Dr. Courtney Stafford Walter

Biography

Courtney Stafford-Walter is a lecturer in Educational Studies at the University of Edinburgh, specializing in social anthropology with a focus on indigenous education. Her research engages directly with the interplay between schooling, development, and social change, using ethnographically grounded approaches to explore how education can perpetuate or challenge expectations in varying contexts. She completed her Ph.D. in Social Anthropology at the University of St Andrews in 2015, where her doctoral research examined the effects of state-run boarding schools on the Wapishana people of Southern Guyana. This work highlights the complexities of maintaining cultural identity in schooling systems that impose external structures. Stafford-Walter has also conducted extensive research on the impacts of migration and boarding schools on the health and wellbeing of Amerindian youth, contributing to wider discussions on education and global development, specifically in relation to the Sustainable Development Goals. Moreover, she has presented her findings at numerous conferences and workshops, actively contributing to the discourse on qualitative methodologies within educational anthropology.

Research Interests

Experience