Ania Atkinson has 17 years’ experience teaching, training and lecturing in education, including: four years as an hourly paid lecturer at Nottingham Trent University; and three years at an international university in Thailand as a full-time lecturer and BA programme leader. Throughout this time, she has been actively engaged with curriculum and policy development and has had a hand in shaping whole school policy and strategy. She is currently in the final stages of writing up her PhD: ‘The Early Career Teacher (ECT) experience. An exploration into the learning needs of ECTs in England, through the lens of Rousseau and Émilian autodidacticism.’ Her project aims to fuse Rousseauian philosophy with educational praxis by evaluating ECT learning needs against the landscape of the autodidactic learning approach presented in Rousseau’s Émile (1979). Ania has recently joined Nottingham Trent University as a full-time permanent member of lecturing staff.