Dr Eleni Skoura-Kirk

Dr Eleni Skoura-Kirk qualified as a Social Worker in 1994 in Athens, Greece, her country of origin. She then studied for a PhD in the UK, completing her thesis ‘Negotiating Social Citizenship: Young Homeless People and Social Citizenship in the UK and Greece’ in 2002. During the final years of her PhD, Dr Skoura-Kirk worked for the homelessness charity East Kent Cyrenians (now called Porchlight), helping entrenched rough sleepers in East Kent towards accommodation and resettlement. 

Dr Skoura-Kirk started work as a Lecturer in Social Work in 2006 at CCCU, teaching on subjects around service user involvement, human development, sociology and research methods. She completed the PGCLT (HE) teaching qualification in 2009 and joined the School of Social Policy, Sociology and Social Research in 2016 as a Senior Lecturer in Social Work at the Medway Campus. 

Dr Skoura-Kirk’s research interests relate to homelessness and service user and carer involvement in social work education. As part of her PhD, she conducted qualitative research with young homeless people in the UK and Greece. Part of this work was presented at conferences and resulted in the publication ‘Youth in the UK and Greece: Young Homeless People and the Meanings of Youth’ 

More recently, Dr Skoura-Kirk has focused on service user and carer involvement in the academic assessment of social work students. 

Dr Skoura-Kirk is interested in qualitative methods, with a focus on discourse analysis and narrative approaches to research. She is currently examining the way in which social work students’ discourses might develop or shift after service user and carer input in the classroom.  

Dr Skoura-Kirk teaches modules on undergraduate and postgraduate social work programmes.

Registered social worker with Social Work England.