Josh Salter

Profile

I am an early career researcher and PhD student in the School of Sociology and Social Policy at the University of Leeds. My path to academia has been anything but linear. I left school after my A-levels to work in sales, but a growing curiosity about people and society led me to study Criminology with Sociology at Northumbria University, where I graduated with first-class honours. It was there that I first experienced the excitement of research and the transformative potential of education.

After completing my MSc in Sociology at Durham University, I spent three years teaching English in Guangzhou, China. Living and working abroad reshaped how I think about education, not as a narrow system of outcomes, but as a global, human process rooted in empathy, curiosity, and connection. That experience continues to inform my approach to research and learning.

My doctoral studies at Leeds bring these experiences together. I am investigating how assessment practices in higher education can be reimagined to promote social justice and civic value, exploring how universities might become more inclusive spaces where all students can flourish.

Research interests

My research explores how higher education can realise its civic and social promise through more equitable and imaginative approaches to assessment and pedagogy. I am particularly interested in how assessment practices reproduce social inequalities and how they might instead cultivate inclusion, belonging, and reciprocity between universities and their wider communities. Drawing on metamodernism as a theoretical, philosophical and methodological framework, my research seeks to bridge structure and creativity, rigour and care, to reimagine the values that underpin educational practice.

These interests have developed through ongoing research and writing on metamodern pedagogies, including an article Metamodern Sensibilities: Toward a Pedagogical Framework for a Wicked World (Teaching in Higher Education, 2024) and a forthcoming book Adventurous Learning in Higher Education: A Metamodern Framework (Routledge, 2025). My broader research connects the sociology of education, social justice, and the philosophical foundations of teaching and learning, aiming to contribute to a conversation about how higher education can better prepare graduates to navigate and transform a complex, uncertain world.

Qualifications

• MSc Sociology
• Bsc Sociology with Criminology
• Level 5 TEFL Qualification (168 hours) — The TEFL Academy (2022)