When I left school, I didn’t expect to have a career in higher education. But here we are.
Once I had completed my PhD, I worked in London for nine months for a global disaster management company before moving to the University of Dundee as a Lecturer in Forensic Anthropology. This provided me with a brilliant opportunity to learn and develop and I established their successful UG and PG degrees as well as experimenting with my own teaching style. After three busy years, I moved to Teesside University as a Senior Lecturer.
For many years, I was the only anthropologist at Teesside. But this was great, because it meant that I had to be creative in order to deliver my teaching and research. Necessity is the mother of invention, and all that. I was given the freedom and support to develop my research career, while also learning a lot about enterprise. It was through this combination that I developed and launched what proved to be an award-winning edtech spin-out company. anthronomics ltd developed digital tools to support learning and teaching in anthropology, and had users across the world.
After working hard to become professor, I realised that I wasn’t really suited to simply doing the same thing for another two decades until I retired, and so I decided to take the sideways step into senior leadership to see if I enjoyed that. I was appointed as Associate Dean (Learning & Teaching) for the faculty of Science, Engineering & Design in 2016 and undertook a wholescale reimagination of the portfolio, enhancing student outcomes and experience (taking it from bottom to top of the university), improving attendance and attainment and creating new learning spaces and staff development opportunities. It was a huge amount of fun, and made me realise that leadership in HE is where I wanted to be.
Following an institutional restructure, I joined Health & Life Sciences as Associate Dean (Academic), a role created for me and with the remit of leading cross-portfolio strategic projects. This included everything from degree quality assurance processes to departmental restructures. Eventually I also took on responsibility for the research and innovation portfolio.
In 2021 I was appointed Dean of Health & Life Sciences. My priority was to make the faculty more impactful and somewhere people were proud to work. As is my tendency, I undertook a programme of transformation which focused on deepening the impact of our partnerships and becoming a more proactive part of the health and biosciences ecosystem in the north of England.
I’ve also been privileged to be asked to write about learning and teaching in higher education. I co-authored a reflection on the impact of the lockdown in university teaching for the leading journal Forensic Science International, and recently was asked to discuss how to maintain quality standards in digital pedagogy for the Times Higher Campus.
After seventeen wonderful years at TU, including three as Dean, I was ready for a new challenge. In 2024 I was appointed as Vice-President (Students & Learning) at Maynooth University which sits in a wonderful campus just outside of Dublin in Ireland. Here, I am looking forward to meeting new colleagues and to leading innovative approaches to the student lifecycle and engagement with students, fostering a culture of innovation, inclusion and support in and outside of the classroom.