This is part of a series of posts celebrating the champions of our institutional Advance HE fellowship recognition scheme, Beacon. Beacon has awarded more than 1000 fellowships since its launch in 2015. Beacon is led by Marios Hadjianastasis and Jamie Morris.
Dr Kamilya Suleymenova and Dr Inci Toral are valuable collaborators for the Beacon Scheme, based in the University of Birmingham’s Business School. They have supported Beacon processes through mentoring and assessing, while promoting Senior Fellowship in the Business School and supporting colleagues in applying and achieving recogntion. Inci and Kamilya have both been awarded PFHEA in November 2025, which demonstrates their strategic vision and impact at UoB and beyond. They recorded a video for us, enjoy! And don’t forget to subscribe.
This is part of a series of posts celebrating the champions of our institutional Advance HE fellowship recognition scheme, Beacon. Beacon has awarded more than 1000 fellowships since its launch in 2015. Beacon is led by Marios Hadjianastasis and Jamie Morris.
Dr Asim Bashir is a Teaching Fellow in English for Academic Purposes at University of Birmingham Dubai. Asim has been working with the Beacon team as a Dubai champion, promoting the Beacon scheme and supporting and mentoring colleagues in Dubai applying for fellowship, especially Senior Fellowship. Asim has also been mentoring and assessing with the Beacon team more widely.
What have you been doing in your context to support Beacon fellowship and recognition?
At the University of Birmingham Dubai, I have worked to make fellowship and professional recognition a visible and valued part of our academic culture. I designed and delivered workshops that unpack the Professional Standards Framework in an accessible way, helping colleagues see how their everyday teaching already reflects the principles of good teaching, leadership, and scholarship. These sessions focus on reflection and practical examples, encouraging colleagues to view fellowship as an opportunity for growth rather than a formal exercise. Alongside this, I mentor colleagues across career stages on their Associate, Fellow, and Senior Fellowship applications, creating a supportive environment for open discussion and reflection. As a panel member of the Advance HE Gulf Network, I also share insights from our Dubai initiatives and learn from regional partners, ensuring that our approach remains both globally informed and locally relevant.
How did you get people on board?
When I first started promoting fellowship, there was hesitation. Many colleagues saw it as a bureaucratic task rather than a developmental opportunity. To change this perception, I introduced short, informal “fellowship conversations”, where we discussed what effective teaching looks like in our context and how this aligns with the PSF. I also shared my own Senior Fellowship journey and encouraged colleagues to tell their stories. These narratives helped demystify the process and shifted the tone from evaluation to reflection. As more staff achieved recognition and shared their experiences, interest grew naturally. My involvement with the Advance HE Gulf Network also reinforced that we are part of a wider professional community where fellowship is a shared, evolving practice.
Why do you do it?
Supporting others through fellowship captures what I believe leadership in education should be: helping others reflect, grow, and connect. Every mentoring session or workshop becomes a shared learning experience, deepening both my own understanding and that of colleagues. As a Senior Fellow, I see this as a responsibility, not an optional extra. Senior Fellowship means giving back, developing others, nurturing reflective practice, and contributing to the wider education community. This work reminds me that recognition is not about status but about creating a culture where reflection and support become normal practice.
What does having fellowship mean for your local teaching culture?
Fellowship provides colleagues a shared framework for discussing learning and teaching. It has encouraged staff to see teaching as a reflective, evidence-based practice that evolves through collaboration. A mentoring network has also emerged, where Fellows and Senior Fellows now guide others through the process, creating a cycle of support and shared learning. For many, including myself, SFHEA represents a commitment to developing others and contributing to collective growth. I remind colleagues that Senior Fellowship is not the end of the journey but the beginning of a new phase of leadership, one where our success is measured by how we help others succeed.
Tell us what was a ‘warm-glow’ moment for you?
A warm-glow moment for me comes from reading colleagues’ LinkedIn posts sharing their fellowship success and reflections on the mentoring support they received. Seeing their confidence grow and their voices strengthen in the professional community is deeply rewarding. Another memorable moment was speaking at the Advance HE Gulf Network event on recognition cultures in international campuses. Hearing other universities express interest in adapting our mentoring model confirmed the wider value of our work. These moments remind me that the joy of fellowship lies in transformation, the point where reflection becomes identity and identity becomes leadership.
How can we better celebrate these achievements?
We can celebrate better by sharing stories more widely. Fellowship achievements should not remain in records but be visible and inspiring. Recently, I invited a newly recognised Senior Fellow to deliver a workshop about their journey from start to finish. Their honest discussion of challenges and breakthroughs made the process real and relatable. It showed how peer-led storytelling can demystify fellowship and motivate others. We also share reflections through newsletters and campus events, highlighting how colleagues apply what they learned. Leadership support is vital too, linking recognition to priorities such as AI readiness, inclusivity, and innovation. Above all, celebration should value the reflective process itself, not just the outcome.
A final thought
The Beacon initiative represents the best kind of professional learning, reflective, collaborative, and purposeful. As a Senior Fellow, I believe recognition comes with responsibility: to mentor, advocate, and give back to the sector. My engagement with the Advance HE Gulf Network reinforces that this is a shared endeavour across the region, where educators are building reflective, connected communities of practice. Fellowship, at its best, is not a reward but a commitment, to curiosity, generosity, and continuous learning.
In 2024 we organised a successful education conference at the University of Birmingham which focused on Generative AI in HE, and which hosted delegates and speakers from across the sector. The conference which ran over 2 days at our Edgbaston and Dubai campuses and online, was a huge success: it offered lively debate, sharing of good practice, and ultimately gave attendees food for thought with practical ideas and solutions for what was (and still is) an ongoing topic in HE pedagogy.
The Edgbaston conference keynote was Professor Mike Sharples, whose talk was both pragmatic and inspirational, helping us focus on pedagogy and principles which matter most: student learning.
A selection of 9 papers from the conference was included in our subsequent Education in Practice Issue 6.1 (Spring 2025), which includes a paper by Mike Sharples, and a host of other contributors, all highlighting different uses of AI in teaching at Birmingham.
To see the table of contents and download the papers go to this LINK.
Our latest case study is titled ‘Feeling the code’: Emotions in programming and interventions supporting positivity, and focuses on teaching introductory coding to Masters students in different contexts, including bioinformatics and computer science, with students learning on-campus or via distance learning. The case study highlights the importance of emotions in this learning setting, and assesses students’ attitudes towards learning coding.
The team came together to understand the often-neglected emotional dimension of the experience of learning to code and what we can do as educators to humanise the learning experience and make it more positive for everyone.
For more details and to download the case study go here.
Our latest case study focuses on embedding employability in postgraduate taught programmes, and the value of integrating skills within the curriculum.
Jemma Saunders manages the Placement and Training module for the MA in Film and Television at University of Birmingham, also supporting industry events and opportunities for wider student cohorts. Outside her professional role, she is working towards completion of an Audiovisual PhD exploring screen representations of Birmingham, and is on the editorial team of Fragments, a journal of videographic form and method.
This is part of a series of posts celebrating the champions of our institutional Advance HE fellowship recognition scheme, Beacon. Beacon has awarded more than 1000 fellowships since its launch in 2015. Beacon is led by Marios Hadjianastasis and Jamie Morris.
Dr Julia Lodge is a Reader in the School of Biosciences at the University of Birmingham. Julia has contributed greatly to the scheme as an assessor and mentor for applicants, especially PGR students who teach in Biosciences as postgraduate teaching assistants (PGTAs). This is an important step in the recognition and employability prospects of doctoral students at UoB.
What have you been doing in your context to support Beacon fellowship and recognition?
Practical Laboratory classes are fundamental to the way that Biosciences is taught. They allow our students to develop essential practical skills but are also an opportunity for them to develop as scientists as they apply knowledge and discuss their ideas with others. Post Graduate Teaching Assistants are essential to delivering this important plank of our teaching.
When I took on the role of PGTA coordinator for the School of Biosciences I looked for ways to provide continuing professional development for our PGTAs beyond the initial training that they do before taking on the role. The Beacon fellowship programme has proved to be a very effective way of doing this as it gives PGTAs an opportunity for formal recognition for the teaching that they do and encourages them to develop themselves as reflective practitioners from an early stage of their careers.
How did you get people on board?
I support the Beacon scheme by working proactively to encourage PGTAs to apply for Associate Fellow of the HEA. Together with colleagues from the Beacon programme I hold bespoke Beacon Orientation Workshops for PGTAs who are interested in applying. I think that these workshops are particularly effective because I have a good overview of the work that they do and can advise about how to use their specific experience to evidence an application. They also provide a good opportunity for peer support.
I also make a point of celebrating successful applicants making sure that their achievement is recognised in School communications and on our social media.
Why do you do it? What does having fellowship mean for your local teaching culture?
I think that engagement with the Beacon programme is a key driver of the increased professionalism that we have seen amongst our PGTAs. They see that their work is recognised and valued beyond the specific class that they are supporting. The reflective approach that the application requires also develops their understanding of themselves as educators; I think sometimes they don’t understand what a good job they do until they write about it.
What was a ‘warm-glow’ moment for you?
My warm glow moments are when I read the thoughtful and reflective applications from PGTAs who I have watched develop as educators over two or three years of working with us in labs and workshops.
Our latest paper is a critical literature review and reflection on practice in HE on the topic of disability inclusion within healthcare education. Written by Dr Katharine Weetman, an Assistant Professor in Clinical Communication at the Interactive Studies Unit of the Birmingham Medical School, the paper is of relevance to all HE practitioners who are concerned with EDI, and especially specific types of disability.
The paper was developed based on a final assignment for our PGCHE programme.
Lindsey Compton, Associate Professor in Genetics from the School of Biosciences comments on embracing educational research for academics from a STEM background (and beyond!), after an event of our Education Research and Scholarship Network on 30 October 2025.
Over the years as University educators, we come to know our own students the best! What works (or doesn’t work!) well for them in our context? How do they think and respond to the content we deliver as we teach the subjects we know and love? How do different approaches land or don’t land with our students to help them to engage and progress? So, what better setting in which to trust our own intuition as to what education research questions are the best ones to ask right now to improve the student experience in a data-driven way? Education research is for everyone who wants the educational experience of their students to be the best it can possibly be, so believe in your ideas and if it is new to you then do enjoy delving into the exotic world of social science!
Wordcloud with participants’ responses to “What motivates you to pursue pedagogical research?”
Here are my top five tips for fellow academic scientists from a STEM background who are thinking about taking the plunge into education research:
Be proud of your educational enhancement work and shout about it from the rooftops! In our disciplinary contexts, it can be all too easy to feel like our worth is recognised only through the research income we generate. But perhaps the most valuable contributions we make are not the ones we can easily measure! You will always remember the priceless moment where your students have really valued the difference you made to their special days at university.
Revel in the joy in discovering new research methods! Like a kid in a sweetshop, I discovered methods such as collaborative autoethnography and will now be using it to develop insights into programme leadership. The bread-and-butter methods used in education research can seem exotic and even other-worldly to STEM practitioners!
Get involved in the workshops, seminars and communities of practice organised by the Educational Development team. When the emails are piling up, it can feel difficult to justify the time spent away from your day-to-day work, but you will be glad you did! Most importantly – you deserve to make space for your own professional development. It can be really nourishing for the soul to connect with colleagues in different disciplines, share experience and stories, get inspired and maybe even identify opportunities for future collaboration!
Work on what matters to you! Once you have a project in mind, find like-minded people to work with who care about the same things. And definitely invest in finding collaborators who have experience with the approaches you want to use or the relevant theories.
Stay in your lane! There are different “levels” on which we might engage with educational research. Find the level that is within your scope of experience. If you are aiming to develop or enhance a new theory that will change the way we conceptualise or understand an aspect of learning, that is wonderful! But for many academics, practice-based research will feel much more accessible and will enable you to innovate to improve what you do based on observations from your own context – and who doesn’t want that!
Word cloud with participants’ responses to ““What puts you off from carrying out pedagogical research?””
We are pleased to announce our second seminar of this year, titled: ‘The Unwritten Curriculum: Developing an education career through mistakes, missteps and making connections’.
This seminar provides the opportunity for you to hear Professor Lesley Batty (GEES) talk frankly about her journey at UoB as a teaching-focussed member of staff and learn how she navigated through the highs and lows of this journey to provide innovative research-led teaching in GEES.
We are pleased to announce that our latest article is a very useful investigation into HE practice, especially with regards to data collection and support for students, identifying limitations in policy, and proposing ways for overcoming them. The article, titled ‘Neurodivergence in Higher Education: Data, Practice, and Pathways to Inclusion’, was produced by Dr Qamar Natsheh and Dr Rickson Mesquita, both from the School of Computer Science at the University of Birmingham.
This paper emerged from interdisciplinary discussions exploring how neuroscience could inform inclusive practices for neurodivergent individuals, particularly those with ASD and ADHD. It integrated recent neuroimaging insights from an MSc project with pedagogical research and experience to examine neurodivergence in higher education through data, practice, and inclusive pathways. The paper was initially developed as part of a PGCert final assignment project.
Education in Practice Network 