Dr Karen Gravett
Dr Karen Gravett is Senior Lecturer at the Surrey Institute of Education at the University of Surrey, UK, where her research focuses on the theory-practice of learning in higher education, and explores the areas of student engagement, belonging, and relational pedagogies.
Karen is Director of the Language, Literacies and Learning research group, co-convenor of the SRHE Learning, Teaching and Assessment network; a member of the SRHE Governing Council, and a member of the editorial board for Teaching in Higher Education. Her work has been funded by the Society for Research in Higher Education, the Association for Learning Development in Higher Education, the British Association for Applied Linguistics, the UK Literacy Association and the Arts and Humanities Research Council. Karen is a Principal Fellow of Advance HE.
Karen’s work is published in leading journals including Studies in Higher Education, Teaching in Higher Education, Higher Education, Learning, Media and Technology, and the International Journal of Qualitative Methods. Her latest books are: Gravett, K. (2023) Relational Pedagogies: Connections and mattering in higher education, Kinchin, I. M. and Gravett, K. (2022) Dominant discourses in higher education: Critical perspectives, cartographies and practice, and Gravett, K., Yakovchuk, N. and Kinchin, I.M. (Eds.) (2020) Enhancing student-centred teaching in higher education: The landscape of student-staff partnerships.
Keynote outline
Our recent times have disrupted the way we think about student learning. With the shift to more blended modes of teaching, or following increased concerns about students’ wellbeing and participation, educators are focusing upon questions relating to how to encourage student engagement and how to foster a sense of community. In this keynote presentation, I will share some of my recent research and practice examining partnership, belonging and connection, enabling participants to think about students’ experiences in new ways. I will consider how students as partners practices are emerging in today’s universities as a means to offer a more participative, inclusive, agenda, and as offering potential to transform university cultures, within an increasingly economically driven higher education context. I will explore the growing area of student-staff partnership research, policy and practice within higher education, and I will discuss the benefits and challenges of fostering partnership approaches to learning and teaching within our own disciplines. There will be opportunities to discuss what experiences participants have of working in partnership with students, as well as to explore practical ways of establishing partnership practices. This presentation will conclude with thinking about how we can draw upon evidence-based research to assist our work in maximising students’ potential and fostering engagement for a diversity of students in contemporary higher education.
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