Overview of this session

This information session will include a panel discussion with three Queen's postdocs involved in teaching, and who applied and were successfully awarded Associate-Fellowship of the Higher Education Academy (AF-HEA), which is a recognised certification for Higher Education teaching.

The panel will be preceded by a short presentation to introduce the HEA Fellowship scheme and Queen's Merit Award (QMA), which is the free internal process to obtain the certification at Queen's.

The panellists will discuss how they accessed teaching opportunities as postdocs, what they delivered, what the benefits of teaching were for them, how the QMA works, what was the assessment like, how they prepared and any other tips they feel would be useful to other postdocs willing to apply for teaching certification. They will also answer questions attendees ask in the chat.

Gaining teaching experience and awareness of good teaching practice in higher education is key to research staff aiming at an academic career. This session aims to provide first-hand information based on the experience of postdocs who recently engaged with it.

More information and signposting on teaching is available on the PDC's Teaching and Supervision page.

The content will be tailored to research staff, but the QMA is open to anyone involved in teaching in the University, including technicians and PhD candidates, and everyone is welcome to attend.

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Facilitator / panellists

The session will be facilitated by Dr Alice Dubois (PDC Manager), with the following panellists:

Dr Claire Tonry

Claire is a research fellow in the Wellcome Wolfson Institute for Experimental Medicine and has been involved in delivering guest lectures to masters students, co-supervising undergraduate and PhD projects and demonstrating lab practicals. In 2020, she enrolled in the QMA programme and was awarded AF-HEA in March 2021.

Dr Victoria Cairnduff

Victoria is a research fellow in the Centre for Public Health and her teaching experience includes delivering guest lectures to MPH students and undergraduate Medical students, co-supervising masters and PhD projects and facilitating case-based learning sessions for 1^st year medical students. Victoria enrolled in the QMA programme in 2019 and was awarded AF-HEA in June 2021.

Dr Prabhath Piyasena

Prabhath is a research fellow at the Centre for Public Health and has been involved in delivering lectures and tutorials to medical undergraduate and master's students. He also assisted with supervision on numerous master's and PhD projects in global eye health. He enrolled in the QMA programme and was awarded AF-HEA in November 2023.

The 'Postdoc Life' series

The 'Postdoc Life' series of information sessions aims at highlighting some of the internal and sector developments and initiatives to postdocs and research staff, in order to help them better understand and navigate their direct (Queen's) and wider (UK Research and Innovation sector) environment.

Sessions are organised regularly, with topics informed by the PDC Representatives' Network. All postdocs and research staff can suggest future topics by contacting the PDC (pdc@qub.ac.uk) or their local representative.