Qualifications

MA (Hons) (St Andrews), PGCE, M.Teach, GradDipSpanish, EdD 

Dr Ian Collen started his career as a secondary school teacher of French and German, having also worked as a lecteur d'anglais at the University of Paris III, Sorbonne Nouvelle, and as a Research Assistant at the US Department of Education, Washington D.C. He joined Queen's University Belfast in summer 2015 and leads our PGCE in French, German, Irish and Spanish. He also supervises postgraduate students undertaking Master's degrees in primary and post-primary Teaching and Education, as well as being second supervisor on PhD projects in Language Education. 

As part of his role at Queen's, Dr Collen is Director of the Northern Ireland Centre for Information on Language Teaching and Research (NICILT). He is also a Fellow of the Higher Education Academy. 

Dr Collen is interested in all aspects of Modern Languages Education in instructed classroom settings. He is currently Principal Investigator on the Language Trends series, funded by British Council, which seeks to longitudinally chart the health of language teaching in schools in England, Northern Ireland and Wales. He has published in peer-reviewed journals and spoken at numerous international conferences.