Victoria is a previous physical education teacher and school sports coordinator. In 2010 Victoria was awarded an Alexander Trust Bursary to complete a PhD at the University of Bedfordshire. She completed her PhD in 2013 focused on supporting sustainable curriculum renewal through a longitudinal school-based professional learning programme on the Cooperative Learning model. During her doctoral studies Victoria worked as a part time lecturer and then acted as a course leader and lecturer for two years at the University of Bedfordshire. She joined the University of Birmingham in 2015.
Victoria’s research has won national and international awards. She received the Qualitative Research in Sport and Exercise Early Career Scholar Award in 2018, was the Physical Education and Sport Pedagogy Reviewer of the Year in 2016, the AIESEP Young Scholar in 2015 and the American Educational Research Association’s Lawrence Locke Scholar in 2014. For her innovative work surrounding social media as a professional learning tool she received the early career research award from the European Educational Research Association in 2013. From 2011-12 Victoria also received four awards from the Association for Physical Education, the Youth Sport Trust and the University of Tskuba.
Victoria has received funding from research councils, trusts and industry. These include, Wellcome Trust, Society for Educational Studies, the British Academy, the Richard Benjamin Trust, the South Korean Global Research Network, and Virgin Active. In 2016 Victoria led the first MOOC in Physical Education with FutureLearn, outstanding Physical Education lessons, and has co-lead the Youth Sport Coaching FutureLearn MOOC in collaboration with the Football Association. She has published a co-authored book focussed on Digital Technologies in Physical Education and her forthcoming book focusses on Young People, Social Media and Health