Dr Nicholas Stock

Dr Nicholas Stock

School of Education
British Academy Postdoctoral Research Fellow

Contact details

Email
n.j.stock@bham.ac.uk
Twitter
@89stock
Address
University of Birmingham
Edgbaston
Birmingham
B15 2TT
UK

Having spent 13 years teaching English in state secondary schools and colleges, Nick became interested in what drew people to teach in spite of the hardships of education. Most offered quite similar answers to the question of why they teach, but suspecting something deeper, Nick embarked on a research project to investigate their desires.

Nick Stock is a British Academy funded postdoctoral researcher exploring the unconscious desires of teachers through the lens of Lacanian psychoanalysis. Extended, unstructured interviews are being conducted with trainee teachers to delve into the reasons they choose to enter the profession and seek to move past commonplace responses. This three-year project raises serious questions about the symbolic structure of education and the fantasies it generates. It also problematises the reasons that some might believe they enter into education for and questions what the desires are that impel the act of teaching.

Ultimately, the project raises the question: what are we really doing when we think we are educating?

Open all sections

Feedback and office hours

Office hours available in person in room 520.

Wednesday 11:00-13:00.

Zoom appointments available on request.

Qualifications

  • PhD in Philosophy of Education, University of Birmingham, 2021
  • MEd in Teaching Studies, University of Birmingham, 2014
  • PGDipEd (QTS) in Secondary English, University of Birmingham, 2011
  • BA (Hons) in English Literature and Creative Writing, Aberystwyth University, 2010

Biography

Nick was an English teacher for thirteen years, first in a Secondary School, then in a Sixth Form College. It is through this experience that many of his research interests arose, particularly the structures of education, the identity and motivations of teachers, and the acts that take place in the classroom. He completed his PhD part-time alongside teaching, an ironic exploration of educational ontology that drew on the work of Derrida, Rorty and Heidegger. His thesis won the George Cadbury Prize for best thesis in school.

After completion, he was awarded a British Academy postdoctoral research fellowship.

Teaching

  • Education, Policy and Society. MA Education, Module Tutor
  • Identity, Politics and Everyday Life. 3rd Year Education BA Module, Module Tutor
  • Children as Citizens. 3rd year Education BA, Module Tutor

Postgraduate supervision

Nick is currently co-supervisor for a PhD that examines students with classical academy backgrounds and their engagement with Shakespeare.

Research

Research interests 

Poststructuralism, psychoanalysis and critical theory

Subject of teachers and their subjectivation

Critical Pedagogy, deschooling and other educational alternatives

Radical political theory

Literature in and as research

Education and mental health 

Current projects

 BA Fellowship Becoming Teacher. Desires, Drives, and Formations.

Other activities

Member of the Philosophy of Education Society Great Britain (PESGB). 

Publications

Recent publications

Article

Stock, N 2024, 'Classroom architecture and the gaze: beyond the Panopticon', Discourse: Studies in the Cultural Politics of Education. https://doi.org/10.1080/01596306.2024.2351564

Stock, N 2024, 'Fantasies of Rousseau: A Lacanian View of Natural Education In and Beyond Émile', Educational Theory, pp. 529-550. https://doi.org/10.1111/edth.12655