Guest speakers

Peter Felten is a professor of history, assistant provost for teaching and learning, and executive director of the Center for Engaged Learning at Elon University. His current research focuses on the influence of human relationships, and on individual and institutional change, in undergraduate education.

His books include the co-authored volumes: The Undergraduate Experience: Focusing Institutions on What Matters Most (Jossey-Bass, 2016); Transforming Students: Fulfilling the Promise of Higher Education (Johns Hopkins University Press, 2014); Engaging Students as Partners in Learning and Teaching (Jossey-Bass, 2014); Transformative Conversations (Jossey-Bass, 2013); and the co-edited book Intersectionality in Action (Stylus, 2016).

He has served as president of the International Society for the Scholarship of Teaching and Learning (2016-2017) and also of the POD Network (2010-2011), the U.S. professional society for educational developers. He is co-editor of the International Journal for Academic Development and a fellow of the Gardner Institute, a U.S. foundation that works to advance equity, social justice, and mobility in higher education.

Melinda is a former Fulbright/Nga Pae o te Maramatanga Indigenous Scholar who has published widely on the nature of ethnic identity development, examining the ways race, ethnicity, culture and identity impact the lives of young people,­ particularly Māori students. In 2016, Melinda was awarded an esteemed Marsden Fast-Start grant to undertake a research project examining the distinctive identity traits of Ngāpuhi, New Zealand’s largest iwi. In 2017, Melinda was awarded a prestigious Rutherford Discovery Fellowship to tackle an important question facing educators – ‘How can we foster cultural pride and academic aspiration among Māori students?’ – using culturally informed and iwi-determined research methods.

Meegan Hall (Ngāti Ranginui) provides strategic academic leadership to increase awareness of and grow engagement with Māori knowledge and people in the University’s learning, teaching and research contexts. This complements her academic development role within Victoria’s Centre for Academic Development, where she works with academic staff and teaches about Māori culturally responsive teaching and learning practices. Meegan is a Principal Fellow of the Higher Education Academy (now Advance HE), a Principal Investigator for Ngā Pae o te Māramatanga, New Zealand’s Māori Centre of Research Excellence, an Executive member of the Māori Association of Social Science, an Associate Editor for the International Journal for Academic Development and is on the Editorial Board for the journal, SOTL in the South. Her research focuses on Indigenous people in higher education, which combines her interest in higher education learning and teaching with her disciplinary background in Māori studies and her academic development work with Māori academic staff and students.

Jane was previously Chief Researcher at the New Zealand Council for Educational Research (NZCER). Before that she worked in the Schools of Education at Victoria University of Wellington and the University of Waikato. Many years ago, she was a secondary school teacher of science.  She is the author of Catching the Knowledge Wave? – The Knowledge Society and the future of education, published in 2005.

For about twenty years Jane has mainly worked on the question of how and why schools and other educational institutions need to change if they are to be ‘fit for purpose’ in the Knowledge Age and/or the Anthropocene. She has published many papers, led several research projects, and carried out consultancy work (for school, government, and community groups) on a wide range of educational futures questions. She recently completed a three-year research project that followed a group of teachers as they participated in a professional learning programme designed to foster “future-oriented” thinking. The findings from this project have led her into complexity theory, and an interest in unpacking the way concepts like collaboration, partnership, interaction and innovation are being interpreted in educational contexts.