Professor Joelle Fanghanel

National Teaching Fellow 2011 Joelle Fanghanel has a background in Linguistics and Comparative Literature, and started her professional career in the 80s as a teacher of French in various London schools, and colleges of higher education. She also worked as a freelance specialist translator in the late 80s to early 90s. At the University of Bedfordshire where she worked until 2000, she taught Comparative Literature and directed an MA in Translation. During this time, she became very interested in the pedagogical challenges posed by the teaching of foreign literature and languages, and in the relation of education to the world of work. Appointed Principal Teaching Fellow in 1998, she started to develop her own thinking about teaching, learning, assessment and broader higher education issues. She has since developed a keen interest in academic identities and disciplinary cultures, and the complexity of the academic role in today's context. This interest informed her PhD studies in Educational Research which she undertook part-time at Lancaster University whilst working at the University of Leicester in the early 2000s. Her thesis examined the 'practice filters' that impact on pedagogical constructs. It highlighted the material and intellectual factors that affect academic practice on an everyday basis. Appointed at City University London towards the end of her doctoral studies, she became actively involved in the Scholarship of Teaching and Learning. Much of her energy since has been dedicated to encouraging and supporting colleagues' scholarship. She has done this as Director of Educational Development at City, Convenor of the London SoTL International Conference, and presently as Director of the Institute for Teaching, Innovation and Learning at the University of West London. She is also Convenor and Chair of the editorial board for the London Scholarship of Teaching and Learning International Conference, former Vice President (Europe) of the International Society for the Scholarship of Teaching and Learning (ISSOTL), and elected member of the SRHE Council. Her book 'Being an Academic' will be published in August 2011.