Alison began her academic career as a physical geographer at Reading University, having studied at Swansea University during the 1980’s. It was during her PhD research that she became more and more interested in addressing the outcomes of the complex interrelationships between human and physical systems, a field now called sustainable development. Also, as a ‘first generation graduate’, she became passionate about the role of education in changing people’s perspectives and aspirations. Combining these two great passions she has channelled her energies into creating the type of higher education system which supports high quality, active, interdisciplinary and immersive learning. This helps students understand the crucial role they can play, as future leaders and decision makers, in creating a fair, just and sustainable future.
Alison was appointed as the inaugural Director of Education for Sustainability at Anglia Ruskin University in 2012 where she has created a strategy to ensure that sustainability is part of all students’ experience. Securing the University’s corporate commitment to sustainability and embedding sustainability into academic regulations are two of her most widely felt impacts. As part of the University’s Global Sustainability Institute she has also developed and leads the Education for Sustainability Research theme, catalysing interdisciplinary EfS research and supporting a number of PhD students. Alison is also demonstrating, by example, how her vision of empowering students from any disciplinary background to become ‘agents of positive change’ can lead to learning and teaching excellence.
Alison leads the MSc Sustainability, an innovative, interdisciplinary course run as a partnership with two other educational charities which the external examiner has described as ‘groundbreaking’. She is also involved in students extra-curricula learning, leading an overseas volunteering programme which gives students a unique and immersive appreciation of the complexities of sustainable development and helps them develop their skills to address these. Alison’s work has been formally recognised as delivering learning and teaching excellence and as action research has been presented at numerous conferences and as journal articles. In 2015 she was awarded Principle Fellowship and in 2016 an Anglia Ruskin University Teaching Fellowship.