Distinguished Teacher Lecture - School of International Relations

Distinguished Teacher Lecture series

The Distinguished Teacher Lecture series celebrates teaching excellence and excellent teachers. Overseen by the Teaching Forum convenors, this prestigious event cultivates continued and collective conversations about teaching, learning and pedagogy. Once a year, the School invites an external speaker who has been recognised for their exceptional teaching successes and dedication to education.

The Distinguished Teacher Lecture events were established in the 2018-2019 academic year. Since then, they have had sustained impact on advancing inclusive teaching practices across the University of 黑料吃瓜网 and the broader scholarly community.

What happens at the Distinguished Teacher Lecture?

Each speaker runs two events to showcase and share their specialised knowledge.

First, they run a bespoke Teaching Forum to share their personal teaching experiences, techniques and approaches with staff and postgraduate research students in the School of International Relations. This session is designed to be collaborative and interactive, enabling participants to learn how to put new ideas and lessons into practice through group work and breakout sessions.
The second event is the prestigious Distinguished Teacher Lecture itself. Here the invited speaker shares their scholarship, research and pedagogy with larger audiences. This mode of knowledge exchange is rare when it comes to teaching and pedagogy, yet it showcases the impact that teaching can have inside and outside of academia.

The Distinguished Teacher Lecture topics are not predetermined. On the contrary, they range from speaker to speaker. This openness and diversity facilitate cutting-edge conversations about higher education and world affairs. With equality of access at its core, the Distinguished Teacher Lecture is open to everyone, including members of the public and other universities. Nominations for Distinguished Teacher Lecture speakers are also solicited from everyone in the School of International Relations on an annual basis.

Convenors

In academic year 2026-2027, the Distinguished Teacher Lecture will be convened by Dr Norma Rossi and Dr Nick Brooke. In the previous year, it was convened by Dr Faye Donnelly and Dr Nick Brooke.

If you have ideas for the Distinguished Teacher Lecture series, please feel free to get in touch with the convenors. More information about the Distinguished Teacher Lecture and the nomination process is shared via email to staff and postgraduate research students at the start of every semester.

Distinguished Teacher Lecture events

April 2026

Emotions as sites of embodied learning in the classroom

– University of Glasgow

Emotions have become a recognised element of International Relations curricula, shaping modules and taking up intellectual space within our disciplinary teachings. However, while recognised as an important part of the shifting boundaries of the discipline, there is a deeper question regarding the pedagogical role of emotions.

Drawing on reflections from my research and teaching on narratives of war and conflict, I explore connections between reading/learning, emotions, power, politics, and positionality. In doing so, I consider in what ways asking students to engage with their emotions in the classroom may shift learning away from an extractive and consumptive model of education towards a more ethical, relational, and political understanding of global politics.
Naomi Head is Professor of International Relations at the University of Glasgow and her research and teaching focuses on narratives of conflict, the politics of empathy and emotions in war and conflict, and conflict transformation.

Her research has engaged with conflict in the Balkans, Israel-Palestine, the Iranian nuclear negotiations, and the coalition wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Naomi has a longstanding interest in mediation, communication, and forms of non-violence and is an Associate Practitioner with the Centre for Good Relations in Scotland.

April 2025

Thinking through violence. Cultivating care: Pedagogical reflections on teaching on/about/with resistance

– Goldsmiths, University of London

Dr Akanksha Mehta is a queer feminist educator, researcher, writer, community organiser, trade unionist and photographer.

She is Senior Lecturer in Gender, Race and Cultural Studies and Co-director of the Centre for Feminist Research at Goldsmiths, University of London. She is also the Co-Equalities representative and a caseworker for the Goldsmiths UCU branch.

Alongside comrades, she co-runs several collective projects, including the anti-colonial feminist public education collective Insurgent Knowledges, the Crip Theory Reading Group, and Solidarity Kitchen, a South East London community space combining food and political education.

Her research focuses on feminist, anti-colonial and queer politics. Her long-term project, Rightwing Sisterhood, examines the everyday politics and mobilisations of Hindutva and Zionist women, and her monograph based on this work will be published by OUP. She is also currently researching queer-trans collectivity, mobilisation and community building in India, and co-editing a volume on queer hope and futures from the global south.

She was the recipient of the 2023 Emma Goldman Award from the Flax Foundation and has received numerous awards for her teaching.

March 2024

Chasing World War I ghosts: Re-learning IR through the Togoland campaign

– Queens University, Canada

March 2023

Pedagogy and popular culture: International Relations and the (small) screen

– University of Leeds

May 2021

Unsettling IR: Teaching as making the familiar strange

– Deakin University

May 2019

British Empire, the Academy and IR

– Johns Hopkins University

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