Kevin Bryant

Dr Kevin Bryant holds a King’s Fellowship in Bioscience Education and has significant experience in widening participation to health professions. His research critically examines the social construction of knowledge and its role in the power dynamics of higher education and healthcare practice. Kevin has a personal and professional interest in neurodiversity, particularly autism and hyperactivity.

[email protected]

Background

Following early research work on diet-induced thermogenesis and female infertility in diabetes, Kevin’s career focus has been in bioscience education and widening participation to healthcare professions. Kevin instigated and directed the pan-London Uni4U: Opening Doors to Higher Education project, supported by the European Social Fund.

He is an advocate of students as co-creators of the curriculum and won the Most Innovative Teacher award for his involvement of students in the critical evaluation and radical development of human biology for nursing in the Nightingale Faculty at King’s College London. 

Research interests

Current research

Kevin’s research explores the role and social status of knowledge during the transition of support workers in the health sector, through higher education to graduate nurse. Using Legitimation Code Theory (LCT), Kevin has illuminated tensions between the representation of ‘profane’ and ‘sacred’ forms of knowledge that are in play within higher education and differentially identified by nurses and support workers as forms of capital. Kevin’s research advocates a wholesale re-evaluation of the significance and status of embodied knowledge arising from experiential learning, and the relationship between epistemic knowing and social knowing as forms of capital derived from learning at work.

Previous research

The role of biosocial dimensions of personality in illness behaviour.

Diet induced thermogenesis and obesity.

Female infertility and diabetes

Teaching

Undergraduate BSc and FdSc nursing bioscience.

Physiology for MSc Advanced Clinical Practice

Qualifications

• Doctor of Education (University of East Anglia)
• MSc Behavioural Biology and Healthcare (University of Surrey)
• Certificate in Education (University of Surrey)
• Postgraduate Diploma in Nutrition and Dietetics (Leeds Polytechnic)
• BSc Physiology and Biochemistry (University of London)

Memberships, editorial boards

• Advance HE: Bioscience in Nursing Education national forum
• British Sociological Association
• Forum for Access and Continuing Education (FACE)
• Researching, Advancing and Inspiring Student Engagement (RAISE)
• Legitimation Code Theory UK (University of Durham)

Research grants, consultancy, knowledge exchange

Director and project lead on the following social inclusion project funding awards:

Key Skills for study and employment for Health Sector Skills in central and SE London 2005/07 (Learning and Skills Council; £393K)

Opening Doors of Higher Education to residents of Lambeth, Southwark and Lewisham 2005/06 (Higher Education European Social Fund; £249K)

South East London Nursing Initiative 2003/06 (SE London NHS Workforce Development Confederation; £240K)

Community laptop outreach scheme 2003/04(Waterloo Strategic Regeneration Board; £198K)

Access and Retention to Allied Health Professions 2003/04 (Higher Education European Social Fund; £249K)

Skills for study and employment 2002/03 (London Central Learning and Skills Council; £200K)

Access to Healthcare Skills 2001/02 (European Social Fund /Government Office for London; £225K)

The London Nursing Initiative 2000/01 (London Development Agency; £179K

Recent presentations and conferences

Recent conference presentations and publications

Bryant K (2023) Whose knowledge counts? Using Bourdieu and Bernstein to explore the status of knowledge during transition from support worker to graduate nurse. British Educational Research Association Conference, Aston University: Birmingham

Bryant, K. (2023) Bridging the ‘discourse gap’: the potential role of diet in resolving tensions between the physiological and sociological narrative of Covid-19. British Sociological Association Annual Conference 2023: Sociological Voices in Public Discourse. Manchester University: BSA

Bryant, K. (2023) Whose knowledge counts? An exploration of the status and power of knowledge in the transition from healthcare assistant to registered nurse. RCN Education Forum National Conference: Equality, diversity and inclusion within the health and social care workforce.

Bryant, K. (2022) Knowledge matters: using Bourdieu and Bernstein to explore tensions between academic and everyday forms of knowledge in degree apprentices’ engagement with higher education. Researching, Advancing and Inspiring Student Engagement National Conference on Student Voice: Inclusion and Diversity. Lincoln University: RAISE

Bryant K (2021) “It’s life Jim but not as we know it”: welcome to planet Asperger’s. Interprofessional Learning Seminar: Anglia Ruskin University

Bryant K (2020) The lived experience of an ‘Aspie’ bio-scientist becoming a qualitative researcher: a case study in shifting paradigms and differing perspectives. Anglia Ruskin University: Disability Services.

Bryant, K. (2019) The wrong kind of knowledge and the wrong kind of knower? An exploration of the status of knowledge in the experience of vocational students’ transition through higher education’ in S. Broadhead, J. Butcher, M. Hill, S. McKendry, N. Raven, R. Renton, B. Sanderson, T. Ward and S. Wynn Williams (Eds) Transformative Higher Education – Access, Inclusion & Lifelong Learning, London: Forum for Access and Continuing Education.