Dr Paul Elmer is Associate Head of College (Education and Students) in Westminster Business School.

As a teacher, a social researcher and subsequently an academic manager, my focus is at the meeting point of education and work; the type of work we do, and the type of person we become. A person’s immediate job prospects, their lifelong movement across social classes, their health, happiness and mortality, are linked to the tools they can learn and deploy in the highly competed market for persons and skills. My role is to help them. My work on vocational learning was recognised with a National Teaching Fellowship in 2004; I went on to develop teaching and learning practice and policy in the UK and internationally, promoting education that helps people to secure and sustain rewarding work.

My fellowship began as an attempt to solve a problem. My part-time students of public relations, in a poor northern town, had little access to the workplace they aspired to enter. They had no way into such socially elevated work, despite their good educational results. Through an industry contact, I learned of a new consultancy model that was being trialled in the Netherlands, and embarked with a small group of final year students on a fact-finding mission. The result was an early example of co-created learning in the UK, a student PR consultancy that won blue chip and government clients, and went on to embrace other disciplines over the following 15 years. This pioneering student-led consultancy embedded learning and earned a very substantial fee income, all of which was ploughed back directly into improved student experiences for its workers; decent computers, a permanent office with phones and a fancy coffee machine, enough money to travel, meet and entertain clients. The project led to better student employability, and the model was subsequently adopted as far afield as Canada and New Zealand.

I was able to use my fellowship to develop research into occupational cultures, the practices and performances that make someone the ‘right person for the job’. Initially this research was in the creative and cultural industries which remain overwhelmingly white and middle class. The work resulted in a doctoral thesis and the findings were adapted to inform course design and employability initiatives. For several years subsequently I became immersed in designing and improving vocational learning both in the UK and internationally, including establishing a creative industries campus in China, and improving access to graduate work in the UK.

I went on to draft national policy on the future of post-18 education in the UK, proposing better links between educators and labour markets, more integrated and responsive skills education across further and higher education, and funding reforms to enable through-life learning. I am currently conducting research into ethnicity and work in advertising, and I am lucky enough to be called upon to advise the development of vocational learning internationally.

Graham Meikle is Professor of Communication and Digital Media in the College of Design, Creative and Digital Industries. He teaches a core introductory undergraduate module on cultural aspects of the internet each autumn, and leads an MA programme, as well as supervising PhD students and publishing research. Graham is passionate about the nexus between teaching and research and sees this relationship as the most important aspect of higher education. For 20 years, at three universities, a guiding concern of his teaching has been how to foster different kinds of literacy in creative ways. Much of this has involved using social media platforms as learning and teaching spaces, including many years of video essays and collaborative class blogs.

Graham has created and led four degree courses: one MA and one BA at Westminster, and two Master’s degrees at Stirling, where he was Senior Lecturer from 2007 to 2013. He earlier spent seven years lecturing at Macquarie University in Sydney, where he completed a PhD in Media and Communication, and a Master’s in Media, Technology and Law; Graham also has an MA (Hons) in English Literature from Edinburgh University. He is a Senior Fellow of the Higher Education Academy, and an advisor to Westminster colleagues working towards their own fellowships. Before his postgraduate work, Graham taught English in Japan, Ecuador and Spain, and Academic English and IELTS preparation courses in Sydney: he continues to draw upon this experience in his work with many international students in the UK. Graham has published seven books. He has written The Internet of Things (with Mercedes Bunz, 2018), Social Media (2016), Media Convergence (with Sherman Young, 2012), Interpreting News (2009) and Future Active (2002). He has edited News Online (with Guy Redden, 2011) and The Routledge Companion to Media and Activism (2018).

Dr Celia Jenkins is a Principal Lecturer in Sociology and committed to social justice for all staff and students. Her specialist areas are education, religion and research methods and she has taught across undergraduate courses in Sociology, Criminology and Women’s Studies and postgraduate courses in Globalisation, Law and Religion and the Postgraduate Certificate and MA in Higher Education. She has had responsibilities including Faculty Senior Tutor and Disability Tutor and sat on a range of university committees on learning, teaching and student experience, about which she cares deeply. She was course leader for Sociology for many years, steering it successfully to a 100% NSS score in 2015 and it was ranked 2nd in London in the Guardian league tables in 2016.

Celia describes her philosophy of teaching as a socially- just pedagogy which entails an inclusive curriculum and a commitment to social justice, providing her mostly non-traditional students with the critical knowledge, skills and abilities to exercise their pedagogic rights to personal enhancement, inclusion and political participation and has written about this in a recently edited book on Socially Just Pedagogies in Higher Education. Her current action research with the transnational Alevi community and local schools aimed to counter the marginalisation that the second generation experience in schools by introducing Alevism lessons into the core Religious Education curriculum. The positive outcomes and curriculum pack are being disseminated for use in other schools in the UK and beyond. She was awarded a National Teaching Fellowship in 2018.

Tony Burke is Head of the Centre for Education and Teaching Innovation. His academic background is in Built Environment Education and he qualified as a Chartered Building Surveyor prior to embarking on an academic career. He was the Programme Leader of the large Undergraduate Construction Studies Programme at Westminster and in this role, he provided academic leadership to the programme team and taught extensively on professionally accredited degree courses related to the construction and surveying professions. His main areas of teaching included construction technology, statutory control and building conservation.

His teaching philosophy is based on the idea that learning takes place within a broad context that extends well beyond the classroom. He believes that the teacher’s role should be to support students in a holistic way by designing a framework within which learning can take place, integrating learning resources, harnessing the power of digital technologies and promoting collaboration.

He is a regular contributor to conferences, especially the annual Innovation in Built Environment Education (iBEE). In 2016, with his colleague Rob Garvey, he won the Chartered Institute of Building’s Premier Award for Innovation in Education and Training, for the development of the first Massive Open Online Course (MOOC) in Digital Construction.

In recent years he has increasingly worked across the University promoting various initiatives relating to learning and teaching, including developing learning communities and embedding employability in the curriculum. Currently he has a particular focus on working with course teams to support them in the development of new courses and in the review and revalidation of existing courses.

His doctoral research analyses curriculum development in universities as an activity system, using cultural-historical activity theory.

Tony was awarded a National Teaching Fellowship in 2018.