معرفی
Dr Emma Folwell is Head of Interdisciplinary Studies at Birmingham Newman University where she leads strategic curriculum design and student engagement across the Foundation Year and BA Applied Humanities. A historian by training and Fulbright Scholar, she now focuses on inclusive pedagogy, academic coaching and mindfulness to support student success and close awarding gaps.
Education & scholarly affiliations:
- PhD (History) ‑ university not specified in text
- Senior Fellow, Advance HE
- Fellow, Royal Historical Society
- Member, British Association for American Studies & HOTCUS
Research & scholarly interests: Emma’s historical work examined poverty, gender and conservatism in the post-civil-rights US South, culminating in her 2020 monograph The War on Poverty in Mississippi. Her current pedagogical research investigates assessment by engagement, academic life coaching as an alternative to personal tutoring, mindfulness in accelerated degrees, and ipsative assessment within interdisciplinary programmes.
Publication trends: Across two decades she has published in leading history journals and, more recently, high-impact higher-education journals. Her output blends empirical archival research with evidence-based pedagogic innovation, reflecting a trajectory from American social history to contemporary curriculum scholarship.
Awards & recognition:
- Fulbright Scholar
- Research grants / fellowships from Lyndon Baines Johnson Presidential Library, Royal Historical Society, British Association for American Studies
- Invited keynote speaker, AdvanceHE Symposium on Students as Co-Creators (2025)
Teaching & programme leadership: Over a decade she has designed and taught modules from Level 3 to 7 in History, Politics, Applied Humanities and academic skills. She co-created the university’s first accelerated BA programme and embeds coaching, reflective practice and inclusive assessment to enhance retention, progression and wellbeing.
Service & community: Emma peer-reviews for the Journal of the Foundation Year Network and Journal of Learning Development in Higher Education, serves on conference committees and is an active contributor to national policy debates on access, attainment and assessment.
