Rate My Professor Ellen McHugh

Dr Ellen McHugh is a Senior Lecturer in the Department of Education at Brunel University London, where she joined in 2017. She serves as BA Education Programme Lead, teaches on the undergraduate education programme, and holds supervisory and personal tutoring responsibilities across the department. McHugh is a Fellow of Advance HE and a member of the Human Geography: Space, Place and Society research group. She earned a BA (Hons) in Geography and Archaeology from the University of Manchester, an MA in Tourism, Environment and Development from King’s College London, and a PhD in Geography from the University of Reading, supported by a studentship awarded in 2007.

McHugh’s research centres on educational inequalities in higher education, focusing on students from under-represented and marginalised backgrounds, student poverty, food provision in university settings, commuter students, children from armed forces families, mobility and belonging, and doctoral students transitioning to academic positions. She has contributed to projects funded by the British Academy/Leverhulme Small Research Grant on free food provision for students and by Brunel’s Global Lives Interdisciplinary Research Centre on military families and transnational motherhood. Prior to academia, she worked with the Embassy of Ireland’s Emigrant Services Advisory Committee and as a Marketing Executive for Tourism Ireland. Recent outputs include the 2026 book chapter ‘Journeying through in-between times and spaces: commuter students’ everyday practices of and strategies for university access and engagement’ in the Handbook on Geographies of Education, the report ‘On-campus food poverty in England: student hunger and university free food provision’, and evaluations of support for children from armed forces families. She also serves as External Examiner for the BA Children, Young People and Society programme at York St John University.