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 is currenty Director of Postgraduate Taught Studies and a member of the School Management Committee in our School of Social Sciences, Education and Social Work.

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. He has previously served as Director of Initial Teacher Education across all PGCE subject pathways, and Examinations Liaison Officer. 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, Wales and, from 2026, the Republic of Ireland.

Dr Collen is also Co-Lead on LIFELANGS, funded with a large grant supported by Ireland's Higher Education Authority (HEA) through its North-South Research Programme. This project is in collaboration with colleagues at Trinity College Dublin. 

Previous funded scholarship has been through grants from the British Academy and Department of Education NI. He has published in peer-reviewed journals and spoken at numerous international conferences.