Dr Elizabeth Hoult is a Professor of Education at Northumbria University in the UK.  Her research interests include the application of literary theory and literary analysis to social research; resilience in education, and adult and community education as ways of nurturing hopeful futures.  Her research has been described as methodologically groundbreaking, stemming from her doctoral monograph ‘Hoult, E.C. (2012) Adult Learning and La Recherche Féminine: Reading Resilience and Hélène Cixous New York: Palgrave Macmillan,  in the way that it juxtaposes literary analysis and qualitative data in order to read social issues. She continues to think about the way that deep engagement with texts allows individuals and communities to imagine alternative futures. To this end she is interested in the civic university as a source of social renewal. Her recent writing has explored the uses of science fiction as a container for speculative and contemplative conversations about hopeful futures.  She is committed to an academic life which supports teaching, research and knowledge exchange as equally important and interrelated endeavours.

PhD completions 

Ursula Edgington - Performativity and Affectivity: lesson observations in England's Further Education Colleges (2013)

Christian Beighton - Deleuze and Lifelong Learning: creativity, events and ethics (latter part supervision, 2014)

Denise Cormack - Life-Writing as a Method of Inquiry: good enough mothering and life chances (2015)

Kate Thomas -  Dimensions of Belonging: Rethinking retention for mature part-time undergraduates in English higher education (April, 2016)

Beverley Hayward - Making the Invisible, Visible: the positioning of the learning support assistant in higher education adn the possibilities for resistance (2019)

Matthew Martinez - Reading Resilience: exploring non-normative modes of writing and being (2020)

Val Sanders - Losing and Finding Oneself in a Book: An exploration of the mysterious immersive experience of reading literary fiction (2021 )