PSA Teaching & Learning Network - Call for New Network Leads

Expressions of interest are invited by midday GMT, Monday 14 July

A huge part of PSA’s strategic mission is to support our members as they proceed through their careers; Supporting those teaching politics in higher education and raising the profile and professional status of politics and international relations teaching and scholarship in Higher Education.

We are looking for new leaders of the PSA’s  Teaching and Learning Network (TLN). The TLN leadership team will comprise between four and six people, who are current PSA members and passionate about teaching and learning within Higher Education, alongside a member of the PSA staff team and a PSA Trustee.

The PSA Teaching & Learning Network exists to:

• Enable all politics & IR academics/Higher Education (HE) teachers to share the good and innovative practices that they have developed, within a community of practice
• Support the production and dissemination of research and scholarship relating to the teaching and learning of politics
• Support the PSA in contributing to policy relating to HE matters, including the Teaching Excellence Framework (TEF)
• Support early career academics in developing their practice as university teachers 
• Support the development of politics & IR students as critical and independent learners, able to contribute to economic, social, and political wellbeing as active citizens.

Teaching and learning academics represent a large and varied part of the PSA membership and community. The TLN leadership team is responsible for organising and delivering an engaging and inclusive annual programme of events and activities designed to support teaching & learning academics. This usually includes online and in-person events, presence and activities at the PSA’s annual conference (PSA26 will be in Oxford), regular communications with TLN members via e-newsletters, blogs, web-content, social media and PSA News magazine, all of which is supported by the PSA’s central team.

Typically, the TLN leadership team’s outputs include:

• Sessions on how to teach key topics
• Developing pedagogy, curriculum & teaching skills
• Scholarship and teaching track career development
• Opportunities to network with peers and more experienced colleagues
• Facilitating links with PSA journals
• Awarding/judging teaching prizes
• Advocacy for early career academics and engagement with regulatory and other activities including the Teaching Excellence Framework.

The TLN leadership team may also wish to explore mentoring and coaching as part of its activities and will have the opportunity to input to the PSA Membership review in 2025/26 as well as potentially delivering an event in partnership with APSA in 2026.

The network leads are usually appointed for two years and will work closely with the PSA team , trustees and other PSA groups and networks. They will be involved in running events, sharing communications via newsletters and socials, and supporting the needs of TLN members. All roles are voluntary. We are keen that the TLN leadership team reflects a balanced and representative range of TLN academics.

The PSA is a UK based organisation so the network leads would need to be able to attend and participate in UK based TLN events and meetings.