Festival of Social Sciences (1-7 November, 2021). Role in project: Lead applicant.
Adventures in Wonderland: A Makerspace for Under 5s. With the Victoria and Albert Museum ‘Alice: Curiouser and Curiouser’ Exhibition, September 2020 - February 2021. Role in project: Co-I. Funded by Knowledge Exchange Support Fund, the University of Sheffield.
MakerFutures: Adventures in Sustainable Play. Festival of the Mind, the University of Sheffield. 17th - 27th September, 2020. Role in project: Project Lead. Funded by the Festival of the Mind, the University of Sheffield. Role in project: Lead applicant.
- Publications
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Edited books
- Perspectives on Play: Learning for Life. Abingdon: Routledge.
Journal articles
- Children’s digital play during the COVID-19 pandemic : insights from the play observatory. Je-LKS : Journal of e-Learning and Knowledge Society, 17(3), 8-17.
- Younger infants in the elementary school : discursively constructing the under-fives in institutional spaces and practices. Genealogy, 3(3). View this article in WRRO
- Lessons from the Play Observatory: re-imagining learning through film-making and transludic practices in children’s pandemic play. Education 3-13, 1-17.
Chapters
- The Contemporary Environment In Beckley P (Ed.), Supporting Vulnerable Children in the Early Years (pp. 13-31). London: Jessica Kingsley Publishers.
- Play. children and primary schools In Brock A, Jarvis P & Olusoga Y (Ed.), Perspectives on Play: Learning for Life (pp. 190-224). Abingdon: Routledge.
- 'We don't play like that here': Social, cultural and gender perspectives on play In Brock A, Jarvis P & Olusoga Y (Ed.), Perspectives on Play: Learning for Life (pp. 47-80). Abingdon: Routledge.
- Perspectives on Play: Learning for Life. Abingdon: Routledge.
- Teaching activities
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Yinka is a Senior Fellow of the Higher Education Academy and has extensive experience teaching and leading undergraduate and postgraduate programmes in childhood studies, education studies and initial teacher education. She currently teaches across the BA, MA and EdD programmes.. She is a Co-Director of the BA Education, Culture and Childhood. She is Module Lead for the undergraduate module EDU110 The Digital University and for the Masters module EDU6201 Contemporary Issues for Early Childhood Education. Yinka supervises undergraduate, Masters, EdD and PhD students in the following areas:
- Social Constructions of Children and Childhood
- Histories of Early Childhood Care and Education and of Primary Education
- Children’s Play
- Children’s Cultural Worlds
- Personal, Social and Emotional Education
- Citizenship Education
- Children’s Creative and Digital Literacies
- Professional activities and memberships
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Senior Fellow of the Higher Education Academy
Children’s Officer of the Children’s History Society
Member of the British Education Research Association (BERA)
Member of TACTYC (The Association for the Professional Development of Early Years Educators)
Member of the Royal Historical Society
Yinka is a regular reviewer for the British Journal of Educational Studies, Education Sciences, the Journal of Early Childhood Research, and Literacy.