Dr Victoria Bourne

Dr Victoria Bourne is a psychologist and a Teaching Focused academic who is passionate about teaching research methods and statistics to students in a way that engages them in being active and independent researchers. She has taught at a number of institutions, developing researchers from first year undergraduates through to postdoctoral fellows. Victoria's work focuses on developing innovative teaching strategies to make research methods and statistical analysis an approachable, accessible and exciting topic for students to learn about. By teaching and engaging students actively in the entire research process, students understand the need for learning about (often disliked) statistical analysis. Her teaching is also liberally coated with chocolate-related examples. Impact of work Victoria is keen to support and develop teaching within this area, and has given a number of talks at workshops and conferences about how to engage students in research methods, including running her own one-day event on "Creating Independent Researchers". Recently, Victoria has published a textbook that provides students with a hands-on guide to conducting psychological research, from devising the initial research question through to presenting and thinking critically about research findings. In addition to teaching both undergraduate and postgraduate psychology students, Victoria has been invited to talk on a range of research topics at doctoral schools at a number of institutions. More recently, she has given a series of well received workshops for the Society for Research in Higher Education, helping to develop and strengthen pedagogic research across the UK. She is a committee member for the BPS Division of Academics, Researchers and Teachers in Psychology. Victoria works to support and develop teachers and teaching focused academics within Higher Education. She has published papers and presented at conferences about what it means to be a Teaching Focused academic. Victoria also established and runs the Teaching Focused Forum at Royal Holloway, University of London, providing guidance and support for Teaching Focused academics across the institution. Plans for the future Victoria is keen to continue to make statistics more accessible to students, and is currently working on a range of methods to alleviate statistics anxiety that can be individualised according to a student's own profile of strengths and weaknesses.