Dr Liz Gulliford

School of Education
Associate Professor

Contact details

Telephone: +44 (0)121 414 4813
Email: l.z.gulliford@bham.ac.uk

Address: The Jubilee Centre for Character and Virtues
School of Education
12th Floor (West) Muirhead Tower
University of Birmingham
Edgbaston, Birmingham
B15 2TT, United Kingdom

Liz’s PhD (Queens’ College, University of Cambridge, 2011) established a firm, critical foundation for theoretical and practical work in positive psychology, positive education, and character education, upon which she has progressively built an international reputation.

She has carried out extensive conceptual and empirical work in the following domains, publishing in a range of journals in psychology, education, and philosophy:

Gratitude
Forgiveness
Hope and Optimism
Courage
Compassion
Virtue Ethics
Moral Development
Positive Psychology
Theories of Wellbeing
Positive Education
Character Education
Exemplarist Moral Theory (EMT)*

*Co-Pi on John Templeton Foundation funded project on ‘The role of exemplar narratives in cultivating character’ (Faculty of Health, Education and Society, University of Northampton, 2019 – 2022)

Liz has given numerous invited presentations internationally to both academic and lay audiences. To the latter end, she published four children’s books on forgiveness, gratitude, courage and hope.

Qualifications

FHEA (2018)
PhD Queens’ College, University of Cambridge (2011)
BSc Psychology (Hons), Anglia Ruskin University, Cambridge (2003)
MPhil Theology and Religious Studies, Queens’ College, University of Cambridge (1999)
BA (Hons), now MA, Theology, Trinity College, University of Oxford

Teaching

Liz currently teaches on the MA in Character Education:

Theories of Character, Virtues, and Flourishing
Character Education Leadership in Schools and Organizations
MA Dissertation supervision

Before (re)joining UoB, Liz was Associate Professor in Psychology at the University of Northampton (2018 – 2023) where she taught a range of subjects in psychology, including positive psychology and wellbeing, developmental psychology, personality and individual differences, conceptual and historical issues in psychology, psychology in education.

Postgraduate supervision

Dr Gulliford has experience of working with postgraduate students and has supervised PhDs to completion. She would be interested in supervising doctoral students in the fields of moral education, character education, positive education, well-being, and specific virtues.

Publications

Gulliford, L., & Morgan, B. (2021). The concept of gratitude in philosophy and psychology: an update. Zeitschrift Für Ethik Und Moralphilosophie, 4(1), 201-212.

Gulliford, L., Morgan, B., & Jordan, K. (2021). A prototype analysis of virtue. The Journal of Positive Psychology, 16(4), 536-550.

Gulliford, L., Morgan, B., Hemming, E., & Abbott, J. (2019). Gratitude, self-monitoring and social intelligence: A prosocial relationship?. Current psychology, 38, 1021-1032.

Darnell, C., Gulliford, L., Kristjánsson, K., & Paris, P. (2019). Phronesis and the knowledge-action gap in moral psychology and moral education: A new synthesis?. Human Development, 62(3), 101-129.

Gulliford, L., & Roberts, R. C. (2018). Exploring the “unity” of the virtues: The case of an allocentric quintet. Theory & Psychology, 28(2), 208-226.

Morgan, B., Gulliford, L., & Kristjánsson, K. (2017). A new approach to measuring moral virtues: The Multi-Component Gratitude Measure. Personality and Individual Differences, 107, 179-189.

Morgan, B., Gulliford, L., & Kristjánsson, K. (2014). Gratitude in the UK: A new prototype analysis and a cross-cultural comparison. The Journal of Positive Psychology, 9(4), 281-294.

Gulliford, L., Morgan, B., & Kristjánsson, K. (2013). Recent work on the concept of gratitude in philosophy and psychology. The Journal of Value Inquiry, 47, 285-317.