Dr Murat Oztok | The 51cg

Dr Murat Oztok

Senior Lecturer

Email Address: murat.oztok@abdn.ac.uk
School/Department: School of Education

Biography

My research explores how digital technologies shape educational knowledge, participation, and experience. I work at the intersection of postdigital education, postcolonial theory, networked learning, and critical digital pedagogy, with a particular interest in questions of epistemic justice, authority, voice, and educational futures. Across this work, I examine how digital systems can reproduce or challenge existing structures of power and inequality, and how educational practices might be reimagined in more inclusive and equitable ways.

A central concern across my research is understanding whose knowledge becomes visible and legitimate within digital spaces, and how educational relations are formed, sustained, and experienced in practice. Rather than approaching technology as a neutral tool or inevitable force of change, I am interested in how technological systems are embedded within broader social, cultural, and political conditions. My work therefore examines how educational technologies shape or limit what can be known, whose voices become heard, and how particular futures become imagined and normalised while others remain marginal or excluded.

My recent work has focused on themes including postcolonial analyses of networked learning, solidarity and collective pedagogy, educational imagination and futurity, and the ethics of participation and knowledge production. More recently, I have been exploring solidarity as both an ethical and practical condition of collective learning, examining how participation in digital and networked contexts is sustained through relations of care, maintenance, responsibility, and ongoing collective support rather than connection alone.

I am also interested in methodological questions and in how research itself shapes what becomes visible, sayable, or knowable. This includes work on alternative and creative methodological approaches, ethnography, and questions concerning the co-production of knowledge and researcher responsibility.

A Postcolonial Analysis of Knowledge and Experience in Networked Education

This study offers a postcolonial critique of online education, interrogating how learning spaces often replicate colonial power structures. While such environments claim inclusivity, they can marginalise non-Western epistemologies and identities, leading to experiences of alienation and unequal participation. My research reveals how dominant discourses suppress diverse knowledges and voices. Ultimately, it seeks to advance socially just pedagogies in digital contexts

Latest Publications

A Postcolonial Analysis of Knowledge and Experience in Networked Education
2026 - Published
Oztok, M.
Narratives of hope in times of change: Networked Learning for Futures of Possibility. Bonderup Dohn, N., Cutajar, M., Borg, C., Ryberg, T., de Laat, M. (eds.). 1 edition. Springer Nature, pp. 25-41, 17 pages
Chapters in Books, Reports and Conference Proceedings: Chapters (Peer-Reviewed)
- [ONLINE] DOI:
- [ONLINE]
Book Review: Reimagining Literacy in the Age of AI: Theory and Practice
2025 - Published
Oztok, M., Martin, H. (ed.), Education in the North
Education in the North, vol. 32, no. 3, pp. 358-359
Contributions to Journals: Reviews of Books, Films and Articles
- [ONLINE] DOI:
- [OPEN ACCESS]
Haunted Futures: Postcolonial Critique, Solidarity, and the Struggle for Epistemic Justice
2025 - Published
Oztok, M.
The Geopolitics of Postdigital Educational Development. Peters, M. A., Green, B. J., Kamenarac, O., Jandrić, P., Besley, T. (eds.). Springer Nature, pp. 121–141, 20 pages
Chapters in Books, Reports and Conference Proceedings: Chapters (Peer-Reviewed)
- [ONLINE] DOI:
- [ONLINE]
Authority and Authoring Knowledge, How to Make Space for Sámi Voice in Research
2025 - Published
Lund, S., Oztok, M.
Contributions to Conferences: Papers
- [ONLINE]
Authority and authoring knowledge, how to make space for Sámi voice in research
2025 - Published
Lund, S., Öztok, M., Martin, H. (ed.), Education in the North
Education in the North, vol. 32, no. 1, pp. 37-52
Contributions to Journals: Articles
- [ONLINE] DOI:
- [OPEN ACCESS]

View My Publications

Research

Research Overview

My current projects include research on postdigital solidarity, educational imagination, and critical futures studies.

Research Areas

Accepting PhDs

I am currently accepting PhDs in Education, Sociology, Psychology, Philosophy, Computing Science.

Please get in touch if you would like to discuss your research ideas further.

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Education

Accepting PhDs

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Sociology

Accepting PhDs

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Psychology

Accepting PhDs

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Philosophy

Accepting PhDs

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Computing Science

Accepting PhDs

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Current Research

Educational Imagination, Technology, and Futures

I explore how educational technologies shape the ways educational problems and futures are imagined. This work examines how technological solutions can both expand and constrain educational possibilities, with particular attention to questions of anticipation, repair, and educational imagination.

Postcoloniality, Solidarity, and Networked Learning

This work investigates how participation and collective learning are experienced within digital and networked environments. Drawing on postcolonial perspectives, I examine how learning communities are sustained through relations of care, maintenance, responsibility, and solidarity, rather than through connection alone.

Knowledge Production, Voice, and Research Ethics

I examine questions of authority, voice, and representation in research, with particular attention to how knowledge is produced and whose perspectives become visible or marginalised. This work explores issues of epistemic justice, Indigenous perspectives, and researcher responsibility.

Methodological Innovation and Networked Learning Research

I am interested in methodological questions and in developing approaches that can engage with complexity, scale, and emerging forms of educational practice. This includes work on creative and alternative methodologies, ethnography, and methodological development within Networked Learning.

Supervision

Supervisees

MS FAYE HENDRY

Teaching

Programmes

MSc Digital Pedagogy and Educational Futures
Postgraduate, 1 , January start

Courses

Theoretical Foundations of Digital Pedagogy ED507F

Publications

Update

51cg

Biography

A Postcolonial Analysis of Knowledge and Experience in Networked Education

Latest Publications

A Postcolonial Analysis of Knowledge and Experience in Networked Education

Book Review: Reimagining Literacy in the Age of AI: Theory and Practice

Haunted Futures: Postcolonial Critique, Solidarity, and the Struggle for Epistemic Justice

Authority and Authoring Knowledge, How to Make Space for Sámi Voice in Research

Authority and authoring knowledge, how to make space for Sámi voice in research

Research Overview

Research Areas

Accepting PhDs

Education

Sociology

Psychology

Philosophy

Computing Science

Current Research

Supervision

Supervisees

Programmes

Courses

A Postcolonial Analysis of Knowledge and Experience in Networked Education

Book Review: Reimagining Literacy in the Age of AI: Theory and Practice

Haunted Futures: Postcolonial Critique, Solidarity, and the Struggle for Epistemic Justice

Authority and Authoring Knowledge, How to Make Space for Sámi Voice in Research

Authority and authoring knowledge, how to make space for Sámi voice in research

Postcolonial Entry Points into Networked Learning

Postcolonial Entry Points into Networked Learning

The Role of Social Interactions and Cognition in Digital Spaces

Cognitive Apprenticeship: A New Lens for Better Understanding Online Doctoral Provision

Can we afford it?: The cybernetic determinants for pedagogical models in MOOCs

To be or not to be: Social justice in networked learning

The hidden curriculum of online learning: Understanding social justice through critical pedagogy

New platform affordances for encouraging social interaction in MOOCS: The 'comment discovery tool' interactive visualisation plugin

Social presence reconsidered: moving beyond, going back, or killing social presence

Interactive visualizations to enhance social learning practices in mooc platforms

Design based research approaches towards enhancing social learning practices in mooc platforms

Socialization and cognitive apprenticeship in online doctoral programs

Socialization and cognitive apprenticeship in online doctoral programs

Student Moderators in Asynchronous Online Discussion: Scaffolding Their Questions

Social presence reconsidered: moving beyond, going back, or killing social presence

The hidden curriculum of online learning: Discourses of whiteness, social absence, and inequity

Designing computer-supported complex systems curricula for the next generation science standards in high school science classrooms

Being social or social learning: A sociocultural analysis of the futurelearn mooc platform

No one ever steps in the same discussion twice: The relationship between identities and meaning

Cultural ways of constructing knowledge: the role of identities in online group discussions

Socialization and social capital in online doctoral programs

Social presence and impression management: understanding networked learners’ cultivation of learning networks

Student understanding of scientific practices and crosscutting themes via an NGSS–targeted curriculum and instruction project

Reconceptualizing the pedagogical value of student facilitation

Designing curriculum and instruction for computer-supported complex systems teaching and learning in high school science classrooms

Capitalizing on social presence: The relationship between social capital and social presence

Design features for computer-supported complex systems learning and teaching in high school science classrooms

Impacts on student understanding of scientific practices and crosscutting themes through an NGSS–designed computer-supported curriculum and instruction project

Building curriculum and instruction for the next generation science standards:: articulating design features for computer-supported complex systems learning in science classrooms

Development and initial validation of a social capital scale for online learning

Self-representation in online learning environments

Introduction to the Special Issue on Graduate Student Innovations in Science, Mathematics, and Technology Education Research

Examining the qualities of liked notes versus non-liked notes in a collaborative online learning environment

Inequitable whiteness in online learning

Polysynchronous: Dialogic construction of time in online learning

Towards understanding knowledge construction in online learning

What social capital can tell us about social presence

Tacit knowledge in online learning: Community, identity, and social capital

Exploring asynchronous and synchronous tool use in online courses

The role of identities in the process of knowledge construction in CSCL settings

Interaction in an asynchronous online course: A synthesis of quantitative predictors

Synthesizing quantitative predictors for interaction in an asynchronous online course

The relationship between social presence and social capital in online learning communities

Towards better understanding of self-representation in online learning

Social presence and online learning: a review of research

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