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Last updated 4th June 2026

Dimi Kaneva joined the University in 2018. Dimi’s interests and teaching are in the areas of childhood studies, the sociology of childhood, young children’s voice and agency, and qualitative research methods.

Dimi’s research is concerned with exploring children’s voices and experiences through creative, participatory and child-centred research methods. Dimi is the Principal Investigator for LIME, a British Academy funded project (2023-2025) exploring young children’s experiences of family life post the Covid-19 pandemic through play-based research methods.

She also leads an ESRC IAA project 'Early Years Talk: embedding speech, language and communication focus into early education and home activities' (2025-2026) with Speech Stars, Kirklees Success Centre. This project involves a collaboration with three primary schools to develop and disseminate speech and language support activities to support families and early years classrooms with capacity building. 

In 2022-2023 Dimi developed a research partnership with colleagues from the University of Cape Town, South Africa, to explore children’s perceptions of self, difference and migration through storytelling and arts-based research methods. This research was supported by the University’s International Collaboration Fund.

While completing her ESRC-funded PhD ‘Understanding the experiences and engagement of children labelled as having English as an additional language in different school contexts: The case of primary to secondary school transition’ at the University of Manchester, Dimi worked as a Research Assistant on a on a number of large-scale projects including the Coalition of Research Schools (a partnership that fostered collaborative inquiry in outstanding schools across Greater Manchester through action research projects) and Responding to Diversity by Engaging Student Voices (a project exploring ways to strengthen student voice within schools in three different countries).

Previously, Dimi has worked in a range of education settings, including private day nurseries, state-maintained nurseries, children’s centres, primary schools and special schools both in England and Bulgaria. Prior to joining the University, Dimi taught on early years and childhood studies courses at the University of Bolton.

Dimi is a Senior Fellow of Advance HE (formerly, HEA).