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Contact

• workRoom C3 Dearing Building
  Jubilee Campus
  Wollaton Road
  Nottingham
  NG8 1BB
  UK
• Kay.Fuller@nottingham.ac.uk

Biography

Kay joined the º£½ÇºÚÁÏ in November 2014. Prior to that she was Lecturer in Education, and course leader of the secondary English PGDipEd at the University of Birmingham (2007-2014).

Before becoming a higher education teacher and researcher Kay worked for 15 years teaching in five mixed community comprehensive schools in three local authorities. She was a teacher of English, head of English and deputy headteacher during that time.

Kay is a member of a number of research-based networks. She has served as an elected member of BELMAS National Council. She is co-founder (with Drs Pontso Moorosi, Saeeda Shah, and Victoria Showunmi) of the BELMAS Gender and Leadership Research Interest Group. Kay is also a member of the international Women Leading Education across Continents network.

Kay sits on the editorial board of the Journal of Educational Administration and History.

In addition to published papers and books Kay has shared her research with a range of bodies including local schools and events organised by the network WomenEd. Kay has been interviewed by the Times Educational Supplement, the BBC and the Voice of Islam about her research into the distribution of women secondary school headteachers in England and leadership for social justice.

Teaching Summary

Kay contributes to the MA in Educational Leadership and Management programme. She is currently supervising a number of EdD and PhD research projects.

Research Summary

Kay is a Leverhulme Research Fellow (2022-23). Her project, Re-imagining Feminist Leadership Praxis in Higher Education, has generated data from academics across universities in the UK. She is… read more

Recent Publications

• 2026. Routledge. (In Press.)
• FULLER, KAY, POKASIC, K and HANCOCK, JOANNE, 2026. Gender, Work & Organization. 33(1), 121-131
• FULLER, KAY and LASHARI, ASADULLAH, 2025. Journal of Educational Administration and History.
• FULLER, KAY and MCGINITY, RUTH, 2024. Making sense or ‘absolute nonsense’: Resisting English education policy. In: HEFFERNAN, AMANDA and THOMSON, PAT, eds., Resistance in Educational Leadership, Management, and Administration Routledge.

• View all publications

Current research

Her current research focuses on women, gender and feminism in educational leadership. In particular, she is currently working on an intersectional feminist exploration of contemporary educational leadership with a new book due for publication in 2021. In the book, she draws together a number of research projects undertaken during the last five years to theorize about fourth wave feminism. She draws on feminist theories to think about leadership including intersectionality theory, Black British feminism and queer theory. She looks at gender and Islam, digital feminism, men's pro-feminism and femonationalism.

Having completed a critical auto-ethnography to re-narrate her life history and refresh her worldview, she has developed an intersectionality life grid designed to support the reflexivity of scholars and education professionals alike. Her work is underpinned by a commitment to working for social justice and takes an explicitly feminist stance. Even so, she recognises resistance to feminism in some contexts. She works with colleagues in schools and universities to support them in their work.

She is founding co-convener of the BELMAS Gender and Leadership Research Interest Group (committed to an intersectional perspective) and member of scholarly network Women Leading Education across Continents.

Past research

She has focused on the lived realities of women and men as educational leaders. This includes updating the distribution of women secondary school headteachers in England at five year intervals; exploring experiences of becoming and being headteachers; exploring the priorities in leadership as headteachers see them. In particular, her work has focused on the intersections of personal i.e. gender, 'race', social class, sexuality and professional identities and the resulting oppressions and privileges they afford.

Future research

She is currently developing research that focuses on intersectional discrimination in education and employment in education.

Supervision

She has supervised doctoral research focusing on the intersections of gender and 'race' in women's leadership in higher education (Saudi Arabia, Pakistan, the UK), women's graduate student identities (the UK, Saudi Arabia), and research using Critical Race Theory in secondary schools and Black men's professional identities (UK).

Current Research

Kay is a Leverhulme Research Fellow (2022-23). Her project, Re-imagining Feminist Leadership Praxis in Higher Education, has generated data from academics across universities in the UK. She is working with postgraduate doctoral research assistants Asadullah Lashari and Fatma Poyraz Ciddi.

She recently completed a project with Jo Hancock and Kristina Pokasic for the º£½ÇºÚÁÏ Women's Staff Network Women Working and Well in Research.

She also recently completed a poetic inquiry Gender Writes: Young people and leadership that enabled children and young people to learn about gender and school leadership courtesy of an ESRC Impact Acceleration Award (2022-23). Children contributed their poems to an anthology The teaching was based on her recent monograph Feminist perspectives on contemporary educational leadership (Routledge: 2022).

Past Research

Kay has also worked on a number of collaborative projects. One concerns research into women headteachers of Black and Global Majority heritage leading schools in South Africa, the United States and England (with Dr Pontso Moorosi and Dr Elizabeth Reilly). Another concerns women headteachers in Scotland, Jamaica, New Zealand and England (with Dr Dee Torrance, Dr Carmel Roofe and Dr Rachel MacNae).

Kay was PI on a BELMAS funded project Joining up Networks in Education for Women with Dr Joanne Cliffe and Vivienne Porritt.

Kay was also PI on the WomenEd research project with Dr Jill Berry #WomenEd: A movement for women leaders in education

• 2026. Routledge. (In Press.)
• FULLER, KAY, POKASIC, K and HANCOCK, JOANNE, 2026. Gender, Work & Organization. 33(1), 121-131
• FULLER, KAY and LASHARI, ASADULLAH, 2025. Journal of Educational Administration and History.
• FULLER, KAY and MCGINITY, RUTH, 2024. Making sense or ‘absolute nonsense’: Resisting English education policy. In: HEFFERNAN, AMANDA and THOMSON, PAT, eds., Resistance in Educational Leadership, Management, and Administration Routledge.
• FULLER, KAY, 2022. Routledge.
• FULLER, KAY, 2022. . In: SHOWUNMI, VICTORIA, MOOROSI, PONTSO, SHAKESHAFT, CHAROL and OPLATKA, IZHAR, eds., The Bloomsbury Handbook of Gender and Educational Leadership and Management Bloomsbury.
• FULLER, KAY, 2020. Frontiers in Education.
• FULLER, K, 2019. Educational Review.
• CLIFFE, J., FULLER, K. and MOOROSI, P., 2018. Management in Education.
• FULLER, K., 2018. Frontiers in Education.
• MOOROSI, P., FULLER, K. and REILLY, E., 2018. Leadership and intersectionality: Constructions of successful leadership among Black women school principals in three different contexts Management in Education.
• MOOROSI, P., FULLER, K. and REILLY, E., 2017. Cross-cultural intersections of gender and race among Black female school leaders in England, South Africa and the United States of America. In: MILLER, P., ed., Cultures of Educational Leadership: Global and intercultural perspectives Palgrave McMillan.
• TORRANCE, D., FULLER, K., MCNAE, R., ROOFE, C. and ARSHAD, R., 2017. A social justice perspective on women and educational leadership. In: MILLER, P., ed., Cultures of Educational Leadership: Global and intercultural perspectives Palgrave McMillan.
• FULLER, K., 2017. Assumptions and surprises - parallel and divergent social justice leadership narratives. In: ANGELLE, P., ed., A Global Perspective of Social Justice Leadership for School Principals Information Age Publishing.
• FULLER, K, 2017. Management in Education.
• FULLER, K., 2017. Theory sex to leadership heteroglossia: Using gender theories to surface discourses of headteacher compliance and transgression. In: COURTNEY, S. J., MCGINITY, R. and GUNTER, H., eds., Educational leadership: Theorising professional practice in neoliberal times
• FULLER, K. and HARFORD, J., eds., 2016. Gender and Leadership: Women Achieving Against the Odds 1st. Peter Lang.
• FULLER, K., 2016. Headteacher preparation: an account of one woman headteacher’s supportive practices. In: FULLER, K. and HARFORD, J., eds., Gender and Leadership: Women Achieving Against the Odds
• FULLER, K., 2015. Learning Gendered Leadership: A Discursive Struggle. In: REILLY, E. and BAUER, Q., eds., Women leading education across the continents: Overcoming the barriers Rowman & Littlefield.
• FULLER, K., 2015. . In: PETERS, M. A., ed., Encyclopedia of Educational Philosophy and Theory Springer Science+Business Media.
• FULLER, K., CLIFFE, J. and MOOROSI, P., 2015. Planning and Changing: An Educational Leadership and Policy Journal. 46(3/4), 388-415
• FULLER, K., 2014. Gender and Education. 26(4), 321-337
• FULLER, K., 2014. Journal of Educational Administration and History. 46(3), 326-350
• FULLER, K., 2013. Gender, Identity and Educational Leadership 1st. Bloomsbury Academic.
• FULLER, K., PARSONS, S., MACNAB, N. and THOMAS, H., 2013. Educational Management Administration & Leadership. 41(5), 598–619
• FULLER, K., 2012. Educational Management Administration & Leadership. 40(6), 672–689
• FULLER, K., 2010. Journal of Educational Administration and History. 42(4), 363-382
• FULLER, K., 2010. English in Education. 44(2), 146-163
• FULLER, K., 2009. Management in Education. 23(1), 19-31