Reader in Politics and Global Health in the Wolfson Institute of Population Health and Deputy Director of the Centre for Public Health and Policy.
I am incredibly lucky to work with colleagues who are not just passionate about teaching but also extremely interested in pedagogy. This was a revelation for me, having previously worked in places where these things were not taken seriously. One project that had a particularly significant impact on me was taking part in a review of our BSc Global Public Health programme, which was run by my WIPH colleague Andrew Harmer and Ana Cabral from QM Academy. More generally, I have learned a great deal about critical pedagogy from discussions colleagues like Jennifer Randall and Megan Clinch. They encouraged me to experiment with the way I teach, for example by consolidating student learning through museum trips and walking tours of the East End.
Over the last few years, my main scholarship project focuses on virtual exchanges. Virtual exchanges use online tools and platforms to allow students located in different countries to learn together. In 2022, I given a Fulbright Global Teaching Challenges Award to run an exchange between our global health students and undergraduates at UC Santa Cruz. The following year I began a QM Academy Fellowship that explored the potential for virtual exchanges to improve our students’ access to international opportunities.
Obviously, it is good to have something to write about when you are applying for promotion. There are other good reasons to engage in scholarship, however. Teaching on the same programme for almost a decade, it would have been easy to get a bit stale. But engaging with scholarship has provided me with an opportunity to learn new things and apply them in my teaching. It has also brought be into contact with like-minded people at QM and beyond.
I am keen to encourage and help colleagues across QM to develop and deliver virtual exchanges. Year abroad programmes are inaccessible to many students because of the cost and because their parents want them to live at home. This is particularly true of QM because of the specific make up of our study community. Virtual exchanges can help to overcome these barriers to international opportunities because there is no cost to students, and they take place online. By expanding the use of virtual exchanges at QM, I hope to advance our commitment to equality, diversity, and inclusion.
There are so many topics and projects that fit within the broad category of “scholarship”. Try to identify an aspect of scholarship that you are really interested in and find a community of practice that can support and encourage you.