I am a psycholinguist; educationist; SEN specialist; academic, communication and study skills expert with considerable experience in teacher training (TESOL focus) and a passion for EAP, Education Studies and the Sociology of Education. I have been teaching since 2001 and working as a university lecturer since 2004 (both abroad and in the UK). More recently, I worked as a co-ordinator for Pre-sessional Programmes with the University of York and now advise colleagues and students on the development of academic and communication skills.

My current interests cover exploring interdisciplinarity in course development, online EAP course design, teacher education, and educational inequalities.

I’m a Teaching Fellow at the University of St Andrews and I am module convenor for two modules on our MSc TESOL: English for Academic Purposes and Technology for Teaching. I have worked in EAP since 2009. I am the Web Coordinator for the BALEAP TEdSIG. 

I have been involved with EAP in Scotland at Heriot-Watt University since 2015. I teach in-sessional EAP courses for Computer Science and work on the Pre-sessional programmes, developing all courses and as Course Director for one of them. Before moving back to Scotland I taught EAP at Bocconi University in Milan and Università Cattolica for 15 years. I also worked as a teacher/examiner for the British Council Milan.

My research interests are how teachers manage planned and spontaneous ‘teachable moments’ in EAP classes. I’m also interested in ways to help students communicate their research multimodally.

I’m working towards becoming a TEAP Fellow and planning to begin an EdD next year.

My first experience teaching in higher education was as a postgraduate teaching assistant at the University of Southampton where I taught Politics and International Relations modules while doing my PhD. Since then, I have moved on to English language teaching, having worked in the UK, Spain and Portugal. After working on my first pre-sessional EAP course in 2018, I fell in love with the discipline and decided to pursue it as a career. I have recently become an Associate Fellow of the HEA and I am currently working towards gaining a Cambridge DELTA (EAP specialism). I am interested in academic literacies, academic integrity and teacher education. 

I am a Senior Lecturer in Academic Development at the London campus of the University of Sunderland. My current responsibilities include leading on learning design, developing an observation framework for the campus, conducting teacher training and delivering module-specific in-sessional ESAP courses in priority undergraduate and postgraduate programmes. Previously, I was a teacher trainer, SIG leader and Cambridge ESOL oral examiner at Bell Sofia. I also spent a few years in Scotland where I worked for The University of Strathclyde, Glasgow International College and the University of Edinburgh. My main research interests are theoretical and pedagogical practices in course design, genre-based approaches to material development, academic literacy instruction, and teacher education and training.