Staff Profiles

Michele has held two teaching fellowships at Brookes and has been nominated four times for the SU teaching awards. As well as modules in the undergraduate Communication, Media and Culture programme, she teaches discursive archaeologies and qualitative digital media methodologies in a range of postgraduate contexts.

Modules taught

At undergraduate level Michele leads the Advanced Digital Media and Youth Identities and Audiences, Users and Producers modules, and the Honours module Citizen Journalism and Civic Engagment. She also contribues to the Understanding Culture, Research Methods, Special Topics in CMC, and Gender, Culture and Sexuality modules.

At postgraduate level Michele teaches on the MA in Publiishing and in Education, and on the Ed.D programme. 

Supervision

Michele offers PhD and M.Res supervision in areas relating to youth and media engagement; gender and girlhood; audiences and identities; media and institutional discourses, narratives and taxonomies.

Michele's research interests lie in gendered aspects of power relationships, in discourses and experiences of girlhood, and in the potential of participation in research to address inequalities. She is currently leading a study investigating girls' imaginings of leadership, exploring ways in which they draw on local figures and transnational celebrities as well as their own experiences. Data is gathered via focus group workshops, surveys and closed social media groups. A summary of key findings from the pilot can be found here

In 2014-15 she led an international project developing models of participant action research to explore and address gendered barriers to leadership in youth in Scotland and The Netherlands.

Her doctoral thesis employed Foucault’s (1969) Archaeological model to investigate the circulation of discourses of gender, success and 'ability' with regard to girls. This study is interdisciplinary in its exploration of the ways in which discourses are reproduced in educational and popular culture settings; it developed an innovative model for data collection in schools, on television and on-line. It has purpose-built research website, www.smartgirls.tv.

Michele was co-organiser of 'The Neoliberal Life Cycle of Success: Alternative Perspectives' seminar series in 2015-16, and of the  ‘Communities, Culture, Diversity and Cohesion’ series of public events on academica and ethics in public life. (with Prof. Beverley Clack), with a focus on feminist methodologies, research relationships and community benefits. While working within Education, she developed a range of Action Research projects at national and local levels and supported teacher-researchers on the BPRS scheme.

 

Research group membership

MeCCSA Women's Media Studies Network (Vice-Chair) 

GEA: Gender and Education Association

Feminist and Women's Studies Association

Centre for Diversity Policy Practice and Research (Oxford Brookes)

Research grants and awards

Research projects

2017-18: PI for project researching girls’ engagements with popular leadership discourses and representations of women leaders. This project explores an issue of pressing national and international significance identified by the European Commission (2010) and the World Economic Foundation (2016)—that of the under-representation of women in decision-making roles. It aims to understand what girls apprehend female leadership to mean in their local contexts, and also in global contexts of transnational celebrity and popular discourse. This project is supported by funding from the GEA and the OCMS.

2014-2015: Led participant action research (PAR) project with WAGGGS Europe looking at gendered barriers to leadership in youth in different European contexts. This involved working with volunteer leaders in Scotland and The Netherlands in both single-sex and mixed settings to identify and address challenges in their own settings through PAR approaches.

2008-2012: smartgirls.tv. This investigation of 'successful girl' discourses in educuatonal and media settings is a muliti-site, mixed method project that brings together the voices of girls interviewed in their schools, with participants in a dedicated website forum (www.smartgirls.tv), and stories for and about girls in film and television. It is published as Girhood, Schools and Media: Popular Discourses of the Achieving Girl (Routledge 2015)

Research impact

• November 2018: Attended Women & Equalities Select Committee: Women in Politics, House of Commons, London
• November 2018: Participant in #AskHerToStand Day; House of Commons, London
• TORCH (The Oxford Research Centre in the Humanities) Oxford Suffrage Centenary committee member
• June 2017: Who Runs the World? Girls, Leadership and Celebrity Seminar organiser and presenter; Senate House, London
• November 2016: Panellist for open debate 'Gender Diversity in Politics: Are We There Yet?' chaired by Baroness Mary Goudie and dedicated to the late MP Jo Cox. CDPRP., Oxford Brookes University
• September 2016: Participant in round-table discussions on HE at the national; Labour Party Conference: TEF vs REF and  Student Mental Health
• 2013-2015: Led international research consultancy project on gendered barriers to leadership in youth for the World Association of Girl Guides and Girl Scouts. This involved the design, training, delivery and evaluation of a cross-Europe participant action research project.
• July 2015: Led a series of workshops for girls at Oxford secondary schools exploring attitude to and experiences of 'being in charge' / leadership.
• March 2014: Invited panellist for open debate: The Future of Higher Education: The role of Humanities & Philosophy in the contemporary academy alongside fellow academics and the Rt Hon. Liam Byrne MP.
• September 2014: Invited panellist for discussion on educational equalities and access l at Labour Party National Conference, Manchester with members of the Education Select Committee
• Contribution to All Party Parliamentary Group on ‘Sex Equality:  Women’s Access to education, opportunities and social mobility’ at Westminster
• Nov 2014: Invited to House of Commons to meet women MPs from Australia and UK to discuss issues of women, representation and power in politics
• June 2014: Invited to meet Shadow Secretary of State for Education at the House of Commons to discuss educational exclusion and fair admissions
• Invited to present work on girls’ online practices to media industry leaders at Ofcom (2012)
• Invited panellist for a live virtual panel on TV, Film and Transformative Learning held by Meridian University, San Francisco, attracting 1,200 participants online (2011)
• Created online teacher courses and resources for Department for Education on ability identities and on fulfilling the Gender Equality Duty in schools (2004-2009)

Further information

www.smartgirls.tv

'The Neoliberal Life Cycle of Success: Alternative Perspectives' seminar series blog https://nottheneoliberallifecycle.wordpress.com/about/ 

Books

• Beverley Clack and Michele Paule, Ed., Interrogating the Neoliberal Lifecycle: The Limits of Success, Palgrave Macmillan (2019)
  ISBN: 9781509516926 eISBN: 9783030007706
  Abstract

  In this timely collection, contributors from a number of disciplines discuss neoliberal visions of success, and the subsequent effects they have on the construction of the lifecycle. Frequently mentioned in popular political discourse, the notion of neoliberalism is often deployed as shorthand for the consensus that austerity is necessary and the hard-working individual can survive it. This volume unpicks and interrogates the term by engaging with the interface between the political ubiquity of neoliberal forms and its lived experience in neoliberal societies, cutting across a multiplicity of factors including gender, age, and access to education. Impressive in its wide scope and analysis, Interrogating the Neoliberal Lifecycle presents an informed discussion not only of the limits of the neoliberal paradigm but also of possible alternatives. 
  

  Website 
• Paule M, Girlhood, Schools, and Media: Popular Discourses of the Achieving Girl, Routledge (2016)
  ISBN: 9781138840065 eISBN: 9781317556794
  Abstract This book explores the circulation and reception of popular discourses of achieving girlhood, and the ways in which girls themselves participate in such circulation. It examines the figure of the achieving girl within wider discourses of neoliberal self-management and post-feminist possibility, considering the tensions involved in being both successful and successfully feminine and the strategies and negotiations girls undertake to manage these tensions. The work is grounded in an understanding of media, educational, and peer contexts for the production of the successful girl. It traces narratives across school, television and online in texts produced for and by girls, drawing on interviews with girls in schools, online forum participation (within the purpose-built site www.smartgirls.tv), and girls’ discussions of a range of teen dramas.Website 

Journal articles

• Paule M, Yelin H, '"There are so many things that you could change": The gendered politics of hope and aspiration in girls’ mediated imaginings of leadership'
  Participations x (2020)
  ISSN: 1749-8716
  Abstract

  This paper examines data from our research into Girls, Leadership, and Women in the Public Eye within a framework suggested by Janet Newman’s (2015) distinction between individual ‘aspiration’ and collective ‘hope’ in political contexts of austerity. The project responds to the contemporary turn to the agentic, aspiring girl as the solution to the gender leadership gap in the future. It explores ways in which girls are enjoined to imagine leadership via high-profile campaigns, and their own envisionings developed through their local experiences and their encounters with highly visible women across a range of media. Our data reveals differences between the aspirational, individualist leadership models promoted to girls and their own preferences for more collaborative leadership as a means of achieving wider social change. We suggest that the concept of ‘leadership’ presented to girls needs to be challenged in terms of its gendered individualism and its failure to capture ways in which they desire to participate in decision making.
  

• Paule M V A, 'Dinosaur Discourses: Taking stock of gendered learning myths'
  Gender and Education 27 (7) (2015) pp.744-758
  ISSN: 0954-0253 eISSN: 1360-0516
  Abstract

  The persistence of gendered learning myths in educational contexts and the wider imaginary continues to trouble feminist educational researchers and practitioners. The tracing of such myths and the categories they create through authoritative and elite discourses of the past suggests how they have functioned across different fields to preserve a hierarchised binary. Gendered myths seem to be lent authority by some of the more popular claims of contemporary neuroscience as they were by the nascent Victorian psychological sciences. Adopting Michele Le Doeuff’s (2003) heuristic of identifying which attributes are absorbed into masculine intellectual legacies and which ‘cast off’ to women allows for a focus on patterns of privileging of learning discourses across the humanities and sciences, and the ways these are constituted in historical and contemporary contexts

  Website 
• Paule, M, 'Girls, the Divine and the Prime Time'
  Feminist Theology (2012)
  ISSN: 0966-7350
  Website 

Book chapters

• Clack B, Paule M, 'Afterword: Advice for a Life Beyond Neoliberalism?' in Clack B, Paule M (ed.), Interrogating the Neoliberal Lifecycle: The Limits of Success, Palgrave Macmillan (2019)
  ISBN: 9783030007690 eISBN: 9783030007706
  Website 
• Paule M, Clack B, 'Introduction: Welcome to the Neoliberal Lifecycle!' in Clack B, Paule M (ed.), Interrogating the Neoliberal Lifecycle: The limits of Success, Palgrave Macmillan (2019)
  ISBN: 9783030007690 eISBN: 9783030007706
  Website 
• Paule M, 'Girl Trouble: Not the Ideal Neoliberal Subject' in Clack B and Paule M (ed.), Interrogating the Neoliberal Lifecycle: The Limits of Success, Palgrave Macmillan (2019)
  ISBN: 9783030007690 eISBN: 9783030007706
  Abstract

  In this chapter I take as a starting point the figure of the ‘successful girl’ as she appears in popular and educational discourses as the ideal neoliberal subject (Harris 2005; McRobbie 2008), one that simultaneously reproduces and elides entrenched structures of privilege and power (Baker 2010) within a particular context that produces her as successful—that of ‘gifted and talented’ policy in the English education system of the early 21st Century. My interest lies in ways in which individual girls make sense of their lives in school contexts where they are enjoined to be successful within identifiably neoliberal parameters.
  

  Website 
• Paule, M, 'Super Slacker Girls: Dropping Out but Divinely Inspired' in Sherrie A. Inness (ed.), Geek Chic: Smart Women in Popular Culture, Palgrave Macmillan (2007)
  ISBN: -978-1-4039-7903-2 eISBN: 978-1-137-08421-7
  Website 

Other publications

• Paule M, 'Reports for WAGGGS Europe ‘Harnessing Talents’ consultancy: 1. Gendered barriers to leadership in youth: summary research review 2. Final Report (Draft, amended)'
  

  Outputs included:

  • An initial summary of existential research into gender and youth leadership
    
  • A report on the outcomes of the international action research project conducted for WAGGGS (World Association of Girl Guides and Girl Scouts) Europe. This was conducted in Scotland and the Netherlands. Data was gathered from pre- and post- intervention questionnaire survey completed by girl guide/scouting members and their leaders, and from evaluations from the local leaders on the outcomes of the action research interventions that they designed and implemented. 
  
  The report informed leadership practices within WAGGGS Europe, and also contributed to their internal equalities audit. It  led to the creation of a shared resource bank of activities for developing leadership equally among members. for use by leaders. Results were also disseminated via presentations and training I was invited to lead in Helsinki, Oslo and Bratislava. I created the action research training materials and other materials used within the project. 
  
  () Abstract

  This report provides a summary of research into gender, youth and leadership. It draws on literature from the fields of psychology, education, youth and childhood, management, gender and cultural studies from a range of national and cultural contexts. It does not attempt to cover all literature in these diverse fields, but to identify key patterns and findings pertaining to the development of leadership in young people, gendered barriers to such development and examples of successful interventions.
  

• Paule, M. (2008) The Gender Equality Duty. Curriculum Management, London: Optimus Publishing
• Paule, M (2007) Super Slacker Girls. In (ed) Sherrie Innes, Geek Chic: Smart Women in Popular Culture. Palgrave Macmillan
• Paule, M. (2006) From the Gothic to Postmodernism: Teaching theory through popular culture in secondary English, English, Drama, Media, Sheffield: NATE
• Paule, M. (2005) ‘You’re on my campus buddy!’: Sovereign and disciplinary power at Sunnydale High. Slayage: The Online International Journal of Buffy Studies. No 15 http://slayageonline.com/essays/slayage15/Paule.htm

Books (practitioner and student)

• Paule, M. (2003), with Bennet, A. and Constant, C. Developing Writing Skills, Oxford: Heinemann
• Paule, M. (2003) with Cooper, S. Revise Opening Worlds and Opening Lines, Oxford: Heinemann
• Paule, M. (2002) with Gregory, A. and Cooper, S. Working with Opening Worlds and Opening Lines. Oxford: Heinemann.
• Paule, M. (2002) ‘From Here to There’ and ‘Face’ in The New Windmill Literature File, D. Denaro & M Jones (eds), Oxford: Heinemann.
• Paule, M. (2001) Thoughtlines, Oxford: Heinemann.

Reviews

• Paule, M (2006) A review of 'The Pleasures of Horror’ by Matt Hills in Particip@tions: Journal of Audience & Reception Studies. Volume 3, Issue 1 ttp://www.participations.org/volume%203/issue%201/3_01_paule_review.htm
• Paule, M. (2005) Review of Action Chicks: New Images of Tough Women in Popular Culture, by S. Innes (Ed) European Journal of Cultural Studies 2005 8: 385-387.

Areas of expertise

Michele provides consultancy and media commentary on matters relating to:

• Girlhood and power
• Gender and education
• Gender and media
• Youth and digital engagement
• Participant Action Research

Membership of professional bodies

Vice-Chair of MeCCSA Women's Network

Member of the Feminist and Women's Studies Association

Member of the Gender and Education Association

Consultancy

Michele is interested in developing consultancy projects relating to girlhood and institutional cultures/practices. She has experience in designing online development tools as well as real-world intervention strategies. She has led and implemented a range of consultancy projects and evaluations for national and international clients in educational, voluntary and government sectors. 

Conferences

Selected conference and seminar papers

 

June 2017: 'Who Runs the World?: Girls, Leadership, and Celebrity' 
Symposium and Project Launch, Senate house, London

January 2017: '"I’m not bossy, I’m the Boss”: Girls’ mediated perceptions of power and leadership'. Paper presented at MeCCSA Annual Conference: Culture, Media, Equality and Freedom. University of Leeds. 

October 2016: ‘Girls, mediated perceptions and experiences of leadership’ for the Oxford University International Gender Studies Centre seminar series, Lady Margaret Hall, Oxford

June 2016: 'Gender and discourse in audience studies' Seminar for the Oxford University Womens' Group, St Catherine's College, Oxford

June 2016: 'Working on Gender and Leadership' Opening keynote for the 15th Annual WAGGGS conference in Oslo

April 2016: 'Banning Bossy and Leaning In: Girls' mediated perceptions of leadership'. Paper presented at the International Association of Girlhood Studies, UEA, UK

October 2015:'Girls and the gendering of leadership'. Invited keynote for the 'ABC for youth participation in Europe' WAGGGS event, Bratislava, Slovakia.

June 2015. 'Girls’ negotiations with genre and gender on screen: the pedagogies of teen TV' at the Feminisms, Power and Pedagogy: 10th Biennial Conference of the Gender and Education Association at the University of Roehampton

June 2015: ‘”Something similar happens in TV-land”: Girls’ on- and offline audience strategies in relation to successful girl narratives’ at the Consuming Cultures: Women and Girls in Print and Pixels conference (OBU)

November 2014:' “He gave me all these options. And it kind of put me off”: Life-planning, anxiety and institutionalised choice in successful girl discourses'. Paper for seminar series: The Neoliberal Life Cycle of Success: Alternative Perspectives, Oxford Brookes University

May 2014.'Gender, Youth and Popular Discourses of Leadership'. Invited keynote for the WAGGGS International Convention on Gender, Youth and Leadership, Helsinki, Finland.

June 2013: ‘I was blonde and off a council estate’: Girls negotiating gender, class and success in television viewing. Console-ing Passions,International Conference on Television, Video, Audio, New Media and Feminism, De Montfort University, Leicester

November 2012: ‘Girls Online: Access, autonomy and anxiety’ Invited speaker at Children and Parents' Media Literacy research event,Ofcom, London

September 2012: ‘Researching with Girls: Spaces for reflection?’ Paper presented at A Tale of Two Cultures – Feminist Academia and Feminist Activism event held with the Centre for Diversity Policy Research and Practice, Oxford Brookes University

June 2011: 'The Future Girl’s Problem Past: A Genealogical Approach to Feminised Success’ Paper presented at GEA: The Gender and Education Conference held at the University of Exeter

 

Other experience

Before embarking on a research career in Communication, Media and Culture Michele led and worked on a range of national education initiatives including Excellence in Cities, Aim Higher, Widening Participation, the Best Practice Teacher Research Scheme and London Challenge. She has experience teaching in the secondary education sector, including as Head of English and Media and as Advanced Skills Teacher in an Education Action Zone.  

Press, publicity and reviews

From Initial reviews of Girlhood, Schools, and Media: Popular Discourses of the Achieving Girl (Routledge 2015):

The book is particularly innovative in its weaving together of media analysis and focus group/web data from girls who both respond to media, and articulate their own ‘smart girl’ identities. What also makes this book very original is its literature review on gendered notions of ‘genius’ and ‘gifted’ students. I have not seen that done anywhere else and it does offer some very interesting information for context

The author has definitely done the research to be considered an ‘expert’ on the topic and has been engaged to speak on the topic in a number of international and national venues

None of the competing literature weaves together media analysis with qualitative data. The element of on-line data collection is also a unique twist.

It will push thinking in new and innovative directions. The theoretical framework is novel, as is the tri-format for data collection

Further information

Blogs for GEA-funded Girls< leadership and Women in the Public Eye project: 

Save the Cheerleader, Save the World: Girls, media and leadership in the 21st century

Meme Defectors? Girls’ encounters with leadership role models

www.smartgirls.tv

Seminar series blog: https://notheneoliberallifecycle.wordpress.co