Stephanie Panichelli-Batalla, co-director

Stéphanie is the Head of School for Cross-Faculty Studies and a Professor in Global Sustainable Development. She has been working on Cuba for the past twenty years, with a particular interest in Cuban culture, human rights and more recently, Cuba’s involvement in global health.

Her interest in Education for Sustainable Development started before joining the GSD department in 2017. She co-authored a paper on "Educating for Sustainability in Language Degrees" with Dr. Severine Hubscher-DavidsonLink opens in a new window in the Internatoinal Journal of Sustainability in Higher Education in 2016 and has since continued to grow her interest in ESD.

Last year, she became the co-lead of the ITLR common theme on ESD as well as a member of ESSAG (Environmental and Social Sustainability Action Group) representing the education strand of the University's Sustainability Strategy. She also set up the ESD Network with Dr. Jo Lee, which she is now co-directing with both Jo and Tom. She is very keen to continue supporting Warwick's strategic priority to put ESD at the centre of how we approach education at Warwick and looks forward to allowing the network to play a facilitating role in this area.

Tom Ritchie, co-director

Tom is Assistant Professor and Director of Student Experience in the Department of Chemistry at Warwick. His journey with Education for Sustainable Development (ESD) began during the 2022/23 ITLR process, leading him to join this network in September 2023.

He passionate about incorporating Education for Sustainable Development (ESD) because of a belief in its essential role preparing students to thrive in the 21st century. He has incorporated ESD principles into both module and curriculum design in Chemistry, teaching students the knowledge, skills, and values they need to create a more sustainable and just world.

He also works to apply ESD principles to the whole student experience, inside and outside the classroom. In addition to integrating ESD into our new Chemistry curriculum, he has co-designed the We are Chemistry programme with students to provide them with opportunities to learn, practice, and apply ESD outside the classroom through co-curricular activities.

Fundamentally, he believes that ESD is essential for all students at Warwick, regardless of their degree or future career plans. ESD teaches students to think critically about the challenges we face and to develop innovative, inclusive, and creative solutions.

If you want to talk to Tom about ESD, We are Chemistry, or anything else to do with co-designing the student experience, please feel free to contact him at , or reach out on Teams or LinkedIn.

Joanne Lee, co-director

Jo is Associate Professor in Italian Studies (SMLC) and current head of Italian at Warwick. Her research and teaching centres on the ethical implications of travel and travel writing in context of Italy, including ways in which travel writing engages with questions of social justice and inclusion, decolonisation, sustainable development and the climate emergency. Her articles have appeared in journals such as Italian Studies, Italian Culture and Studies in Travel Writing.

She was co-lead of the ESD theme for the 2023 ITLR review and set up the ESD network with the co-directors in May 2023.

She is interested in changing patterns of travel and tourism such as domestic travel, slow travel and virtual travel as a response to both the Covid-19 pandemic and climate change and supervised a URSS project on this topic in 2022. Her interest in slow travel (and slow food!) developed into an interdisciplinary module for the Institute of Advanced Teaching and Learning with a strong focus on addressing social change and promoting sustainable lives: The Slow Movement: Interdisciplinary Adventures in Time and Pace.

Her recent ESD activities in the Italian department include working with the language team and a student co-creator to redesign the intermediate Italian language module to align the topics with the UN’s 17 Sustainable Development Goals. The aim has been to embed ESD holistically within the curriculum, using the Italian setting as a lens through which to address global issues while maintaining a focus on local contexts and highlighting positive community stories and initiatives.