Sherran Clarence

Sherran Clarence is Senior Lecturer in the Doctoral School at Nottingham Trent University, leading university-wide workshops and courses for doctoral researchers and supervisors. She also holds honorary affiliations as a Senior Research Associate at Rhodes University’s CHERTL and as an Associate Member of the LCT Centre at the University of Sydney.

After earning degrees in Political Science and Women’s & Gender Studies, she completed her PhD at Rhodes University in 2014. Earlier roles included coordinating the UWC Writing Centre at the University of the Western Cape, focusing on undergraduate writing development and lecturer support.

Research interests

• Doctoral education and researcher development
• Social justice and equity in higher education
• Academic literacies and writing-centre theory
• Legitimation Code Theory applications
• Emotional and affective labour in early-career academia
• Disciplinary knowledge construction and pedagogy

Her work interrogates how universities can create inclusive cultures that enable diverse students and staff to become knowledge-makers without conforming to dominant norms, emphasising explicit pedagogy, affective support, and epistemic justice.

Publication trends span critical higher-education studies, Legitimation Code Theory, writing-centre innovation, and affective aspects of postgraduate development, with recent pieces on precarity, doctoral identity, and inclusive writing pedagogy.

Editorial & service roles

• Managing Editor, Theoria: A Journal of Social and Political Theory
• Editorial Board member, Teaching in Higher Education
• Editorial Board member, Higher Education, Research and Development
• Assessor, Strengthening Postgraduate Supervision short course, Rhodes University

Doctoral & Masters supervision covers Legitimation Code Theory, academic literacies, higher-education curriculum and pedagogy, accounting education, doctoral attrition, online learning barriers, and feedback practices.

She currently leads a new research project exploring representation, belonging, equity, and inclusion in the university through feminist sociologies of emotion.