News

The Embedding Belonging in Curriculum Design Working Group, part of the WIHEA Building Belonging Learning Circle invites contributions to a University-wide collaborative project which aims to translate the principles of belonging into practical curriculum design. If you have practice to share or would like to assist with collecting case studies, co-designing and co-facilitating workshops and/or developing resources then you can join as a member.

As part of the induction programme for the 2025 Fellows who started their Fellowship in September, a Mentoring and Networking lunch on 22 October gave the new Fellows and their mentors (Fellows and Alumni) an opportunity to engage in conversation about past and present Fellowships. The lunch was also attended by Prof Georgia Kremmyda, DPVC (Learning & Teaching), Prof Rebecca Freeman, DPVC (Education) and Kerry Dobbins, Associate Professor (ADC), who each gave presentations specifically aimed at helping new Fellows make the most out of their Fellowship and of being part of the WIHEA community.

If you did not attend the event, do take a look at the presentations attached. They explore the strategic priorities in learning and teaching, student success and engagement, and provide an insight into the upcoming work and how the WIHEA community can get involved and contribute to the institutional enhancement priorities. They also include some great guidance about applying the principles of SoTL to your Fellowship, along with practical tips on how to focus on what is meaningful to you.

Congratulations to WIHEA Fellow Naveera Abhayawickrama on winning the Warwickshire Law Student of the Year Award. A fantastic achievement, which gives recognition of excellence in legal practice, innovation, leadership, and service. Naveera became a WIHEA Student Fellow in 2024, co-led the ‘Belonging and Inclusivity: A space for international and neurodivergent students in HE’ project and continues to actively engage and support our new cohort of Student Fellows this year. We are delighted she has received this recognition in her field. You can read more about this award.

WIHEA 2025 Annual Report

We are pleased to share our 2025 Annual Report, which celebrates the impact the Academy has had over the last 10 years and also includes the personal reflections and achievements of some of the Fellows who have recently transitioned into Alumni. You should all have recently received an email containing a link to the report. Current Fellows and those that became Alumni in September will shortly receive a hard copy in the internal post. We only have a limited number of hard copies, but any Alumni that would also like a hard copy, please email WIHEA@warwick.ac.uk and where possible we will send you one.

This online event on 5 November brought together academics, professionals and students from across the WIHEA and the wider university community to hear directly from Learning Circle Leads about their aims and ideas that they will be working on during 2025/26 and how anyone interested can get involved.

The recordingLink opens in a new windowLink opens in a new window of this one hour event is available to watch.

What does the recording include:

• Discover the wide range of Learning Circles including open circles that everyone can join.
• Hear directly from the Leads about their aims and ideas for 2025/26.
• Find opportunities to get involved and connect with Fellows, Alumni and Warwick Members who share your interests.
• For further information on the Learning Circle's please visit the Learning Circle web pages.

We would like to invite you to the second meeting of the Warwick Anti-Racism Staff Forum, scheduled to take place on MS Teams on Thursday, 13 November 2025, from 11:00AM - 12:00PM Please register to attend here: https://warwick.ac.uk/fac/cross_fac/academy/activities/learningcircles/anti-racistpedagogyandprocess/staffforumregistration

Our topic will be 'Racism is awful, so what can I do to help?'

Do you ever find yourself thinking, "I want to do something, but I don't know what, because racism is just too big"?

We (Karoline and Poonam) both found ourselves asking similar questions. As professional services staff members, we found it difficult to identify our spheres of influence for this work.

In this interactive session, we will outline our own journeys with carving out a role for us to play in anti-racism, and we will encourage you to think about areas in which you can play a part too.

Our session aims are to:

• Share practical examples from others' experience
• Offer inspiration to colleagues who may struggle to identify their role in this work

We probably can't give you all your answers, but we can share our own roadmaps in the hope that they may help you, too!

There is no required pre-reading, other than a set of agreements about how we will conduct our discussions. You do not need to have attended previous meetings to join this one. Forum meetings are structured to enable us to learn from the varied practices and experiences of colleagues in a wide range of roles.

The Warwick Anti-Racism Staff Forum comes out of the work of the WIHEA Anti-Racist Pedagogy and Practices in HE Learning Circle. It is open to all those who work at Warwick, including professional services and academic staff with an existing anti-racism practice, as well as those interested in or curious about developing one. Each meeting, we will share practice and discuss key challenges affecting different staff roles across the university. We invite you to share your suggestions for future topics here (anonymously if you wish): https://forms.office.com/e/Yh33f9eH8p.

Attendance requires that Forum participants arrive on time for any meeting they attend, ready to engage in the meeting fully by that time. Our experience has shown that later arrivals make it much harder to establish and maintain shared agreements for open, honest and thoughtful discussion.

Once you have registered, we will send over our participant agreements, the Teams invite and some optional pre-readings. Please do register promptly if you are interested, and encourage your colleagues to do so, too.

The third Neurodiversity in Higher Education Conference The third Neurodiversity in Higher Education Conference took place at the University of Warwick on 15th September 2025, bringing together 110 attendees including higher education professionals, students, and community members. The event explored neurodiversity in university settings through a dynamic programme of research presentations, posters, interactive seminars, panel discussions, and creative workshops.

Professor Gina Rippon (Professor Emeritus of Cognitive Neuroimaging, Aston University) opened the conference with a keynote based on her latest book, The Lost Girls of Autism: How Science Failed Autistic Women – and the New Research that's Changing the Story. Closing the event, Dr Brian Irvine (UCL Centre for Research in Autism and Education) delivered an inspiring keynote titled Hopeful Optimism.

The conference was generously supported by the Warwick International Higher Education Academy (WHEA), Warwick Inclusive Education, and the Warwick Dean of Students. Special thanks go to ASD@Warwick, the Warwick ADHD Society, and the Scientific and Organising Committees for their vital contributions.

The event was led by Alumni Dr Jagjeet Jutley-Neilson (Department of Psychology) and Professor Olympia Palikara(Education Studies, SELCS), alongside a dedicated team of colleagues, researchers and students, reflecting a truly collaborative effort to advance understanding and inclusion in higher education.

We are pleased to share that Warwick students and staff in all roles are invited to participate in focus groups and co-design workshops to inform development of trauma-informed practice in higher education. Trauma-informed practice acknowledges the commonplace nature of traumatic experiences and their impacts on individuals and communities. It aims to ensure that these experiences are accommodated in individual and organisational practices, to create safe, engaging, and collaborative learning environments and promote inclusion for all students and staff. Further to initial funding from the MWA Education Exchange Scheme in 2024 (formerly managed by WIHEA/MEA), this cross-institutional project, funded by the Monash Warwick Alliance, aims to develop trauma-informed practice in higher education settings. Click here to find out more and get involved.

WIHEA’s Compassionate Pedagogies Learning Circle has released a series of podcasts. This is a more informal way to catch up with the Learning Circle activities, so if you are new to WIHEA and interested in compassion, this is a great place to start! In this series, what is compassion and the role of compassion across our university spaces and what’s coming next for the Compassionate Pedagogy Learning Circle.