Meet the team

Aminath Shiyama

Dr Aminath Shiyama works at The Maldives National University (MNU). Although she is currently the Quality Assurance Controller, she is an Assistant Professor with a research and teaching background in science and science education. Shiyama has extensive experience in teacher education, with a focus on teacher professional development and learning.

She has taught undergraduate and postgraduate courses at the Faculty of Education of MNU. Her significant contribution was to science teaching methodology, research methods, curriculum development and comparative and international education.

Aminath strongly advocates contextually contingent practices in education, especially in policies and in practice. As such, Aminath too believes in the power and importance of communities of practice in teaching and learning and its essentiality in transforming education for a more culturally respectful and sustainable approach to our development.

Research interests focus on science and environment education pedagogies, teacher professional development and learning and curriculum development. She researches all these areas from a comparative education lens.

Email: aminath.shiyama@mnu.edu.mv

Claire Lee

Dr Claire Lee has recently taken up a five-year Research Fellowship in the Centre for Psychological Research.at Oxford Brookes University, focusing on applied social psychology and its links with educational research. Before that she worked as Early Career Research fellow for the Children and Young People RIKE (Research, Innovation and Knowledge Exchange) Network at Oxford Brookes University. Claire is delighted to be leading the Our World, Our Futures project, an initiative of the CYP Network.

Claire was a primary school teacher for many years before completing her PhD in 2020. She is interested in the ways in which children actively use literacies, in their broadest sense, to make sense of the world and to develop a sense of self. She is passionate about involving children in ethically appropriate ways in dialogue about their lives. In her research she creates spaces in which participants use arts-based and multimodal methods to explore the things that matter to them.

Claire has also worked with teachers to conduct qualitative research in their own settings as a way of developing contextually appropriate practice and supporting their professional autonomy.

Email: clairelee@brookes.ac.uk

Fathimath Nasiha

Ms Fathimath Nasiha Abdul Muhaimin is the Head of Centre of the Centre for Foundation Studies at The Maldives National University (MNU). She was working as the lead Instructional Designer at the Centre for Educational Technology and Excellence, MNU until September 2020. She completed her Master of Education degree from La Trobe University, Melbourne, Australia in 2010. She also holds a Bachelor of Arts Degree (English Literature, Film and Art, La Trobe University, Australia) and a Postgraduate Diploma in Education (MNU, Maldives).

Ms Nasiha’s research interests are in distance education and technology-enabled education, and was the project manager of the AMED, an Erasmus+ project aimed at advancing higher education in Maldives through e-learning until her appointment at CFS in September 2020. She is pursuing her PhD studies at the Universiti Sains Malaysia and is exploring self-paced online professional development for online teaching.

Ms. Nasiha has been working as a key member of the e-learning support team of MNU where she was actively involved in e-learning design and facilitation since she joined MNU in January 2011.

Clare Rathbone

Dr Clare Rathbone is Reader in Cognitive Psychology in the Centre for Psychological Research at Oxford Brookes University. Her work examines the relationships between autobiographical memory, imagined future events and the self, with a particular focus on how these constructs relate to well-being.

Dr Rathbone’s research is quantitative in nature and spans young adulthood, neurodivergence, healthy aging, dementia, and neuropsychological cases. She is particularly interested in the impact of life transitions on the self and the way we remember the past and imagine the future.

Dr Rathbone is a registered STEM Ambassador, responsible for encouraging younger generations to explore career options in science, technology, engineering and maths, and promoting public understanding of science.

Email: crathbone@brookes.ac.uk

Fathimath Shafeeqa

Dr Fathimath Shafeeqa is involved in a number of projects relating to environmental education. She is currently working as a Director for the Institute of Research and Development and as a part time lecturer in the Maldives National University and other colleges and has extensive experience in teaching environmental education.

She has taught undergraduate and postgraduate courses and her focus is mainly on environmental education, curriculum development and education philosophy and sociology.

Shafeeqa also worked as the manager for Live & Learn Environmental Education Maldives, advocating and ensuring that awareness and education lead to a positive environmental attitude among the school children, tourist resort staff and community members.

Research interests include environmental education pedagogies, climate change and its impact on the Maldivian environment and how people perceive this phenomenon.

Email: fath.shafeeqa@gmail.com