Training Team

Our trainers are all experienced classroom practitioners, along with Steve, Peter and Emma they mentor trainee philosophers through our accreditation programme, and support teachers in classroom practice.

Miriam Cohen Christofidis

Miriam began teaching philosophy to graduates and undergraduates from 1994 and has taught at UCL, Heythrop and Oxford. She has been teaching A Level philosophy at Camden Girls School for the last 2 years. Miriam has a BA and an MPhil from UCL, and her main interest is in political philosophy and Plato. Miriam has been working with The Philosophy Foundation since 2007 and has worked with children from nursery age up to KS5.

Tim Beardmore-Gray

Tim joined us in 2016 whilst he was completing his Master of Philosophical Studies at King's College London. He has a First Class MA in Philosophy from Edinburgh University (2012). Tim works at a number of primary schools in South East London as well as teaching an over-50s philosophy class at the Second Half Centre, and facilitates philosophy with the educational charity GROW.

Steven Campbell Harris

Steven has a background in Philosophy and Theology, graduating with a joint honours degree in the subjects (MA Philosophy and Theology, First Class Honours) in 2012. In the following year he worked as a teacher of English as a foreign language and later as an editorial researcher and philosophy events producer for the HowTheLightGetsIn philosophy festival. Having acquired a taste for teaching, and seen how philosophy can be taken out of the academy and put into people's lives, in late 2013 Steven decided to pursue the intersection of the two.

He began work as a tutor of Philosophy and Religious Studies and undertook training to become a philosophy specialist with the Philosophy Foundation. Since then he has facilitated hundreds of enquiries for children from years 1 to 8 and tutored students of all abilities from primary to undergraduate level. His main focus in both his teaching and tutoring work is to develop in his students a reasoned engagement with the world and with themselves. In late 2015 he took on additional responsibilities as a teacher trainer for the Foundation, helping with INSET days as well as observing and training other philosophy specialist teachers.

Donal Coonan

Donal completed his degree in 2004 and then spent a year teaching English to children as young as two years old in Japan. Since then, he has been working as a private tutor for children in London. He is also a theatre practitioner, having trained at the prestigious L'Ecole Philippe Gaulier in Paris, and is particularly interested in the capacity of play to engage children with their learning. He became accredited in November 2012 and the skills he picked up doing this has assisted tremendously with his tutoring. He now also works as a philosophy facilitator and is excited about the huge potential of philosophy to assist the thinking skills of children from all backgrounds.

Andy West

He has worked in southeast London, SEN schools, Great Ormond Street Hospital, Muslim schools and prison education. He writes for the Guardian, Open Democracy and TES. He's a contributor to the award-winning book The Philosophy Shop and his work with children with special educational needs features in the April 2015 edition of Special Children.

Andy has also worked as a conflict mediator, a befriender for the National Autistic Society and an English teacher. Andy teaches philosophy in prisons and has a book coming out in 2022 about his work in prisons.

Zoe Drewitt

Zoe Drewitt became accredited in 2017 and is a highly experienced Specialist Philosophy Teacher, trainer and mentor for The Philosophy Foundation. She studied philosophy at University College London, going on to have careers in journalism and then mental health before returning to the world of philosophy. She facilitates philosophy enquiries for all ages, from six to 96, both in-person and online. She also uses philosophy as a tool in team-building workshops for schools.