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University of Leeds Teaching Awards 2022 Winners

University of Leeds Teaching Awards 2022

Browse the following profiles of the University of Leeds Teaching Awards 2022 winners. There were six winners in total, three winners of the early career award, and three winners of the sustained excellence award.  To find out more about the awards you can visit our main teaching awards page or read the announcement of the 2022 winners.

Early Career Excellence Award Winners:

This award category is for colleagues with up to five years’ experience of teaching or supporting learning in higher education, there were three winners in 2022 for this category:

Dr Leah Henrickson 

Dr Leah Henrickson, Lecturer in Digital Media in the School of Media and Communication, has been recognised for her innovative and impactful student education practice.

Leah lectures across the BA Digital Media and MA New Media, and currently serves as the Programme Leader for the MA New Media. She has successfully implemented a variety of experimental pedagogical techniques to enhance her students’ digital literacies and critical self-reflection. These efforts are documented in both internal publications and external publications, as well as in national expert panels. Outside the classroom, Leah serves as the Lead Evaluator for the I Belong: Creative Connections programme, which supports student senses of belonging and wellbeing at the University.

The award recognises Leah's creativity, imagination and passion in her work. She has demonstrated a genuine focus on making her teaching engaging for students and supporting and informing colleagues as part of various initiatives.

It’s an honour to be recognised with this award. My pedagogy strives to empower students to develop the skills and confidence to succeed in whatever they choose to do next. Students will forget most of the facts they learn in our classes, but what they won’t forget are the experiences that have trained them how to self-reflect, critically question, and push themselves to dream even bigger.

Dr Madeleine Pownall

Madeleine PownallDr Madeleine Pownall is a Lecturer in the School of Psychology and a Leeds Institute for Teaching Excellence (LITE) Fellow. She completed her PhD in April 2022 and is now leading the Curriculum Redefined work in Psychology and the research group, Research in the Psychology of Student Education.

Madeleine is particularly interested in pedagogical research which examines issues such as learning communities, research training, and psychological literacy, and regularly publishes under these topics. Her LITE Fellowship centres around Global Citizenship in the university curricula, using mixed methods. She is the author of a psychology textbook, A Feminist Companion to Social Psychology, and aims to embed the principles of feminist scholarship into her student education practice.

Dr Pownall has won other prestigious teaching awards, including the Wilbert McKeachie Award, granted by the Society for the Teaching of Psychology. She is also a Fellow of Advance HE and sits on many committees, including the Psychology of Women and Equalities (POWES) Group, and the Society for the Improvement of Psychological Science.

This award feels really special. Working with students and colleagues, both in the School of Psychology and in LITE, is the very best part of my job. Student education has played an important role in establishing my academic identity, ever since I joined the university in 2018 as a PhD student and Postgraduate Teaching Assistant. It’s a real honour to be recognised for teaching and I’m so excited to continue this journey through Curriculum Redefined.

Dr Martin Ward 

Dr Martin Ward (PhD, Hiroshima), a Leeds graduate himself and a Fellow of Advance HE, is a Lecturer in Chinese and Japanese Translation in the School of Languages, Cultures, and Societies (LCS). He is an innovator in translation pedagogy, most recently introducing collaborative online international learning (COIL) into undergraduate and MA translation classes at Leeds.

Working in collaboration with academics at institutions as far afield as Canada and Australia, he seeks to provide students at Leeds with stimulating learning experiences reflective of real-world scenarios. In 2020 Martin also founded the East Asian Translation Pedagogy Advance (EATPA) network, bringing together almost 100 academics at 50 universities globally teaching the translation of East Asian Languages into a dynamic community of practice.

Committed to educational outreach, Martin frequently visits local high schools to give taster sessions in Chinese, Japanese, and translation. He also conducts ongoing pedagogic research to develop enhanced teaching methodologies in his field, regularly disseminating his findings at academic conferences both nationally and internationally,  and in journals, such as the International Journal of Chinese Language Teaching.

Martin is a professional translator and is also serving on the QAA Panel to revise the current LCS Subject Benchmark Statement.

I am delighted and deeply humbled to win this award. A stimulating and supportive learning environment was one of the notable features of Leeds during my own student days here, and providing this for Leeds students in a new 21st century context continues to be a major driver for me as I develop my practice.

Sustained Excellence Award Winners:

This award category is for colleagues with more than five years’ experience  of teaching or supporting learning in higher education, there were three winners in 2022 for this category:

Dr Judith Hanks 

Judith Hanks

Dr Judith Hanks is the Deputy Chair of cross-Faculty Research Ethics Committee (Faculties of Business, Environment, and Social Sciences), and Deputy Director of the Education, Childhood & Youth Pathway, White Rose Doctoral Training Programme.

Judith started at the University of Leeds in the Language Centre and in 2013 moved to the School of Education, where she served as Programme Leader (MA and BA), Deputy Director of Centre for Language Education Research, Head of Undergraduate Area, and Academic Group Leader. In all her roles she works to deliver an inclusive and intercultural student experience, working with staff and students to enhance integration, belonging and community-building.

In her School, and across Faculties, Judith supports staff from a range of backgrounds to promote effective educational practice. A co-founder of Exploratory Practice (an international movement of teachers and learners researching their pedagogic practice), she is also convenor of the AILA Fully Inclusive Practitioner Research Network bringing together teachers and students globally co-producing ethical research and scholarship in education.

Judith supports and mentors academics locally at Leeds through PRiSE and Advance HE, nationally through British Association of Lecturers in English for Academic Purposes (BALEAP), and internationally through Association Internationale de Linguistique Appliquée (AILA), developing careers through impactful international collaboration and networking.

I am delighted to win this University of Leeds Teaching Award. It is difficult to convey the combination of amazement and happiness that this recognition of many years of teaching and learning brings. I look forward to many more years of working together with colleagues (staff and students alike), exploring our practice, puzzling deeply about educational issues, investigating together, and sharing our (inter-)cultural understandings locally, nationally, internationally. Thank you to all those who have offered support along the way.

Dr Nimesh Mistry 

Dr Nimesh Mistry is a Principal Teaching Fellow in the School of Chemistry. Nimesh obtained an MChem in Medicinal Chemistry at the University of Leeds, then completed his PhD in Chemistry at the University of York. In 2013 he moved back to Leeds as a Teaching Fellow where he has remained since. Nimesh is responsible for delivering high quality teaching to undergraduate students taking chemistry subjects. He also has a strong focus on research in chemistry education, where he has published journal articles, a book chapter and a chemistry textbook.

This award recognises the work Nimesh has done to improve chemistry education in Leeds and beyond. In particular, his work in redefining what students should learn in the laboratory portion of a chemistry degree has led to students improving their laboratory skills and learning how to preform scientific inquiry. His influence goes beyond Leeds where many other institutions have followed in adopting similar approaches and using the experiments he has designed.

I am delighted to have won a University of Leeds Teaching Award in Sustained Excellence. I am passionate about delivering a high-quality education to students and have worked hard over my career towards achieving this. To have been recognised for my work is a huge honour. Receiving this award has spurred me on to continue using all my efforts to deliver a transformative education to our students in line with the Leeds Student Education strategy.

Dr Suzanne Young 

Dr Suzanne Young is an Associate Professor in Criminal Justice in the School of Law and Senior Fellow of the HEA. Suzanne's teaching and scholarship work has been influenced by her passion to create student-centred engaging learning environments that embed interaction and active learning to enhance the learning experience. Suzanne has undertaken scholarly research on digital enhanced learning, experiential learning and, most recently, her LITE fellowship explored students’ transitions to higher education.

Suzanne’s work has been influential in supporting colleagues in the use of synchronous and asynchronous learning approaches as well as creating learning and teaching resources for colleagues and students. As a mentor at Leeds, Suzanne is drawing on her own pedagogical research expertise to support others undertaking scholarly projects and applying for their HEA accreditation.

Suzanne is the current Chair of the British Society of Criminology’s Learning and Teaching Network and the co-director of the Centre for Innovation in Research in Legal Education (CIRLE) at Leeds. She is working with colleagues locally and nationally to enhance the teaching and scholarship of the discipline and is encouraging the use of more evidence informed learning practices.

I am delighted to have been awarded the Sustained Excellence Teaching Award. Students are at the heart of what I do and over the years I have endeavoured to create meaningful learning environments for all. For me personally, teaching and scholarship has not always been held in the same regard as research, but receiving this award reinforces that the work I do is valued and recognised. I would like to thank my students, past and present, who continue to inspire my scholarship journey.