I am the Associate Dean Academic Operations. I am responsible for recruitment and admissions for the School, timetabling for staff and students, workload models and their use, and the physicial resources of the School. I also lead on apprenticeships, and national and international partnerships. Prior to this appointment, I was the Deputy for Practice Learning & Partnership activity. Practice Learning includes all placement provision. Partnerships include NHS and private partners, international and business partners, service user and carer partners, and alumni.

I was the course leader for the BSc (Hons) Podiatry for 10 years until September 2016, and led many podiatry-specific and inter-professional modules in both undergraduate and postgraduate programmes in the School of Health Sciences.

I am a former Chair of the Podiatry Programme Leaders Association of the College of Podiatry, and am a reviewer for a number of healthcare journals.

My academic teaching is principally in anatomy of the lower limb and I am the Human Tissue Authority Designated Individual for the School of Health Sciences dissection room.

I became an RGN from the Nightingale School of Nursing in 1988 specialising in theatre nursing and children’s nursing. In 1995 I gained a first class honours degree in Podiatry at the University of Brighton, then joined the staff of the University as a clinical tutor, becoming a lecturer in 1996, senior lecturer in 2000 and principal lecturer in 2013.

I gained a Certificate in Learning and Teaching in Higher Education in 1999, an MSc Podiatry in September 2001 and a Doctorate in Education in 2019. I am an Advanced HE Senior Fellow, and have an Excellence in Facilitating & Empowering Learning Award.

I like to think I have an energy to my teaching which encourages the students to engage on a practical and intellectual level, and take an inquisitive and reflective attitude towards their learning. I employ a variety of teaching methods to enable students to access what they need in an enjoyable and productive way. I use online learning such as podcasting, the Personal Response System, wikis and other e-learning tools in my teaching and assessment.

I am sensitive to how students receive feedback on their work and ever mindful of enhancing the student experience. I have been utilizing pod casts as a mode of feedback for some years and students report this strategy to be a highly effective method of receiving feedback.

I am a ‘champion’ of the Peer Assisted Study Sessions project, and am a staunch advocate of inter-professional learning. To these ends, I have endeavored to facilitate the development of meaningful activities within the course, School and the wider University community.

My main research interests are the learning and teaching of anatomy, independent learning, and reflection.

Early in my career I worked on the use of the portfolio in clinical learning and this led to my writing a chapter entitled ‘The development of critical reflection in the Health Professions’ for an ILT Occasional Paper publication, in which the use of critical reflection in undergraduate degrees of various health disciplines was explored.

I have devised, developed, and led an innovative ‘BSc Module by Learning Objectives’ module since 2003. I have researched the impact of this module on the student experience and presented the findings at national and international conferences. I am now developing the module further to enhance the experience of our most talented students.

I have a doctorate in education and studied the undergraduate student’s learning of anatomy. I took a phenomenological approach to do two things:

1. Understand how undergraduate students describe the experience of learning and applying anatomy across the podiatry curriculum
2. Discover the students’ lived experiences of learning and applying anatomy for podiatric practice

I am interested in supervising doctoral study in the field of anatomy, anatomy and its application to practice, or research where phenomenology is used. My specialism is in descriptive phenomenology.