Appointed 2025

Sarah Montano is an experienced retail marketing academic and a 2023 National Teaching Fellow (AdvanceHE). Sarah holds the award of Principal Fellowship of the Higher Education Academy. Her work on digital learning has been used to demonstrate the digital excellence internationally. As a first-generation student she is acutely aware of how when at university she lacked social capital.

This inspired her to begin her pioneering work in digital pedagogy and much of her work in digital innovation has been to ensure equality of access for all students. Sarah’s teaching is heavily influenced by her industry practice and through this, she delivers engaging industry relevant teaching and authentic assessments via an experiential learning approach. Her pedagogical research interests are primarily around how industry practice can be reflected in assessments, digital education and graduate employability skill development. Sarah’s academic area of research is retail and consumer behaviour. In addition, Sarah is researching the role of retail in creating community 3^rd places for women. She is an engaging and skilled communicator and regularly appears in the media on the subject of retail industry change.