Peter Burgess

Peter is a former teacher of History, Politics and Sociology in schools in west London. He completed a master's thesis at Birkbeck in 2016, supervised by Professor Joanna Bourke, on the influence of the wartime alliance with the Soviet Union on the social and political thought of a group of British women.

Peter joined King's in October 2018 on an ESRC funded PhD studentship to research the political engagement of young Muslims in west London. Since joining King's, Peter has presented at a number of research seminars and conferences, including the King's Centre for Public Policy Research Theory and Methods seminar series and the Young People's Politics strand at the Political Studies Association Annual Conference. He has also taught social theory on the BA Social Science at King's. He is a co-founder and convenor of the Radical Education Group in the School of Education, Communication and Society at King's, and has recently become a co-convenor of the British Sociological Association Activism in Sociology Forum.

Research interests

Peter's doctoral research explores the social and political ideas, engagement and activism of young Muslims, primarily from recent migrant communities in west London. He is interested in how they developed a social and political awareness, commitment and engagement, including the roles of schooling, family, friends, community, religious faith, ethnicity, political causes and specific events, and how these and new experiences continue to shape the development of their ideas and engagement.

He is interested in the meanings that their actions have for them, and how these have adapted and changed as they negotiate their way through the social and political world. What inspired them to become (and in some cases remain) political engaged? What kind of society and world would they like to live in, and what roles do they see for themselves in helping to bring that future about? Peter's research is centrally focused on the objective, theorised by Gewirtz & Cribb (2006, 2008), of conceptualising social justice in ways that are sensitive to the ethical and practical dilemmas of realising social justice in real world contexts, and on the politics of multicultural pedagogies.

His research aims to identify opportunities for, and barriers to, the active political engagement of young Muslims. He also hopes that his research will contribute to social and political or ‘citizenship’ education policy and to more engaging forms of political learning for young Muslims within and beyond formal education.

Peter's thesis title is: Exploring the political engagement, learning and development of young Muslims.

Principal supervisor: Professor Sharon Gewirtz

Secondary supervisor: Dr Tania de St Croix