Michael Scott, Academic Director of the Institute

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Michael is the Academic Director of the Institute and a Professor in the Department of Classics and Ancient History at Warwick and an Honorary Citizen of Delphi, Greece. He is a National Teaching Fellow and Principal Fellow of Advance HE, and believes passionately in making the ancient world as accessible as possible, acting as Director and Trustee of Classics for All, and as President of the largest regional branch of the UK Classics Association. He regularly talks in schools around the country, writes articles for national and international newspapers and magazines, participates in BBC radio shows and podcasts, and facilitates engagement with the ancient world via a suite of social media channels. He is the author of several successful popular history books, and has written and presented over a dozen TV series about the ancient world for History Channel, National Geographic, BBC and ITV. In recognition of his engagement work, Michael was delighted to be reincarnated as a Lego Classicist figure in 2018. Michael’s commitment to, and passion for, engagement has been a key driver for the creation for the Institute.

Andrew Todd, Director of the Institute

Andrew is the Professional Services Director of the Institute as part of his role as Director for Regional Engagement. He leads the University’s local growth, civic and community activities in the West Midlands. His role includes strengthening partnerships across the West Midlands and ensuring the University is embedded in its region. It also includes engaging in the development of local economic and community strategies so the University can contribute fully to the local economic, social and cultural growth.

Andrew has nearly 20 years’ experience working between universities, business and the public sector and his career includes secondments to Advantage West Midlands and the West Midlands Combined Authority focused on bringing the strengths of regional universities to support the West Midlands.

Rachel Edwards, Associate Academic Director

Rachel is a Reader in the Department of Physics. She is passionate about engagement with schools, and the need to reach out to children of all ages in order to show them what a scientist does, and the wide range of people who are scientists. She loves giving public lectures and has been involved in many of the Warwick Christmas lectures - any excuse to play with liquid nitrogen on stage! She also engages with school teaching bodies, helping to give new teachers different examples of where science and engineering knowledge is used in active research.

Kerry Baker, Associate Director

Kerry is a manufacturing engineer and sociologist and has spent the majority of her career working with academics, researchers, students, employers, teachers and young people to share knowledge and enthuse others about the world of STEM (science, technology, engineering and maths). Throughout her career she has designed and delivered a variety of public engagement and school events, developed and conducted training to support others and designed and manufactured specific kit to support each of these endeavours.

Kerry enjoys finding links and common ground to work successfully in partnership with others and likes to bring innovation and creativity to everything she does, channelling her enthusiasm into supporting her team, colleagues and local communities to have access to a wide range of opportunities to explore, wonder and enjoy.

Helen Wheatley, Partnerships Lead

From 2020-2022, Helen assumed the role of Director of Warwick Institute for Engagement’s City of Culture Programme and the Resonate Festival. She now oversees our Partnerships, strengthening our ongoing work with cultural organisations and communities and working with our Regional Fellows. Helen is Professor and Director of Film and Television Studies. She is also co-founder of the Centre for Television Histories. She works collaboratively with archives and curators to engage the public with the history of British broadcasting and has twice been awarded the university’s prizes for impact/community engagement for this work. Her most recent book, Spectacular Television: Exploring Televisual Pleasure (IB Tauris, 2016) won the BAFTSS Award for Monograph of the Year in 2017. Helen is particularly committed to supporting and championing public engagement activities and research which are co-designed or co-produced with partners outside of the university. This approach recognises the valuable skills, experience and knowledge of the people we work with to deliver an exciting programme of public engagement activities.

Naomi Kay, Engagement Officer

Naomi is an experienced engagement professional with a background in event and project management. She has delivered a number of university festivals, including the Science Family Day held to celebrate Warwick’s hosting of the British Science Festival in 2019. She works on a range of strategic projects for the team, including leading on the creation and launch of our first student facing public engagement module through IATL. She is passionate about empowering staff and students to develop their engagement expertise, and ensuring Warwick activities are enjoyable and accessible for a wide range of people.

Helen Luckhurst, Engagement Officer

Helen joined the Institute in August 2022 to work on student-led knowledge exchange. Her post is funded by the Higher Education Innovation Fund.

Helen has a background in teaching, having previously worked as a primary school teacher in Birmingham. She joined Warwick in 2019 to work on Outreach and Widening Participation in WMG, and led their Bright Stars Insight into Engineering module which was taught by Warwick students in local schools. For Coventry City of Culture, she developed Stitch In Time, training local teachers to teach a cross-curricular, creative computing project. Helen has also supported postgraduate research students in WMG. She is looking forward to meeting students across the University in her new role and helping them to build relationships with the public for knowledge exchange.

Laura Harford, Events Coordinator

Laura joined the Warwick Institute of Engagement after completing her doctoral research in immunology. She has experience in a range of public engagement and outreach roles with organisations such as Pint of Science, In2research and In2scienceUK, and is passionate about making research accessible to everyone. She enjoys working within diverse teams to find creative ways to share knowledge with different audiences and develop exciting events that are welcoming for the whole community.

Josh Oakes, Administrator

Josh is an experienced administrator with a background in business governance, project management and people development. He is passionate about people and creating inclusive teams. He enjoys enabling productivity through streamlined systems that ensure we can focus on what matters.

Josh joined the University in March 2020, just before the first lockdown. Starting within the HR team at WMG, he joined WIE in November of 2021 and provides the backbone to our activities, underpinning them with the financial, HR and administrative support required.

Matthew Evans, Administrative Assistant

Matthew joined WIE in January 2023 after completing his PhD in Classics and Ancient History. During his doctoral research, he undertook various roles that focused on outreach and public engagement, including Postgraduate Student Ambassador, organising international conferences, workshops and departmental colloquia, and participating in school outreach events. He also co-founded and co-edits an online blog (Material Musings) that aims to make the research of the Department of Classics and Ancient History accessible to the wider public. Within WIE, he will offer administrative support to the team's activities and organisation.