Dr Annie Hughes

Dr Annie Hughes began her career at the University of Bristol where she completed her Ph.D. in Human Geography. Annie gained a lectureship at Kingston University in 1995 and immediately fell in love with teaching Kingston's diverse student body. In her role as Director of Geography programmes at Kingston, she invigorated the Geography curriculum and improved the student experience, leaving the role in 2015 with her course having achieved a score of 100% for overall satisfaction in the NSS. She shared her student-centred approach to learning and teaching with colleagues through her roles as School Senior Tutor (2009-2015) and Director for Learning and Teaching (2015-2016) where she was responsible for disciplines as diverse as Human Geography to Civil Engineering. Impact of work Annie's passion is ensuring equality of opportunity for all students and, in particular, that diversity and inclusion are recognised as central measures of quality in academic teaching. Her commitment to an inclusive approach in higher education led her to collaborate with the Equality, Diversity and Inclusion Unit at Kingston University to develop an Inclusive Curriculum Framework which has been adopted by her University as an institutional curriculum design tool. Her work has had a significant impact on the educational mission of her institution and the sector more broadly. The Framework was awarded the Guardian Award for Teaching Excellence in 2017 and will be disseminated in six other higher education institutions in the UK as part of a successful HEFCE catalyst bid. It has also been adopted by a US University, University of North Carolina, Charlotte. Plans for the future Annie is dedicated to ensuring that her University and the higher education sector both nationally and internationally advances its commitment to diversity and inclusion and prioritises its responsibility to address structural inequality in order to ensure equality of opportunity for all students. She continues to propagate her message through constructive dialogue at academic conferences and through her continued commitment to conducting and publishing her innovative pedagogic research which identifies inequalities of opportunity in the praxis of higher education. Her research has been supported by Kingston University, as well as the HEA, HEFCE, and the ESRC.