Jane Creaton
Jane is a Principal Lecturer in Higher Education and is working on the Research Informed Teaching initiative. She has been seconded from the Institute of Criminal Justice Studies where she was Associate Head (Quality) and Principal Lecturer in Criminal Law and Criminal Justice. She has also worked as Senior Education Officer at the General Council of the Bar and as Research Officer at the Oxford Centre of Criminological Research. Jane is a member of the Society for Research into Higher Education and the University of Sussex Centre for Higher Education and Equity Research. She has acted as an external assessor on a number of course approvals and curriculum reviews and is involved in the ongoing development and delivery of the Professional Doctorate in Criminal Justice.

Paul Warmington
I am currently a Senior Lecturer at the School of Education, University of Birmingham. From the late 1980s I worked in further education, moving to the University of Nottingham in 2000 and, in 2004, to Birmingham. My teaching and research has focused particularly upon equalities, widening participation and informal learning. Among my key interests are shifting conceptions of race; tensions between race conscious social analyses and ‘post-racial’ approaches; dynamics between emergent Critical Race Theory and more ‘traditional’ Marxist / sociology of education readings. In terms of analytical frameworks, I am interested in using sociocultural/ activity theory to explore race and racialisation in post-compulsory education and, increasingly, in relation to work-related, professional and informal learning. Within the School of Education I am Director of Studies for Doctoral Research. As regards teaching, I am programme leader for the (Postgraduate) Research Methods Training programme and for the Equality and Diversity module on our BA (Hons) Childhood, Culture & Education programme. In addition, I currently convene the School’s Race Equality Diversity special interest group. I have led research projects and have published on race equality, widening participation and sociocultural theory. I have worked for a while with C-SAP’s Race Research Group and am part of the organising committee for C-SAP’s June 2009 conference on Critical Race Theory at the Institute of Education, London.

Mike Keating
I am Senior Lecturer in Criminology at Liverpool Hope. I have a keen interest in L&T and contributed to the BSA's Sociology Teaching Handbook back in 1992. I have conducted research into the use of Auto/biography in the Sociology Curriculum (SEDA 2008) as well as evaluating our attempts at integrating academic skills into the sociology curriculum (LATISS, forthcoming). I teach at all levels of the undergraduate degree in Criminology as well as the Masters in Criminal Justice. I am co-editor and author of the undergraduate textbook Sociology: Making Sense of Society, the 4th edition of which is going to press. I have been an Evertonian for over 45 years and am currently Secretary of Kingsley United Football Club which runs teams for local youngsters (Under 8s - Under 18s). This club is a founding partner of the Tiber Project committed to regenerating the Lodge Lane area of Liverpool, through the development of Community Arts and Sport for young people. I am also Chair of the Greg Greenidge Trust which is a charity providing bursaries to youngsters seeking to study and train in the performing arts.

Mark Turin
Mark Turin is a linguistic anthropologist. He studied archaeology and anthropology at the University of Cambridge, and holds a PhD in descriptive linguistics from Leiden University where he was affiliated to the Himalayan Languages Project. He has held research appointments at Cornell and Leipzig universities. After many years of residence and research in Nepal, he was appointed Chief of Translation and Interpretation at the United Nations Mission in Nepal (UNMIN), a position which he held from 2007 to 2008. At present, he continues to direct the Digital Himalaya Project which he co-founded in the Department of Social Anthropology at Cambridge in 2000, and has recently established the World Oral Literature Project, an urgent global initiative to collect, protect and connect the oral literatures of indigenous peoples before they disappear without record. He writes and lectures on ethnolinguistics, visual anthropology and oral history at the University of Cambridge.

Terry Wassall
I am a Principal Teaching Fellow in the School of Sociology and Social Policy at the University of Leeds. In addition to teaching at both undergraduate and postgraduate levels and assisting in the supervision of PhD students, I have particular responsibilities for developing and supporting the use of computer and information technologies in teaching and support of student learning. My research interests are in the development of sociology theory as a scientific enterprise. My approach is centrally informed by the work of Norbert Elias and the critical realist perspective. Key concerns include: the development of a theoretically informed social research methodology and, more substantively, the relationship between society, the environment and ecological processes. In addition I am engaged in a number of projects investigating and developing e-learning techniques for supporting learning and teaching. I teach social science research methods, particularly quantitative methods, to undergraduate and post graduate students. I also teach a sociology of the environment module and make contributions to other modules on topics related to social theory and the relationship between social and ecological processes.

Richard Huggins
Richard Huggins is the Assistant Dean of Academic Affairs at Oxford Brookes University where he teaches postgraduate courses on research methods and democracy. Richard has two main areas of research interests. The first is media, politics and democracy on which he has published a number of articles and chapters and a recent book entitled New Media and Politics (co-edited with Barrie Axford, London, Sage). He is currently working on a book on democracy and democratization (Routledge, forthcoming, 2004). The second main area of research interest includes criminal and social justice, public order issues, community and urban renewal and substance misuse. In recent years he has conducted a number of commissioned research projects and consultancies for a range of local authorities, the Thames Valley Police, various Drug and Alcohol Action Teams (DAATs), Health Authorities and other statutory and voluntary organisations in substance misuse issues. Richard is currently involved in a community development project funded through the Communities Against Drugs (CAD) initiative of the Home Office’s Crime Reduction Unit. He is a member of the Drugs Prevention Advisory Service Regional Training Forum and of the Partnership Board of the Leys Link Single Regeneration Board in Oxford.

Deborah Lee
I am currently Senior Lecturer in Sociology at Nottingham Trent University. Particular areas of interest for me are student employability and careers; volunteering and community engagement. I am interested in working with students to develop what they feel they need to enhance their employability, rather than imposing particular skills upon them. Working on E-learning and flexibility of access to learning, I have been active in developing blended learning opportunities for students. As part of a current revalidation of BA Sociology at NTU, I am looking to include more opportunities for students to work in a self-directed way, supported by individual members of staff, throughout the degree programme. I am engaged with personal tutoring and student support underpinning student achievement, and the gender issues in this process. I am keen to explore further how students might be supported to achieve their best at university, and how staff can be supported to deal with difficult issues and their repercussions. I have written about student conduct at university and how managers deal with it, publishing the first UK book on students stalking, physically attacking and verbally heckling staff, which also noted the poor management of the issue by many in leadership positions - all of which undermines teachers and teaching. I think there is much more to be done with regard to this serious issue.

Carlton Howson
Carlton Howson works in the academic quality department at De Montfort University, undertaking special projects with specific reference to "gathering the student voice". His current pedagogic interests are: Critical race theory – in particular what staff and students say about their experience in higher education and the strategies they use to cope within everyday life. The Experience of Students in higher education, in particular the policy context of widening participation, student retention, disparity in degree attainment, the future of higher education and commitment to social justice. Working with students and staff collectively and independently on enquiry base learning and practice in an attempt to reduce ‘domestication’ or the negative impact of education.

Dave Harris
Prof David Harris did his Sociology at London and Essex Universities (beginning in 1965). He is interested in social theory and its applications to specific activities and practices, including distance education, electronic teaching, leisure and cultural studies. His publications range across those fields and include editing a monograph (with Jon Cope and Joyce Canaan) for C-SAP on teaching and learning social theory. He teaches at a small University College in Plymouth (UCP Marjon), on a range of undergraduate and postgraduate courses, and uses electronic teaching materials (including RLOs devised by a colleague and himself) on Leisure Studies, Education and Research Methods courses. He is particularly interested in developing sociological insights into the practices of electronic teaching and learning, including researching ‘technophobia’ and ‘technophilia’. More details are available on his personal website http://www.arasite.org/.

Annabel Kiernan
Senior Lecturer in Politics at Sheffield Hallam University: Since joining Hallam in January 2007 I have focused on learning and teaching, looking at new ways of enhancing student engagement in political science in particular. My involvement in Hallam’s Active Learning, Active Citizenship research project (http://extra.shu.ac.uk/alac/), which was funded by FDLT5, provided new impetus for developing this theme. Since the completion of that project I have continued to develop innovative teaching, learning and assessment strategies in a range of politics modules through the integration of audio-visual inter-university dialogue, citizen forums, blogs, newspaper wikis and via the engagement of students in community development work for my local football club FC United of Manchester (a non-profit non-league football team created in 2005). My latest project, due to begin in autumn 2009, will insert dynamic learning space into the curriculum in order to reignite student activism on campus, with the aim of enhancing lifelong learning and active citizenship. As a result of my emphasis on learning, teaching and assessment, my recent research has also focused on student-centred learning and engagement, with papers on active learning in politics given at the Higher Education Academy (York, 2008) and Political Studies Association annual conference (Manchester, 2009).