Dr Konstanze Spohrer

Job Title: SENIOR LECTURER IN EDUCATION STUDIES
Department: School of Education
Extension: 0151 291 3623
Email: spohrek@hope.ac.uk

Dr Konstanze Spohrer is Senior Lecturer in Education with particular expertise in the Sociology of Education. She graduated from the University of Strathclyde in 2013 with a PhD in Education. Her teaching and research focuses on educational inequalities and the extent to which education can contribute to a more just society. Her research has examined how motivational attributes, such as ‘aspiration’ and ‘character’, are mobilised in policy discourse, enacted in educational practice, and negotiated by young people. She has an interest in drawing on social theory to understand the relationship between society and education, in particular the work of Pierre Bourdieu, Michel Foucault and Basil Bernstein.

Konstanze Spohrer has led, developed and taught on MA modules in Education as well as supervised EdD and MA disserations. She is currently module lead of the core MA module 'Critical and Contemporary Issues in Education'.

At undergraduate level, she has led the Sociology of Education component at several levels and has taught across the Education Studies provision. 

Research profile on ResearchGate:

Konstanze Spohrer on ResearchGate

Spohrer, K. (2024) ‘Resilience, self-discipline and good deeds – examining enactments of character education in English secondary schools’, Pedagogy, Culture & Society, 32(1), pp. 1–20. doi: 10.1080/14681366.2021.2007986.

Spohrer, K. and Bailey, P.L., (2020). Character and resilience in English education policy: social mobility, self-governance and biopolitics. Critical Studies in Education, 61(5), pp.561-576.

Spohrer, K., Stahl, G. and Bowers-Brown, T. (2018). Constituting neoliberal subjects? 'Aspiration' as technology of government and self in UK policy discourse. Journal of Education Policy, 33(3), pp. 327-342. doi: 10.1080/02680939.2017.1336573

Spohrer, K. (2016) Negotiating and contesting 'Success': Discourses of aspiration in a UK secondary school. Discourse: Studies in the Cultural Politics of Education, 37(3), pp. 411-425.

Spohrer, Konstanze (2011) Deconstructing 'Aspiration': UK policy debates and European policy trends, European Educational Research Journal 10(1), 53-63