We are delighted to share the news that one of our PhD alums, Afiqah Ab Rahman, has been awarded the status of Fellow of The Higher Education Academy, which she successfully applied for whilst undertaking her PhD study.

Afiqah has a background in teaching English in Malaysia, and used this experience and the experience she gained whilst at Warwick, to be able to apply for Fellowship status through the experienced teaching staff route, rather than Associate Fellowship status through the Postgraduate Research student route.

Afiqah studied her PhD under the supervision of Dr Michael Hammond, investigating vocabulary learning strategies among Malaysians in the UK. She also successfully passed her PhD with no corrections.

Afiqah is currently working for Brunel University London as an Academic Skills Advisor, where she is able to use the skills that she learnt in her PhD, and also empathise with the students that she supports, as she has been in the same position as them. She would like to be able to give the same excellent support to students that she received from Dr Hammond.

Afiqah now plant to gain senior Fellowship status, using her understanding of pedagogy and teaching philosophy to deliver more effective and interactive sessions to her students.

"The Fellowship is about understanding and developing my own knowledge of the subject I teach, learning effective approaches to teaching learning in terms of how to assess students and how to give feedback to students; and showing my commitment to me as a professional. Understanding the diversity that students bring and how I have been developing myself professionally, and how I intend to further develop myself in the future. My teaching is based on research- I need to understand why I do this, why I do things that way. The PhD and FHEA marry together- how do I deliver what I have learnt in my PhD in my teaching? The FHEA teaches me about transferable skills in teaching and how to upgrade my skills as a teacher, and upgrade my teaching to students."

The winner for the Award was announced at the AGCAS Awards for Excellence 2022 presentation at the AGCAS Annual Conference on 22 June 2022. Laura Oxley was awarded due to her outstanding performance on her PG Diploma.

Natalie Lau, LLM in International Corporate Governance and Financial Regulation graduate (Class of 2013) has recently mentored a team of female university students in JP Morgan’s 100 Women in Finance Investment Hackathon.