2025 Teaching Prizes

Congratulations to the following winners. Find out more here.

Sir Bernard Crick Prize – Dr. Alexandra Meakin

“Her contributions to scholarship within her role at the University of Leeds and beyond have been substantial and positive. Notably, her work on attendance and understanding the reasons behind student dropouts has been particularly noteworthy. She has made significant strides in overcoming this challenge. Additionally, her efforts to integrate academic skills for new students have helped address significant challenges in enabling diverse students to adapt to university study. This work is set to be published later this year. Our judges were impressed by the range of initiatives introduced to support students from diverse learning styles and innovative approaches to supporting students through placements.”

Jacqui Briggs Prize – Dr. Davide Vampa et al

“We were impressed by the significant work taken to create an innovative and inclusive team taught module focusing on the 2024 UK General Election. The pedagogic rationale for this module is incredibly well developed, providing students with active-learning opportunities, authentic assessments and practical skills through data analysis that they can apply beyond the course. The approach to team delivery with such substantial expertise across a number of Think Tanks and Universities is impressive and provided students with a unique opportunity to engage in the development of and analyse the outcome of the election. The decision to open up the sessions to a wider audience through public lectures demonstrates significant impact that this work has had in bridging gaps between university and community.”

Vicky Randall Prize – Dr. Susan Kenyon 

“Our winner has demonstrated a considerable and commendable approach to treating students as individual learners and undertaking significant work to support students in their journey through higher education. Her focus upon building a sense of belonging in the classroom and work on diversifying teaching methods to suite a wide range of learners. Her innovations in teaching have supported students from their first steps in higher education through to preparing them for life after higher education through developing core employability skills in particular through a partnership with representatives from the UK Civil Service. She has shown a commitment to spreading best practice and is a frequent contributor to workshops, conferences and blog posts to help progress teaching in the discipline more broadly.”

Teaching and Learning Network Annual Conference 2025

The TLN 2025 Annual Conference: ‘Teaching Well’ took place at Royal Holloway, University of London from 4 – 5 September 2025. This was a popular and well attended event that included a broad range of panels and discussions exploring the professional practice and ongoing development of teaching, learning and scholarship in UK Higher Education.

The Joy of the Teaching Track 

The TLN is rightly famous for being a friendly, welcoming community and the highlight of being a co-Convenor was definitely meeting so many passionate educators, making friends and being able to help create productive spaces for conversations about education. I also very much enjoyed being part of a national conversation about education in the discipline. Throughout my time as a co-Convenor, I have been particularly interested in supporting and advocating for education-focused careers, so it’s fitting that Politics has just published a co-authored article that some colleagues and I wrote based on our PSA Conference Roundtable on the ‘Joy of the Teaching Track‘. We are still in the early days of thinking about education-focused careers, and the most recent conference featured a great roundtable on the role of scholarship for educational specialists. The TLN will continue to be a place where people get together to support each other and figure out what a joyful educational career will look like in future. I look forward to seeing you at the TLN Conference!