Dr Dave Middleton

Dr Dave Middleton entered higher education as a mature student in 1985, aged 27. He spent two years at Coleg Harlech studying Economics and History. His interest switched to Sociology when he went to Cardiff University and he graduated with a first class honours degree in 1990.

After a brief period as a contract researcher, Dave worked for Mid Glamorgan County Council on a project looking at the implications of the European market for training amongst employers and employees in South Wales. Following this he joined TeamCare Valleys, a primary care initiative funded by the Welsh Office. Dave was a Research Officer working with the Postgraduate General Practitioner Group. Whilst there he developed a distant learning package entitled Community and Public Health in the Valleys.

After a brief stint at Gwent County Council analysing census returns in 1994 Dave acquired his first academic post with London Guildhall University teaching research methods. After completing his Masters in Research Methods at Cardiff University in 1994, he embarked upon a Ph.D. in 1997 under the tutelage of Professor John Edwards and Jonathan Seglow. He completed his thesis Respect: the moral infrastructure of justice in January 2004.

In 2005 Dave was the principle applicant on a successful bid to the HEFCE Fund for the Development of Teaching and Learning to develop a multi-media learning resource for politics postgraduate students. The resulting DVD ‘Doing Political Research’ was launched at the House of Commons in July 2008 and has since been used in over 20 UK University Departments. As a direct result of this project Dave wrote a number of papers on aspects of e-learning (see below).

Between 2006 and 2008 Dave was seconded to the University’s Research School where, as Academic Coordinator, he helped to reshape the postgraduate training curriculum across the University. He also completed a short secondment to the Centre for Learning and Professional Development where he produced a number of innovative multi-media modules.

He has spearheaded the first Faculty of Social Sciences’ Student Connections conference, taking place from 30th June – 4th July. http://connections.kmi.open.ac.uk/