Dr Lesley Morrell is Associate Dean (Education) in the Faculty of Science and Engineering, and a Senior Lecturer in the Department of Biological and Marine Sciences at the University of Hull. Before moving to Hull in 2010, she was a Natural Environment Research Council Fellow at the University of Leeds, and obtained her PhD from the University of Glasgow.
Lesley is passionate about enhancing the student experience, and is particularly keen on guiding her students to develop transferable and subject-specific skills through direct teaching, innovative assessment and feedback strategies, and self-reflection. She particularly enjoys mentoring, small group and field-based teaching, offering students authentic research project experiences, and has taken key roles in curriculum development.
Lesley’s commitment to enhancing learning and teaching, in both her own teaching and at a curriculum level, has led to a series of formal roles in relation to learning and teaching at the University. At the same time, she is an active disciplinary researcher in the field of behavioural ecology, focusing on the evolution of social, anti-predatory and parental care behaviours, and on how behaviour is influenced by environmental change.
She publishes regularly in scientific journals, presents at international conferences and mentors PhD students in her disciplinary area. She is a founding member of the Bioscience Education Research Group at Hull, and is particularly interested in how student choice, independence and perception of autonomy influence learning and achievement, and in the development of employability skills in the student population. She is a Senior Fellow of Advance HE (formerly the Higher Education Academy), and in 2016 was a finalist in the Royal Society of Biology HE Bioscience Teacher of the Year award.