Dr John Pendleton

Dr Pendleton is an experienced Senior Lecturer in Midwifery, having worked in the role since 2014.  He has taught across the midwifery curriculum and led modules on public health and research methods.  He currently leads on the final year dissertation module and the second year module on cultural humility in midwifery.  

He has led on the midwifery programme's recruitment and admissions strategy, is a member of both the Faculty and the Graduate School Research Ethics Committee, and represents midwifery at the annual Florence Network of European Nursing & Midwifery Programmes (https://florence-network.org/ ).

Prior to becoming an academic, Dr Pendleton graduated from the University of Nottingham with a Joint Honours degree in French and Spanish.  He then spent nine years working for BBC Teleivsion, becoming a a producer and director on a wide variety of network documentaries including co-productions with the Open University.  Upon qualifying as a midwife, Dr Pendleton worked initially on a high-risk consultant-led unit before spending the majority of his clinical career as a community midwife with an interest in home birth.

Dr Pendleton's main research focus centres on examining reproductive justice through the lens of gender and how gender operates in organizational spaces.  His PhD thesis is an Interpretative Phenomenological Analysis of the experiences of men who work as midwives.  It is the first to explore how a marginal number of men in an otherwise mono-gendered profession make sense of their experiences.  Filtered through the lens of gender, it seeks to understand how they navigate a space where they are neither wanted, needed, or deemed unproblematically acceptable to either service users or the profession as a whole.  He has written and published as part of an interdisciplinary and cross-continental team of academics, clinicains and community members focused on achieving gender inclusivity in perinatal spaces.  In 2025 he received funding to research the experiences of trans and non-binary midwives and student midwives which is currently in progress. 

Dr Pendleton has carried out peer-participatory research with students from minoritized ethnicities to try and understand their experiences within the NHS.  He is co-authoring a chapter for an upcoming text book exploring how to decolonise midwifery education.  He is also conducting research on how universities accomodate the needs of students with religious and/or spiritual beliefs on professionally registered healthcare courses.

Current Supervisees:

Michael Bowden (Phd Student) "Re-imaging care giving: The role of clairsense abilities." Director of Studies - Dr Callum Cooper; First Supervisor - Dr Matthew Hopkins; Second Supervisor - Dr John Pendleton 

Tracy La Penna (PhD Student) "Enhancing compassion in midwifery education through appreciative inquiry." Director of Studies/First Supervisor - Professor Federico Farini; Second Supervisor - Dr John Pendleton  

Christine Richardson (PhD Student) "What does professionalism mean to the undergraduate learner?" Director of Studies - Dr Siobhan Dytham; First Supervisor - Dr Jacquie Ridge; Second Supervisor - Dr John Pendleton

Laura Elliott (Doctorate in Professional Practice Student) "An exploration into the experiences of clinical supervisors of advanced clinical pratctitioners in healthcare settings: Identifying the knowledge and skills required for effective supervision." Director of Studies - Professor Tony Kay; First Supervisor - Dr John Pendleton; Second Supervisor: Dr Matthew Hopkins