Speakers and Abstracts
Catherine Bates
Global research into academic reading suggests that up to 80% of university students do not complete assigned readings, affecting their confidence and academic outcomes (Zeivots, 2021). Reading self-efficacy is key to student empowerment, sense of belonging and success (Bergman, 2024). Research has explored student and staff’s ideas about academic reading, and students’ reading confidence (Miller and Meridan, 2020; Gorzycki et al, 2020), primarily adopting traditional methodologies which maintain researcher-participant hierarchies, rarely focusing on mature student experience. My research foregrounds mature student voice through a Photovoice approach, empowering student-participants to effect institutional change. Photovoice is a participatory research method which involves helping those without power to ‘use visual evidence to recognize and voice their’ experience (Goodhart et al, 2006, p. 53): to influence and effect change. I worked with 11 mature students at the University of Leeds, from across different departments and disciplines; using the Photovoice method they reflected deeply together on their experiences of academic reading, forming their own community of practice. We then co-created a physical and digital exhibition to influence those with power in the institution to effect change. This paper will discuss some of the key findings of this research, focusing particularly on: the need to recognise students’ emotions and lived, embodied experiences of reading ; the danger of academic reading remaining part of the ‘hidden curriculum’ when assumptions are made that students know what and how to read; the importance of academic reading as a social practice enabled by community.
Dr. Catherine Bates leads the BA Professional Studies degree at the Lifelong Learning Centre, University of Leeds. This interdisciplinary degree, focused on contemporary issues, is designed to be inclusive for mature students. Catherine has published on Canadian literature, waste, autobiography, posthuman pedagogies, and hope with a developing interest in antihierarchical participatory research methods, academic literacies and critical pedagogies. She is currently co-leading a research project on mature student strengths as well as leading on How do mature students experience academic reading?
https://campuspress.leeds.ac.uk/maturestudentsreading/
Kevin De Ornellas
Good pedagogy must be grounded in empathy: with an awareness of the sheer difficulty of sitting through lengthy lectures and awareness of just how difficult it is to read and analyse a lot of material across different modules for months on end. In this paper it is argued that there is no point setting students huge reading tasks: realistically most students just can't or won't read The Faerie Queene, Urania, Bartholomew Fair or Paradise Lost in a week. Setting impossible tasks will demoralise people who cannot complete them. But this doesn't mean that one cannot deliver effective instruction on major canonical figures. A female body-fetishising sonnet by Edmund Spenser can be read in class; a love sonnet by Mary Wroth offers a compelling gender contrast to Spenser's blazon-festooned masculinist poetry; Ben Jonson's politics can be ascertained through the study of a particular four-line poem; and John Milton's puritanism can be understood through the study of his short poem about the Nativity. Embracing the short text is also essential for the necessary examination of women's writing in the period. Barring Urania-like prose romances, few pre-1642 long texts by women are extant. So, it is argued that to examine women's agency in the period, a wide range of short pieces by women (many published and/or anthologised for the first time in this decade) can and should be presented in class. It is also argued that engagement with non-literary artefacts is essential: early modern piety about mortality is illuminated through study of simple memento mori rings; knot garden plans tell us much about Tudor notions of political order; coins tell us much about the expansion of regal power in the period; and the binary construction of righteous Protestants with debased Catholics can be made clear not with tortuous readings of Tyndale, Knox or Foxe, but with a discussion about 1588's Armada Portrait. Finally, critical theory can also be taught creatively and pragmatically using short, accessible pieces. One cannot not expect even Masters students to read, for example, long ethical animal rights philosophy books - but the in-class reading of an interview with Peter Singer can deliver much instruction about the spirit of critical animal studies.
Dr Kevin De Ornellas lectures on Renaissance Literature at Ulster University. He has published over 180 pieces - some big, most small. He is the Chair of Judges for the Literature section of the Global Undergraduate Awards.
Noreen Giffney
I specialise in reflective practice and in teaching psychoanalytic and psychosocial theories. I formulated and have been developing the ‘Cultural Encounters Case Study Method’ for the past fifteen years, which is an experiential approach to teaching clinical psychoanalytic concepts using cultural objects (film, art, literature, music, virtual reality) as case studies. I have written about this work in my book, The Culture-Breast in Psychoanalysis: Cultural Experiences and the Clinic, and for The Palgrave Handbook of Psychosocial Studies. After briefly outlining the key features of this experiential pedagogy, I will talk about an ongoing collaboration with performance artists from Bbeyond arts organisation, who work with final-year students in my Psychosocial Issues module to develop their capacity for self-awareness and self-reflectivity through an experience of play/ing in the here and now
Dr Noreen Giffney is a psychoanalytic psychotherapist and lectures in the School of Communication and Media at Ulster University in Belfast. Her BA Hons and PhD were in history and English language and literature, and she subsequently completed her clinical training in psychoanalytic psychotherapy. She remains delighted to have been made an associate member of Bbeyond in 2025. https://www.ulster.ac.uk/staff/n-giffney
Amanda Mironova-Stronge
This paper examines student resistance to in-class poetry writing exercises in an undergraduate creative writing module. While writing prompts are a common pedagogical tool, many students express reluctance to engage with them, often citing a lack of inspiration, disinterest in poetry, or a preference for writing outside the classroom. This resistance can result in limited participation and reinforce the perception of poetry as inaccessible. In response, this paper examines the application of concrete, visually grounded prompts, such as photographic images and blackout poetry exercises, as a method for re-engaging students. By shifting away from open-ended or purely textual prompts to material and image-based stimuli, students were encouraged to engage with poetry from a new vantage point, developing their observational skills and fostering creativity despite prompt restrictions. Drawing on classroom examples and student feedback, this paper discusses how concrete prompts can reduce “blank page” anxiety, increase active participation, and make writing poetry more accessible, especially for those unfamiliar with the genre. Rethinking the approach to creative writing prompts can help bridge the gap between student interests and the daunting perception of crafting a poem, offering practical strategies for teaching creative writing.
Dr Amanda Mironova-Stronge holds a doctorate in English Literature from Ulster University. Her research centred on ecopoetics, examining the works of Joy Harjo and the intersections of environmental memory with language, landscapes, and culture. Presently, she is employed as a part-time lecturer at Ulster University and works as a freelance research data analyst. She is passionate about using poetry as a mode of raising environmental awareness in younger generations and runs poetry workshops for primary and secondary school pupils. She has also served as a poetry facilitator at the Seamus Heaney Homeplace for six years.
Kendra Reynolds
This paper will examine the value of Arts and Humanities approaches to teaching and learning for all students regardless of academic discipline, using first-hand examples of approaches to interdisciplinary study and global learning in the author’s own teaching practice. As P. W. Martin states, Arts and Humanities subjects are ‘cored through and through with ethical issues, social concerns, judgement, and the recognition of human agency’ (A Handbook for Teaching and Learning in Higher Education, 2003: 301). Therefore, Arts and Humanities teaching can facilitate supportive and inclusive learning environments and discussion in classrooms, demystifying notions of Otherness and difference, at the heart of the ethos of Global Learning departments. The author’s experiences of using her literature background to support the Global Learning department in Tulsa Community College in Oklahoma will be discussed as a case in point. In addition, the use of Arts and Humanities methodologies in STEM subjects will be discussed, drawing on a pilot the author created for Tulsa Community College’s Occupational Therapy students, who were struggling with writing concise SOAP notes for patient records. This project used both practical literary and creative writing tools alongside offering students approaches for reflecting on the emotional and human element behind clinical patient treatment. Arts and Humanities education is ‘not an education primarily structured around the imparting of skills and competences, but one primarily structured around a series of engagements with a body of knowledge, or (in the case of the practical arts) a body of practice’ (Martin, 2003: 302). The overall aim of this paper then, is to highlight how Arts and Humanities educators can add value beyond their own disciplines, encouraging both students and educators to think outside of established parameters and boundaries, to look at their subject from an alternative and critical perspective.
Dr Kendra Reynolds is an academic, award-winning poet, and former Fulbright Scholar with a passion for creative writing and contemporary literature. Kendra received her PhD in literature from Ulster University in 2018, with her research focusing on anti-tales, radical revisions of fairy tale narratives by feminist writers. Her first monograph, The Feminist Architecture of Postmodern Anti-Tales: Space, Time and Bodies was published by Routledge in 2020.
Nerys Young
Concerns about the misuse of generative AI in coursework assessments have led many university staff to spend significant time policing student work, sometimes to the detriment of exploring AI’s constructive pedagogical potential. This paper will argue that reframing AI as a pedagogical partner rather than a student shortcut can help shift the focus from detection and prohibition to meaningful learning design.
Using a case study from an undergraduate History classroom, the paper will demonstrate how an AI agent was deliberately used to prolong student thinking rather than replace it. The task was designed to address a recurring problem in student work, the difficulty in framing a certain historical argument, by using structured AI interaction to prompt clarification, challenge assumptions, and refine lines of reasoning. Crucially, students could then translate this supported thinking into their own written assessments, rather than submit AI‑generated text.
The case study will show how carefully constrained AI use can foster critical engagement and improved argumentation, while reducing the student need for misconduct. The AI tool discussed is integrated within Blackboard Ultra and is available to all Ulster University staff, making the approach scalable and institutionally realistic. By focusing on how students think with AI rather than what AI produces, this paper will offer a practical model for using generative tools to enhance historical thinking and reclaim staff time for teaching.
Dr Nerys Young is a Lecturer in American History at Ulster University. Her research interests are in Screen History, and her DPhil explored connections between US Senate Hearings and crime film/tv in the 1950s. She is the treasurer for the Irish Association for American Studies (IAAS). Her latest publication will be a co-written chapter on Charlie Fairhead and Casualty in the forthcoming book, K. Byrne, etal., eds. The National Health Service on Television: The Picture of Health (Routledge, 2026).