Professor Peter Felten

His current research focuses on the influence of human relationships, on institution-wide teaching and learning initiatives, and on the scholarship of teaching and learning. He has published widely on engaged learning, educational development, and the scholarship of teaching and learning, including most recently (with Leo Lambert), Relationship-Rich Education: How Human Connections Drive Success in College (Johns Hopkins University Press, 2020).

He has served as President of the International Society for the Scholarship of Teaching and Learning (ISSoTL), is co-editor of the International Journal for Academic Development, on the advisory board of the National Survey of Student Engagement (NSSE) and is a Fellow of the John N. Gardner Institute for Excellence in Undergraduate Education, a foundation that works to advance equity in higher education.

Personally, Peter is curious about why he so consistently loses at board games and how it can be that chocolate always tastes good.

Brooke Mees

Brooke is in her final year of Master of Teaching and began as an SCP 3 years ago. Working with both WSU The College and university Brooke has co-created pre learning modules, university units, contributed to published articles, and presented at national conferences. Entering into the field of education, Brooke is interested in how partnership practices can change not only curriculum but culture. Although Brooke refers to partnership being complex in nature, she also believes this is what makes partnership so powerful.

Evelyn Nguyen

Evelyn’s transdisciplinary thinking, which stems from her intensive years in Marketing/Communications and her current Social Work degree, has drawn her to 21C Project. Her student-staff partnership experience at Western Sydney University extends across co-curriculum design, academic governance, learning and teaching advisory and extra-curricula initiatives. It has allowed Evelyn to build a solid network with various divisions while playing an active role in influencing a positive student experience in the university.

After two years of lockdown, Evelyn is looking forward to when she can travel and visit her family (including her three cats) in Vietnam, and scuba dive in the oceans again.

Clementine Sugita

As a woman on a journey of self-discovery, committed to reconnecting with ancient wisdom and traditional bodies of knowledge, Clementine naturally found herself drawn to midwifery and the ideal of working in partnership with women and honouring this rite-of-passage. Clementine is currently at the tail-end of her Bachelor of Midwifery degree, and hopes to undertake Honours with the view to becoming a research academic one day. She has found her experiences as a student partner to be incredibly enriching and has a deep understanding of the transformative potential of partnership – within Higher Education and beyond. Outside of her studies, Clementine loves spending time with her cat, Lex, and nourishing her mind, body and soul.

Giedre Kligyte

Driven by her passion for creating opportunities for insight and learning from different perspectives – divergent ways of seeing, thinking about and acting in the world – Giedre brings her Design background and Higher Education expertise to educational questions at the interface of transdisciplinarity and partnership. Her research, which often involves working in partnership and co-authoring with students and non-academic stakeholders, focuses on transdisciplinary collaboration practices in universities and industry or community organisations, and how these translate into the creation of novel learning experiences. Giedre is a co-founder of xFutures Lab, and as part of that work, received a 2021 UTS Vice-Chancellor’s Teaching and Learning Award For transforming Bachelor of Creative Intelligence and Innovation students into transdisciplinary futures-thinkers. She is an Associate Editor of Higher Education Research Development journal, co-convenor of Professional and Higher Education Special Interest Group as part of Australian Association for Research in Education, and a member of Higher Education Scholars Research Network.

In her non-work time, Giedre likes running by the ocean to think, listen to podcasts, and to escape her young family in lockdown.

Ursula Aczel 

Being drawn to social justice and creative thinking all her life, Ursula ultimately faced few viable options when choosing a university degree. She is currently completing her final year of study in the Bachelor of Creative Intelligence and Innovation. Her core degree, Bachelor of Communications (Social and Political Science) is key in guiding her principles and thought processes in the innovation space; ensuring social justice sits at the core of ideation. Ursula is the Year Representative for the fourth year Bachelor of Creative Intelligence and Innovation cohort as well as an active member of the UTS Student Representative Council. Both these roles require her to work closely with students and university staff to navigate the complexities of engaging with SaP concepts in multiple roles.

In non-COVID times Ursula enjoys travelling and meeting new people. In COVID times she has learnt to play the guitar with her Dad. This means she can only play songs from the 70s and 80s era.

Kyra Araneta

Kyra recently completed her undergraduate degree in Sociology at the University of Westminster and has continued her studies for a Masters in International Relations. As a woman of mixed African-Asian descent, identity work has been a complex task for Kyra, but nevertheless a process that has inspired her efforts towards creating decolonial and anti-racist tools and spaces in the academy. In her next few years in education, she hopes that her work on the Pedagogies for Social Justice project can help to transform the ways we think about and engage with pedagogy at the higher education level.

Dr Jennifer Fraser

As a non-binary queer academic at the University of Westminster, Jennifer has spent the past 20 years in the UK teaching and researching at the intersections of literature, gender studies, queer theory and critical pedagogies. Their approaches to education are also shaped by experiences as a white settler migrant in Canada and by growing up between different linguistic and geographic spaces of ‘home’. These both/and experiences of identity formation have taught them to centre building relationships and sharing stories to develop collaborative analyses. Formally, Jennifer is Principal Lecturer in the School of Social Sciences and University Director of Student Partnership in the Centre for Education and Teaching Innovation. What Jennifer loves most about these roles is how they bring them into contact with other dreamers and co-conspirators for change.

Dr Fatima Maatwk

Fatima (she/her) is an Egyptian-German, Muslim lecturer and researcher at the University of Westminster. In the Centre of Education and Teaching Innovation (CETI), Fatima’s engagement with student partnership ties directly into her work on both the Pedagogies for Social Justice and Students as Co-Creators project. Her interests include fostering decolonial spaces within the academy and doing good, ethical work towards social justice, through methods such as student-staff partnership. She also lectures at Westminster Business School where she completed her doctoral research, whilst she completed her Bachelor and Masters degrees in Economics and Business Administration, at Humboldt University to Berlin. Prior to her academic career, Fatima worked in international development at both governmental and non-governmental organisations in Germany and Egypt. She worked on projects tackling public sector reform, alternative dispute resolution, human resources management, mediation, and negotiation.