Current Governing Council Members

Governing Council Officers

• Professor Pauline Kneale, Chair, University of Plymouth
• Professor Jacqueline Stevenson, Vice-Chair, Open University
• Ms. Andrea Cameron, Honorary Treasurer, Abertay University

Pauline Kneale, awarded a national Teaching Fellowship in 2002, is currently Professor of Pedagogy and Enterprise, and Director of the Pedagogic Research Institute and Observatory (PedRIO) at the University of Plymouth. Previous experience includes Directing the White Rose Centre for Excellence in Teaching and Learning of Enterprise at the University of Leeds 2005-10, and The Higher Education Academy Subject Centre for Geography, Earth and Environmental Sciences, (2009-11).

Pauline established and directs PedRIO, one of the six cross Faculty University Institutes. Now in its eighth year, it has an excellent track record in developing staff as pedagogic researchers, and has developed a conference series which attracts staff from many Universities. Pauline’s research focuses on student skills, Masters level teaching, inclusive assessment and student’s experience of University. Recent research publications in collaboration with the PedRIO team and external partners have addressed: transition issues to university; the retention of non-traditional students; evaluating the role and impact of undergraduate research conferences; evaluating the impact of academic development interventions; and the position of pedagogic research in REF2014.

SRHE Committees:
Chair of the Governing Council
(All Committees)

Jacqueline Stevenson is the former Director of the Lifelong Learning Centre at the University of Leeds. She is a sociologist of education with interests in equity and diversity, widening participation, and student success. Her research focusses in particular on the differential higher education experiences of students from black and minority ethnic backgrounds, religious students, international students, and refugees and other forced migrants. She draws on the theoretical lenses of resilience, belonging, mattering, time, temporality and future selves. She was previously Head of Research in the Sheffield Institute of Education, Sheffield Hallam University and Professor of Higher Education at Leeds Beckett University.

SRHE Committees:
Chair of the Governance and Appointments Committee
Member of the Management & Finance Committee

Andrea Cameron is the Head of School of Social and Health Sciences and the Intellectual Lead for Teaching and Learning at Abertay University. She is a Principal Fellow of the Higher Education Academy and has progressed a number of student experience enhancement issues in the various posts she has held since joining Abertay in 2003. Most recently, she has led strategic initiatives relating to Employability, Academic Tutoring, Embedding Equality and Diversity in the Curriculum, Staff Profiling and Accelerated Degrees.

She maintains an active role in the classroom leading a sport placement module and an institutional Elective module (‘Ethical Reasoning for a Global Society’). She has presented and published work in relation to Personal Development Planning, professional reflective practice and heightening employability, inclusion of those with protected characteristics, and closing the attainment gap for those from widening participation backgrounds. Andrea has also been the recipient of awards for her work engaging students with voluntary organisations. She is a Governor of the Dundee Education Trust, a trustee of the Dundee Dragons Wheelchair Sports Club, and an editorial panel member of the Diabetes Wellness News.

Before becoming a sport scientist, Andrea was, and remains, a registered nurse teacher. She continues to produce patient publications for a Diabetes charity. Her interests in heightening skills, competency and employability in graduates derive from her clinical nurse teaching experiences. Andrea is also a mother of one and an accomplished athlete, representing Scotland and England at long distance track events as well as cross-country.

SRHE Committees:
All Committees  – Ex Officio
Member of the Management & Finance Committee

Council Members

• Professor Dina Belluigi, Queen’s University Belfast
• Professor Liz Bennett, University of Huddersfield
• Dr Joy Garfield, Aston University
• Dr Karen Gravett, University of Surrey
• Professor Camille Kandiko Howson, Imperial College London
• Professor Chris Millward, University of Birmingham
• Professor Gina Wisker, University of Bath

Dina Zoe Belluigi is a Professor at the School of Social Sciences, Education and Social Work (SSESW) at Queen’s University Belfast (Northern Ireland); a Visiting Professor at the Chair for the Critical Studies of Higher Education Transformation (CriSHET), Nelson Mandela University (South Africa) and the School of Women’s Studies, Jadavpur University (India).

Informed by critical traditions, her academic scholarship and practice revolves around understanding and addressing inequality and oppression within, and by, the university. Her research interests are underpinned by a concern with the politics of representation and citizenship within the university, constructions of academic authority and freedom, and the ways in which these are negotiated by intellectuals of the Majority World. She has engaged with various methods and analytical approaches; and increasingly is interested in visual and creative research about universities. She is part of an actively growing network asking questions of the idea of the African university. She serves on the SARS-Ireland (Scholars at Risk Ireland) Committee.

SRHE Committees:
Member of the Research & Development Committee

Liz Bennett is Emerita Professor of Education at University of Huddersfield. In 2023 she became a National Teaching Fellow in recognition of her work promoting technology enhanced learning and leading curriculum design to promote active learning, employability, retention and inclusion. She is an editor of Research in Learning Technology and has published in the area of academics’ and students’ responses to use of digital tools.

SRHE Committees:
Member of the Publications Committee

Joy Garfield is a Senior Teaching Fellow and Director of Learning and Teaching for an academic department at Aston Business School.  Her subject discipline area is information systems, particularly the early stages of systems development, systems modelling and complex problem solving.  Joy has a passion for teaching and working towards improving the student experience.  With just over 20 years of experience in academia in teaching, research and management, she has worked at a number of UK universities including the University of Manchester, and the University of Birmingham. Joy has been involved with key strategic, curriculum, and quality developments through course directorship of a range of undergraduate and postgraduate programmes.  Joy is a Senior Fellow of the Higher Education Academy and is currently an external examiner at Sheffield Hallam University and the University of Westminster.

SRHE Committees:
Member of the Research & Development Committee

Karen Gravett is Senior Lecturer at the Surrey Institute of Education at the University of Surrey, UK, where her research focuses on the theory and practice of learning in higher education, and explores the areas of student engagement, belonging, digital education, and relational pedagogies.

Karen is Director of the Language, Literacies and Learning research group, co-convenor of the SRHE Learning, Teaching and Assessment network, and a member of the editorial board for Teaching in Higher Education. Her work has been funded by the Society for Research in Higher Education, the Association for Learning Development in Higher Education, the British Association for Applied Linguistics, the UK Literacy Association and the Arts and Humanities Research Council. Karen is a Principal Fellow of Advance HE.

Karen’s work is published in leading journals including Studies in Higher Education, Teaching in Higher Education, Higher Education, Learning, Media and Technology, and the International Journal of Qualitative Methods. Her latest books are: Gravett, K. (due 2023) Relational Pedagogies: Connections and mattering in higher education, and Kinchin, I. M. and Gravett, K. (2022) Dominant discourses in higher education: Critical perspectives, cartographies and practice.

SRHE Committees:
Member of the Publications Committee

Camille Kandiko Howson is Professor of Education in the Centre for Higher Education Research and Scholarship (CHERS) at Imperial College London. She is an international expert in higher education research with a focus on student engagement; student outcomes and learning gain; equity and social justice; and quality, performance and accountability. She is Chair of the SRHE Research and Development Committee, which she has served on since 2012. Camille has an extensive record of securing external funding from numerous sources, including UKRI; HEFCE; OfS; AdvanceHE; the Quality Assurance Agency (QAA); the Society for Research into Higher Education (SRHE); RAND Europe; and the British Council. She has held previous academic positions at King’s College London. She is passionate about making higher education more equitable and fair, supporting women and those underrepresented to access, succeed and work in academia. She is a Principal Fellow of the Higher Education Academy.

SRHE Committees:
Chair of the Research & Development Committee

Chris Millward is Professor of Practice in Education Policy at the University of Birmingham.  In this role he is concerned with bridging between education research and practice, with a particular focus on tertiary education systems and policy, and educational pathways and transitions across the lifecourse.  Alongside his work at Birmingham and as a SRHE Trustee, Chris is a Marshall Scholarships Commissioner, a member of the British Council’s Educational Advisory Group and Chair of the Advisory Board for the Centre for Global Higher Education.

From 2018-21, Chris served for four years as the first Director for Fair Access and Participation at England’s higher education regulator, the Office for Students.  Prior to being appointed as the access regulator, Chris was Director of Policy at the Higher Education Funding Council for England.  He joined the Funding Council in 2006 from the Arts and Humanities Research Council, where he was Head of Research Programmes from 2002-2006.

Chris grew up in Stockport and attended his local comprehensive school.  He then studied at the universities of Warwick and Manchester, and spent the first years of his career working at the universities of Warwick, Edinburgh and Durham.

SRHE Committees:
Member of the Research & Development Committee

Gina Wisker, former Head of the University of Brighton’s Centre for Learning & Teaching, Professor of Higher Education & Contemporary Literature teaches and researches in learning, teaching, postgraduate study supervision and academic writing. With 25 books (some edited) and over 140 articles published including: The Postgraduate Research Handbook (2001, 2008) The Good Supervisor (2005, 2012,); Getting Published (2015). Gina also specialises in Twentieth-century women’s writing, postcolonial, Gothic & popular fictions: Key Concepts in Postcolonial Writing (2007) Horror (2005), Margaret Atwood, an Introduction to Critical Views of Her Fiction (2012) Contemporary Women’s Gothic Fiction (2016).Gina has supervised 31 PhD students to completion and examined 40. She chaired the Heads of Education Development Group, SEDA Scholarship &Research committee, and the Contemporary Women’s Writing association and is chief editor of the SEDA journal Innovations in Education and Teaching International, dark fantasy online journal Dissections and poetry magazine Spokes. Gina is an HEA Principal Fellow, National Teaching Fellow & SFSEDA.

SRHE Committees:
Member of the Publications Committee

Standing Committees

Governing Council oversee four sub-committees who meet regularly to oversee particular areas of activity. These Committee are:

• Governance and Appointments
• Research and Development
• Publications
• Management and Finance

To learn more about the SRHE Standing Committees and thier remits visit https://srhe.ac.uk/about-srhe/standing-committees/