Nick Burke (they/them)
Department of Sociological Studies
PhD Student
Full contact details
Department of Sociological Studies
The Wave
2 Whitham Road
Sheffield
S10 2AH
- Profile
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Nick is a trans non-binary social work practitioner-academic. They are a National Institute of Health and Care Research Doctoral Local Authority Fellow and a social worker. They joined the department in 2020 as a University Teacher in social work, alongside continuing as a practising social worker in post-adoption support. In their doctoral project, Nick will be working with people affected by adoption (adoptees, birth family members, adopters) to understand family time and relationships across adoption. The project title is "Severed families, preventable harm: a mixed methods study investigating kinship in child adoption in England". Nick will be looking at what makes a good quality kinship relationship, and what preventable harm can occur when relationships are not properly supported. This includes ongoing relationships, or reunification, and they will be considering all formats of family time or contact, and both good and bad experiences.
- Research interests
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More broadly, Nick is interested in user-led research, creative methods, social work practitioners' research literacy, Bayesian social network analysis, and critical and radical social work research.
In their PhD project, Nick is developing a measure, starting from the experiences of people affected by adoption. Social workers will be able to use this measure to help them understand and better support relationships across adoption. Researchers will also be able to use it use in the future to understand what is associated with good quality relationships, and to measure the impact of interventions aimed at improving adoption outcomes and relationship quality across adoption.
Nick has presented papers at the European Conference for Social Work Research in Amsterdam and Milan, on practitioner research.
- Publications
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Journal articles
- Striking Ethical Balances: The Contribution of ‘Insider’ Practitioner–Academic Social Work Research in England. The British Journal of Social Work, 53(7), 3456-3470.
- Striking Ethical Balances: The Contribution of ‘Insider’ Practitioner–Academic Social Work Research in England. The British Journal of Social Work, 53(7), 3456-3470.
- Research group
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Nick is supervised by Dr Michaela Rogers (Social Work), Dr Anju Devianee Keetharuth (Sheffield Centre for Health and Related Research) and Dr Mark Taylor (Sheffield Methods Institute). They are involved in the Centre for Care and iHuman, although their research is interdisciplinary and spans a number of research groups.
- Grants
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NIHR Pre Doctoral Local Authority Fellowship 2021/22
National Institute of Health and Care Research Doctoral Local Authority Fellowship 2023/26
- Teaching interests
- Teaching activities
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Nick has convened and taught on modules on the MA in Social Work and in the Continuous Professional Development programme - the MA in Advanced Professional Practice. Nick developed the Advanced Contextual Safeguarding With Children module and was involved in redeveloping an Out of Home Care module for experienced post-qualifying social workers. In 2019, they gained Higher Education Academy Fellowship status and developed innovative social work group supervision methods that have been taken up regionally.
Nick recently gave a masterclass on Peer Reflective Supervision and is developing a masterclass on Kinship Care for social workers in South Yorkshire.