Dr Peter Coxhead: Brief Academic Biography

Academic History

Cambridge  I began university intending to become a school teacher. A First in Natural Sciences at Selwyn College, Cambridge in 1970 was followed by a PGCE in 1971. I was then lucky to obtain one of the rare studentships valid for a PhD in Education (the Ribband's Research Studentship at Wolfson College), and obtained a doctorate in science education in 1974, supervised by Richard Whitfield (who later became a Professor at Aston University). I carried on as a Research Assistant in the Department of Education for a year.

Open University  When finally forced to leave Cambridge, I moved to become a Research Fellow in the Faculty of Educational Studies at the Open University. There I worked for John Bynner on the secondary analysis of data on smoking and alcohol use by schoolchildren. I was also a member of a team which produced an OU course on social science statistics (DE304); I wrote and edited a range of teaching material in this area (for E341 as well as DE304).

Aston Education  In 1977 I joined the Department of Educational Enquiry at Aston as a lecturer in Educational Research Methods and Statistics. My research interests were primarily in multivariate statistical analysis and its applications to education. A particular application was the Second International Science Survey conducted by the International Association for the Evaluation of Educational Achievement; I was the National Coordinator for England and Wales until 1983.

My teaching was mainly in the area of research methods and statistics for the social sciences. Administrative tasks included MSc(Educational Studies) Programme Tutor.

Aston Computer Science  When the Department of Educational Enquiry was closed in 1983, I transferred to Computer Science, beginning by obtaining an MSc in Computer Science (Software Engineering) from Birmingham University. My academic interests were then mainly in AI (including Lisp and Prolog programming and Natural Language Processing) and Software Engineering.

I taught a range of modules, including introductory software engineering, introductory AI, statistical computing, AI programming languages (Lisp, Prolog) and natural language processing. Administrative tasks included MSc(IT) Programme Tutor, BSc Computing Science Final Year Tutor and European Exchanges Coordinator.

Birmingham  In February 2000, I moved to the University of Birmingham, to take up the post of Senior Lecturer/Academic Manager in the School of Computer Science.

After the School had created the post of Academic Manager, the University caught up by creating the titles 'Director of Learning & Teaching' and 'Head of Academic Programmes', which together amounted to roughly the same post.

I retired from this post on 30 September 2008.

For the period 1 November 2008 to 31 January 2009, I was employed on a short term contract by the College of Engineering and Physical Sciences, partly to work on preparation for the University's QAA Institutional Audit.

Other  I spent about 10 years as an External Examiner to undergraduate and masters degrees at colleges in Singapore and Malaysia for Staffordshire University and then Coventry University. For 30 years I was the External Advisor for Computer Science for the International Baccalaureate, commenting on all examination papers, and at times advising on syllabus changes.

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Content last updated: 28 September 2024