Visiting Professor at the Institute of Education, London, a Research Fellow at the Oxford University Department of Education, and an Honorary Fellow of the College of Teachers. Lesley worked at the National Foundation for Educational Research in England from 1987 to 2000, and subsequently (until 2008) she was senior policy adviser for research at the General Teaching Council for England; she is now an independent educational research consultant. Lesley is also the award-winning author of several books of poetry and has written journal articles on the relationship between poetry and research in education, including:

SAUNDERS, L. (2003). ‘On flying, writing poetry and doing educational research.’ British Educational Research Journal, 29, 2, 175–187.

SAUNDERS, L. (2006). ‘”Something made in language”: the poet’s gift?’, Management Decision (Special Issue), 44, 4, 504–11.

SAUNDERS, L. (2007). ‘An alternative way of responding to powerful ideas: poem entitled “Five Principles of Quality in Narratives of Action Research” plus notes’, Educational Action Research, 15, 1, 33–40.

PHIPPS, A. and SAUNDERS, L. (2009). ‘The sound of violets: the ethnographic potency of poetry?’ Ethnography and Education Special Issue, 4, 3, 357–87.

SAUNDERS, L. (2012). ‘Silence and silences in “creativity”’, London Review of Education, 10, 2, 215–25.