Steven Courtney is Professor of Sociology of Education Leadership, researching and writing in areas including system leadership, charisma, depoliticisation and education privatisation, particularly in relation to the identities and practices of those constructed as educational leaders. As a recipient of the BELMAS Distinguished Service Award, he is a Distinguished Fellow of BELMAS. He is also an Honorary Fellow of the Institute of Teaching and Learning, University of Manchester. 

Prof Courtney is Co-Editor-in-Chief of the journal Critical Studies in Education, co-convenor of the MIE research and scholarship group, Critical Education Leadership and Policy (CELP) and co-convenor of the BELMAS research group, Critical Education Policy and Leadership Studies (CEPaLS). 

Prof Courtney spent the first part of his professional career teaching English to speakers of other languages (TESOL) in Paris before moving into the secondary state sector as a French and Spanish teacher in inner-London comprehensives. Following almost a decade in leadership positions, first as Head of MFL and then Assistant Headteacher, he moved to Manchester to complete an MA in Educational Leadership and School Improvement. Prof Courtney won ESRC funding for his doctoral work on school leadership in neoliberal times, for which, uniquely, he won best-thesis awards from the American Educational Research Association (Division A), the British Educational Research Association (BERA) and the British Educational Leadership, Management and Administration Society (BELMAS).

Prof Courtney took up his first academic post in the Manchester Institute of Education (MIE) as Lecturer in Management and Leadership in 2014, becoming Senior Lecturer in 2018 and Professor in 2022. Between 2016–20, he was Programme Director of the MA Educational Leadership; he has since acted as External Examiner on similar programmes at the Universities of Warwick and Exeter, and at UCL. Between 2020–25, Prof Courtney was Director of Research in the Manchester Institute of Education (MIE).

Professor Steve Courtney's research uses critical approaches to make contributions to the fields of the sociology of educational leadership and policy studies. He carries out research which seeks to explain, illuminate and theorise education policy, and educational leaders' identity and practice in interplay with diverse structural features. These have included the school-inspection regime, heteronormativity, and education privatisation—this latter particularly through the lens of school-type diversification in England. He has researched privatisation in education internationally from a range of perspectives. 

2025: Distinguished Fellowship (British Educational Leadership, Management and Administration Society)

2024: Distinguished Service Award (British Educational Leadership, Management and Administration Society)

2023: Honorary Fellow of the Institute of Teaching and Learning

2023: Excellence in Teaching Award, University of Manchester

2017: British Academy Rising Star Engagement Award-Holder

2016: American Educational Research Association Division A Outstanding Dissertation Award

2016: British Educational Leadership, Management and Administration Thesis Award

2016: British Educational Research Association Doctoral Thesis Award

2015: Faculty of Humanities Award for Outstanding Achievement (PGR), University of Manchester

2011: Platt Prize for Outstanding Achievement in a Master’s Degree in the School of Education, University of Manchester

Doctoral research supervisions

Prof Courtney will be on research sabbatical from November 2025 for one year, and so will not be taking on new doctoral projects until his return. 

Current PhD/EdD supervision

2027

Elaine Campbell: "Constructing teachers: An investigation into the application of primary school leaders’ and education policy constructions of teachers and teaching in England", PhD (FT).
Supervisors: Prof Steven Courtney, Dr Bee Hughes and Dr Edda Sant

Hannah Ruth McCarthy: "An exploration of the relationship between the T-Level Policy Agenda and professional identities within Further Education", PhD (PT).
Supervisors: Prof Steven Courtney, Dr Miri Firth and Dr Mark Carrigan

2026

Saif Al Washahi: "A critical investigation into the governance system in Omani Higher Education: Academic leaders' perspectives", PhD (FT).
Supervisors: Prof Steven Courtney and Prof Steven Jones

Weiyuan Wu: "Towards a Confucian Queer Theory: Conceptualising the experiences of LGBTQ schoolteachers in China", PhD (FT).
Supervisors: Prof Steven Courtney and Dr Catherine Atkinson-Ross 

2025

Zeya Li: "Identity construction in senior women leaders in higher education in a period of social change in China", PhD (FT).
Supervisors: Prof Steven Courtney and Dr Kirsty Finn

Completed PhD/EdD supervision

Karen Healey (2024). "Critically investigating the role of parents in the governance of multi academy trusts (MATs) in disadvantaged communities", PhD (FT).
Supervisors: Prof Steven Courtney, Prof Andy Howes and Dr Joanne Doherty

Pinyan Lin (2024). "Investigating leadership in formal school clusters: The case of Education Collectives in China", PhD (FT).
Supervisors: Prof Steven Courtney, Dr Paul Armstrong and Dr Amanda McKay

Mark Innes (2024). "The micro-politics of enactment in a multi-academy trust", EdD (PT).
Supervisors: Dr Paul Armstrong and Prof Steven Courtney

Beatrice Maud Halstead (2024). "Teachers’ identities in subordinated schools: A Bourdieuian reconceptualisation of educational ‘disadvantage’", PhD (FT).
Supervisors: Prof Steven Courtney and Dr Bee Hughes 

James Twigg (2021). "Towards an understanding of children’s perception of learning in a primary school", EdD (PT).
Supervisors: Prof Steven Courtney and Prof Helen Gunter 

Bee Hughes (2020). "An investigation into a Chief Executive Officer of a Multi-Academy Trust in England", PhD (FT).
Supervisors: Prof Helen Gunter and Prof Steven Courtney

Omar Kaissi (2019). "Researching corporeality in education: An investigation of knowledge production in gender and education research on boys and masculinities", PhD (FT).
Supervisors: Prof Steven Courtney and Prof Helen Gunter

Stephen M. Rayner (2017). "Academisation: a dynamic process of systemic change in England", EdD (PT).
Supervisors: Prof Helen Gunter and Prof Steven Courtney

CELP (Critical Education Leadership and Policy)

CELP is a Research and Scholarship Group at the Manchester Institute of Education.

We undertake critical education leadership and policy scholarship that explores the power relations produced through education policy in relation to, and as expressed by education leadership, leaders and leading.

We also describe, explain and theorise the significance and implications of these relations for people such as education professionals and children, institutions such as schools and universities, and concepts such as public education, equity, and leadership.

Key questions include:

• Who benefits from the current arrangements?
• Whose interests are marginalised?

We explore:

• The subject and/or outcomes of policy, and its formation and enactment.
• Its co-constitutive relationship with professionals' "leader" identities and "leaderful" practices.