Qualifications

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

Dr Ian Collen is Reader (Education) in Modern Languages Education (PGCE) at Queen's University Belfast. He started his career as a secondary school teacher of French and German, holding various posts of whole-school responsibility and teaching both languages across the 11-18 age range, including to A-level.

He has 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 Modern Languages, as well as being Director of Initial Teacher Education across all PGCE subject pathways, ultimately responsible for the education of 138 student teachers annually. He teaches on our M.Ed. programme and supervises postgraduate students undertaking Master's and PhD degrees in Language Education, Teaching, and Applied Linguistics. 

As part of his role at Queen's, Dr Collen is Academic Lead at NICILT based at our Centre for Language Education Research (CLER). He is also a Senior Fellow of the Higher Education Academy (SFHEA). 

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, Scotland and Wales. He has published in peer-reviewed journals and spoken at numerous international conferences.