Professor Nina-Anne Lawrence
Bio:
Professor Nina-Anne Lawrence has had an extensive career in international education encompassing both academic delivery, international business development and senior management of international education programmes and centres both overseas and in the UK.
Nina-Anne’s subject specialism is EAP. She taught early on in her career at Royal Holloway, University of London where she wrote and established their Postgraduate Bridging Diploma and from there moved to Trinity College, Bristol to establish a Language Centre from scratch largely offering preparation for students progressing onto degree programmes in the main college. She successfully took this centre through British Council accreditation.
Nina-Anne lived in China for almost 5 years and in that time she worked with NCUK’s then major Chinese partner first in Centre Principal roles, running the NCUK International Foundation Programme. As the company expanded, she progressed to Head Office as Director of English Language and finally Director of Academic Affairs running 11 centres offering IFY and PMP programmes. She also later became the Academic Director/CEO and Honorary Director of DIFC, also running NCUK programmes.
Nina-Anne wrote a number of programmes and syllabi including the NCUK IFY EAP, NCUK PMP EAP and the NCUK PMP programme.
In terms of international affairs, Nina-Anne became Academic Director of the China Office for a UK university and then took on the roles of Head of International Business Development and Director of International Affairs in the UK.
Having held a range of senior academic management roles within international education and also a period as co-Director of an international charity centre, more recently, Nina-Anne was Director of International Pathway Programmes at the University of Leeds where she led the in-house IFY and also manged two key strategic external partnerships.
Also holding an MBA specialising in internationalisation, Nina-Anne’s BA and MA are in linguistics. She has authored a book on business presentations published by Longman.
She is the outgoing Chair of the University Pathway Alliance (UPA), an association for universities with their own international foundation programmes. She is also a member of the editorial board for the InForm Journal.
In her free time, Nina-Anne enjoys ‘world’s strongest man’ style strength training and competes in regional strongwoman competitions. As a qualified personal trainer, she coached a staff Strength4Life class at the University of Leeds for which she won the Remarkable Coach Award presented by Strength & Conditioning Education 2021.
Additional Roles
2023-ongoing - Member of University of Warwick Council
External Roles
2018-2026 - Editorial Board, InForm Journal, University of Reading
2021-2025 - Chair, University Pathway Alliance (UPA)
2024 - Reviewer, Editorial Review Board, International Journal for the Scholarship of Teaching and Learning (IJSoTL), Georgia Southern University
2021 - Panel Member: QAA Characteristic statement for International Pathway Programmes
Articles and Publications
2025, Troubled waters: the future of internationalisation and international pathways, InForm Journal
2024, Is angst over the quality of international pathway programmes justified?, WonkHE,
2024, Why you should consider a university summer school programme, Times Higher Education Student (timeshighereducation.com)
2023, The changing face of international pathway programs over three decades,Link opens in a new window PIE News
2023, Have we reached peak IFP? https://thepienews.com/the-view-from/have-we-reached-peak-ifp/, PIE News
2022, QAA Characteristics Statement : International Pathway Courses Characteristics Statement (qaa.ac.uk)
Freitag-Lawrence, A. 2003. Business Presentations in the English for Work Series, Longman
Presentations and Conferences
2024 - Invited keynote speaker, InForm Conference, hosted by University of Leeds, Presentation: Troubled waters: the future of internationalisation and international pathways, Invited member of Roundtable discussion on Student Engagement.
2024 - Invited keynote speaker, BALEAP Accreditation Scheme Training Event, University of Manchester: Opening context up. EAP outside the EAP ‘classroom’,
May - University Pathways Alliance (UPA) Conference, Chair, Plenary Panel Discussion, Session: The challenges of leadership in the international pathways space: institutional engagement & beyond
2024 - Co-presenter, PIE Europe Conference, International Pathways: In partnership versus in-house,
2023 - Invited expert panel member, The IC Global Café: Has the Foundation market peaked?
2023 - Chair & Panel member, UPA Conference, two plenary sessions: Have we reached peak IFP?, and What next for Pre-sessional English?
