Our NTF and CATE Award Holders

On this page, you can browse our list of National Teaching Fellowship (NTF) and Collaborative Award for Teaching Excellence (CATE) award holders. You can also read reflections from some of our recent NTF winners on the award and their advice for colleagues.

Information about all the award winners are available on the Advance HE NTF winners webpage and Advance HE CATE winners webpage. In addition, our external advisor for these awards, Peter Hartley (NTF), provides his reflections on the benefits of teaching awards. 

"It is absolutely amazing to have been recognised as a National Teaching Fellow. I have been inspired for many years by the work of colleagues who are already NTFs so I am thrilled and a little shocked, to be recognised alongside those very colleagues who inspired me.  The award has boosted my confidence enormously.

I was honoured that senior colleagues believed in my teaching and scholarship and have been overwhelmed with the generous support from the NTF support team at Leeds – Peter Hartley and Kate Exley have been remarkable and very patient during the application process.

I thoroughly recommend succumbing to the reflective process as it was very rewarding, it was tough, but certainly worthwhile and I feel I have grown as a result. I now have a very different personal view of my scholarship and teaching and what motivates me as an educator.

Thanks also to Bee Bond who reviewed round three of my ‘final’ draft and encouraged me to be bolder and more confident in my text.  It is a real privilege to work alongside such colleagues at the University of Leeds, enjoy the mental space to develop, and to have such world class support.

I am very excited to embrace the opportunity to work with fellow NTFs and hope to gain insights from the opportunities that the network offers while I continue a path in research on designing and visualising pedagogical approaches in teaching and learning.

If others are interested in developing their teaching or scholarship my advice is very simple:

• Follow your passion and find others who share it. Reach out and connect with them.  I have been lucky enough to find this amongst LITE fellows and also in TALENT.  Finding likeminded people will ignite your own ideas and also create lasting friendships.  Meet with them, build on your ideas with them, ask them for help.
• Test your ideas, build prototypes and make them real. Show your ideas to trusted colleagues and certainly try it out with your students.
• Build a portfolio of evidence. Plan to have several scholarship projects running in parallel, each with a run up of about 2-3 years before you collect data, write it up and disseminate. Collect evidence along the way. Learn to incorporate ethical approval so you can share any outputs."

"For me, the most important part of becoming a National Teaching Fellow was the process of completing the application itself. It took me three attempts to get the award. The fact that senior colleagues at Leeds believed my work is valuable enough to give me three chances was as validating as the award itself. It also gave me the confidence, some of the supporting evidence and the right ‘writing mindset’ to apply for promotion at the same time. I became a professor before I became an NTF in the end!

My area of work relies heavily on cross-institutional collaboration and recognition of the value of what we all do in the Language Centre. Writing the application, talking to my mentor about our work (thank you Peter Hartley!) and collecting evidence of its impact really helped me to recognise for myself what we have already achieved. The award has provided public recognition of an area of work that remains side-lined or hidden in many institutions. The possibility of new connections and collaborations available through the NTF networks will, I hope, help to make my discipline and the students we work with more visible and valued.

My advice to colleagues who are developing their teaching profile would be:

• Mentor and support others. There is intrinsic reward in developing mentoring relationships and watching the success of those you mentor, but you also learn enormous amounts yourself from their practice. This is particularly true when they work in a different discipline.
• Become a PRiSE assessor (once you become a Senior Fellow of Advance HE). This gives you great insight into the range and wealth of practices across Leeds, helps you really understand how a good application of this kind should be written and gives you a ready-made community of other assessors who are hugely knowledgeable and willing to share
• Take the time to read, reflect and engage in the scholarship of others. We spend a lot of time doing in student education, but it’s important to have a theoretical understanding of why you do what you do and to be able to articulate this to others.
• Take chances. Don’t be afraid to experiment and try out new things, making sure you do it ethically and systematically and are prepared to learn from failures as much as from success."

View Bee's University staff profile

"Being awarded one of this year’s National Teaching Fellowships feels simultaneously unbelievable, exciting and incredibly special! To be selected as one of the institution’s nominees was, in itself, very flattering, given the number of outstanding educators that work within the university. The process of reflection involved in the NTF process has been valuable for helping me to identify my values as an educator. It provided me with the opportunity to bring together the impact of my teaching and research throughout my career. It has been extremely fulfilling and a great reminder of why I do what I do! I am extremely proud to now be joining the community of NTFs and to receive such prestigious national recognition of my impact as an educator and student education leader. As I embark upon my new role as the University’s academic lead for Surfacing Skills and Student Futures, this award gives me confidence that my work is having a positive impact on students at Leeds and on the wider network of HE educators. I am excited to work with the wider network of NTFs, to learn more about their practice, to share my own, and to develop future collaborations. 

My advice to colleagues developing their teaching profile would be:

• Reflect on your values and purpose as an educator; what matters to you and why? 
• Take on student education roles and use them to learn and to develop your practice and scholarship; read, listen to what others are doing, share your ideas, and initiate collaborations to try out new ideas. 
• Immerse yourself in any student education networks available – in your school/institution/discipline; keep an open mind and be inquisitive. 
• Seek (funded) opportunities to test new ideas/practice as pilot studies: reflect, refine and try again.  
• Keep a diary of the positive things – feedback from others, new ideas – tested and refined. Note the small successes/failures - they will help you tell your story in the future. 
• Seek out collaborations within and beyond your discipline/school/university/country; different perspectives are so valuable for developing informed and influential ideas and practices.  
• Consider the implications and applications of your learning and practice; how might your insights help/inform/benefit others?"

View Karen’s University staff profile

"My research and scholarship over recent years has focused on the educational experiences of students from minoritised backgrounds.  This has shaped my practice and informed every part of what I do as a teacher from curriculum design, through assessment to pastoral support.  It is important to me that when students are brave and honest enough to share their experiences with me that I give a platform to those experiences and amplify them so their voices are heard, hopefully improving things for future cohorts.  This fellowship is important because it helps to amplify those minoritised voices and, I hope, will make those students feel that their contribution to improving higher education is valuable.

My contribution to the national debate on HE is grounded in the belief that education can be empowering but can also be a tool of oppression.  This perspective is often seen as critical and has been criticised by many, including those in government shaping educational policy.  This Fellowship is therefore a timely reminder that those of us who come from the critical pedagogy and critical race theory traditions are making a positive contribution to shaping a more inclusive and transformative HE sector and it is important to have this recognised.

To help me develop my critical reflexivity I started the Anti-racist Book Club with my partner in 2018.  It has met most months since, usually online, and brings together a range of people from different backgrounds.  Studying key anti-racist texts and discussing them with others has really helped me develop my reflexivity and understand my privilege in a positive way.  I would encourage everyone to explore their positionality and think about how heteronormativity, patriarchy, ableism and whiteness (amongst other things) have impacted who they are and  their professional practice.

I remember being told that evidencing impact is different from esteem and this helped me prepare my nomination.  Esteem may be because of impact but it is not sufficient evidence of it.  It’s also important to be able to talk about what your contribution was to all the projects you discuss – what you did collectively as a team is important but this is an individual award and therefore the assessors need to understand what your individual contribution was.  Finally, collect evidence of everything, save those tweets about your conference presentations or those grateful emails from students because that’s all evidence.

There is an active network of existing NTF and CATE holders at Leeds and this gives me a great opportunity to get involved working with them.  Advance HE also encourage and facilitate collaborative work between National Teaching Fellows so I am hopeful that I’ll get involved in some really interesting collaborative projects with other universities.  There’s no doubt this recognition will enhance my network and I’m sure I can look forward to being kept busy with exciting L&T projects for a long time!"

View Nick's University staff profile. Nick's nomination for National Teaching Fellowship was made whilst working at the University of Northampton where he worked from 2013-2022.

"Being awarded a National Teaching Fellowship is special in so many ways.  Firstly, being invited by senior staff at Leeds to apply for an NTF is confidence boosting in itself, that others recognise what you do, and acknowledge that you are worthy of making the application. Secondly, receiving feedback from the reviewers at Advance HE affirms that external educators see the value of your work, and its impact on students, staff and stakeholders in the field.  It is also nice that Advance HE makes a big splash about celebrating the achievements of all its new NTFs, showing they really value the scheme and the achievement. This publicity is also a good way to further extend your national profile.

There are several networks run by Advance HE specifically for NTFs which you are invited to join when you win. This immediately connects you with a diverse group of people across all HE institutions and disciplines, but all with one thing in common, being an NTF. And for me, the real excitement is the national recognition that the award of NTF brings, which facilitates the development of new and extended collaborations.

My advice to colleagues developing their teaching profile would be:

• Keep an ongoing record of what you have done, at Leeds and in the national/international arena.  It’s hard to recall it all when needed!
• Keep a record of nice things people say about you. This is useful evidence/quotes for your application.
• Depending on your career stage, elect to be mentored, or offer to mentor other staff. This will help tease out your talents and skills. It’s often easier to have others recognise and extol your virtues. And the success of your mentee is evidence of your impact.
• Try to involve yourself in the national scene, whether through discipline committees, conferences, workshops etc.  Offer to take on a specific role.  This leads to impact and recognition of your work nationally/internationally.
• Apply for funding for teaching initiatives.  Even small amounts show your success and impact."

View Alison's University staff profile

"Preparing my NTF claim was a valuable exercise in reflecting on my own career. For the last decade, my professional development has focused on leadership in University teaching. I have completed the Leadership Programmes of both the University of Warwick and of UoL. Beyond these, I have striven to develop through my own scholarly research on leadership themes, engaging with colleagues, the literature and the international pedagogic community to explore new approaches and adopt best practice.

I came to realise that my personal development as a leader in Higher Education has led me to my characteristic approach. Firstly, initiatives I lead are always grounded in critical pedagogic thinking, making it easier to articulate my ideas and increasing the likelihood of success. Secondly, I build effective collaborations across and beyond my institution, bringing together like-minded colleagues and students to work towards our shared goals. Recognition of these ideas through my NTF award has given me increased confidence to take on new challenges.

In terms of building my profile, the single best thing I did I think was to become a part of the ISSoTL community, attending the annual conferences on a regular basis and joining and leading special interest groups. I have genuinely made friends (and great colleagues) for life through ISSoTL. My work with them and their testimony for my claim was (and still is) very important."

View Paul's University staff profile

"For me, becoming a National Teaching Fellow was instrumental in providing the confidence to go ahead with a Professorial promotion application at the University of Leeds. It still feels quite rare to have such a public and high profile recognition of your teaching experience and the efforts that go into continually innovating your approach so this award was really special to me.

It was immensely beneficial to have the external validation and visibility in the school/University as various senior people were involved in the NTF application and the DVC for Student Education even attended the award ceremony! The NTF award was the primary way I was able to evidence having a ‘sustained record of high quality teaching’ and the examples, quotes and evidence I gathered for the NTF application have been used many times since. (And just in case you were wondering, I got the Professor promotion!)."

View Sarah's University staff profile