Dr Christina Tatham

School of Education

Programme Director of the MA in Early Childhood Education

EDU - Christina Tatham profile pic
Profile picture of EDU - Christina Tatham profile pic
c.h.tatham@sheffield.ac.uk
+44 114 222 8145

Full contact details

Dr Christina Tatham
School of Education
The Wave
2 Whitham Road
Sheffield
S10 2AH
Research interests

My research is focused on young children’s experiences of, and access to, education in linguistically and culturally diverse settings. I gained my Master’s in Teaching at Griffith University in Australia before returning to Sheffield to work as a primary school teacher in a diverse, inner-city school. My PhD research at the University of Sheffield explored the multimodal communicative practices of young children in a super-diverse, early years educational setting. I am particularly interested in how children create a third space between different discourses they are exposed to.

More recently, I undertook a yearlong project to understand the barriers refugee and asylum-seeking families with young children experienced in accessing education throughout the Covid-19 pandemic. The project explored how schools and community organisations helped families to overcome the challenges they faced.

Publications

Journal articles

Teaching activities

I am Programme Director for the MA in Early Childhood Education and I also teach on the MA in Education, the BA Education, Culture and Childhood and the EdD programmes. Before joining the University of Sheffield in 2022, I was a senior lecturer at Sheffield Hallam University for four years and a Graduate Teaching Assistant at the University of Sheffield prior to that.

Professional activities and memberships

Reviewer for:

  • Journal of Early Childhood Research
  • International Journal of Bilingual Education and Bilingualism
  • Literacy
  • Language and Education