Tom Lowe

Chair (The University of Westminster)

Tom is Assistant Head of School (Student Experience), in the School of Finance and Accounting at the University of Westminster. Previous to this role, Tom was a Senior Lecturer in Higher Education at the University of Portsmouth, where his research included student engagement in development of education, embedding employability into the curriculum. Prior to Portsmouth, Tom was the Head of Student Engagement and Employability at the University of Winchester where he led the University’s student development, internationalisation and extra-curricular opportunities, staffing and strategies. Tom was also the programme leader for the MA in Student Engagement in Higher Education at Winchester, and has served on the RAISE Committee in various roles for ten years. Tom is experienced in the practicalities surrounding student engagement in quality assurance, learning and teaching, University governance and Students' Unions, as well as student involvement in extra-curricular activities and overcoming barriers to student success through inclusive practice.

Ellie Mayo-Ward

Vice Chair (NUS Wales)

Ellie is the Campaigns and Influencing Manager for the National Union of Students (NUS) Wales, working with students’ unions and key stakeholders across Wales to enhance the student experience. Ellie is the Vice-Chair for RAISE, working across the association to develop our processes and supporting the RAISE Buddy Scheme. She was previously an ordinary committee member for RAISE.

Ellie’s passion for student engagement started through being elected as Vice President Education for two years at Bournemouth University’s Students’ Union. Following that, Ellie joined HEFCE knowing it would transition to the Office for Students, to help lay the foundation for Student Engagement in the new organisation and worked on the emergent Student Engagement strategy for the OfS.

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​Ellie has experience of supporting student engagement within institutions and more widely as part of the regulatory environment, so has a good understanding of the regulatory expectations for student engagement for the sector and how this can be applied in practice. Her passion lies in direct engagement with students, and empowering students to be true partners in their HE experience.  

Faye ap Geraint

Secretary (Aberystwyth University) 

Faye holds the position of Student Insight and Engagement Lead at Aberystwyth University in Wales, where she has been dedicated to her role since 2016. Her early realization of the profound impact of student engagement led her to commit herself to enhancing the student experience and promoting a culture rooted in data-driven decision-making. Faye's primary focus is on providing valuable data and insights related to students' academic and extra-curricular experiences. She actively engages in various aspects of student involvement, through participation and partnership to co-creation, working in collaboration with the Students’ Union.

As a mature postgraduate student, Faye is nearing the completion of her MA in Student Engagement in Higher Education, further underscoring her commitment to the field. She has recently taken on the role of Professional and Learning Services Staff Representative within the Raise Committee. Faye's unwavering passion stems from the belief in education's transformative potential and her conviction that every student's higher education journey should be characterized by engagement, empowerment, and ongoing enhancement.

John Parkin

Treasurer (Anglia Ruskin University)

John works on integrating employability into the curriculum across Anglia Ruskin University. He was previously a Senior Lecturer Practitioner in Education and course leader of the BA Primary Education Studies degree at Anglia Ruskin University Peterborough.  These roles have fostered John’s interest in student engagement and employability.  Before joining academia in 2018, he was a primary teacher for seventeen years.  John is completing a doctorate investigating the experiences of men studying for a BA Primary Education Studies and strategies to enhance engagement and continuation.  Other research interests include the co-creation of learning with students and playful approaches to learning.

Dr Ella Dyer

RAISE Operations Administrator (Newcastle University)

Ella’s interest in student engagement has grown over several years. She was a Student Representative and advocate of the student's voice during her undergraduate degree at Sheffield Hallam University. More recently, student engagement was at the core of Ella’s Learning and Teaching Assistant role at Newcastle University. 

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Ella has just completed an ESRC-funded PhD at Newcastle University focussing on how to improve inter-pregnancy care for women with pre-existing diabetes after a baby loss.  

Dr Kiu Sum

Journal Co-Editor in Chief (London Metropolitan University)

Dr Kiu Sum is a Lecturer in Dietetics and Human Nutrition in the School of Human Sciences at London Metropolitan University. With a BSc (Hons) and MRes in Human Nutrition, Kiu's mixed-methods research includes workplace nutrition, public health nutrition, and nutritional behaviour. Kiu's PhD explored doctors' and nurses' nutrition during shift work. Aside from nutrition, she is a pedagogy researcher focusing on student engagement and partnerships, assessments and feedback. 

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Kiu is a Registered Nutritionist (Nutritional Science) with the Association for Nutrition (AfN) and a fellow of the Higher Education Academy. Kiu is a member of The Nutrition Society, Chair of the Institute of Food Science and Technology's South East Branch Committee, and the communications officer of the UK Society for Behavioural Medicine's Early Career Network.  She serves as Secretary at the RAISE network, where she also convenes the Engaging Assessment and Early Career Researchers Special Interest Groups. With an interest in Equality, Diversity and Inclusion (EDI), Kiu serves on ALDinHE's steering group and leads the EDI working group. 

Dr Stuart Sims

Journal Co-Editor in Chief (University of Greenwich)

Dr Stuart Sims is the Head of Academic & Learning Enhancement at the University of Greenwich, leading an academic and professional team with a broad remit for supporting academic staff to enhance and recognise their learning and teaching. Stuart joined the University of Greenwich in February 2022, initially as an Associate Professor in HE Learning & Teaching with responsibility for academic staff development and educational leadership. Prior to this, he has worked in Academic Development roles at the University of Portsmouth and University of Winchester, primarily focused on supporting approaches to staff-student partnership working. Stuart’s background is in the sociology of education and current research interests include degree apprenticeship experiences and shared module pedagogies. Stuart co-led the RAISE SIG for Research and Evaluation between 2017-2024 and has served on the editorial board of the Student Engagement in Higher Education Journal since 2021.

Cinnomen McGuigan

Student Officer (Open University)

Cinnomen is a current student at the Open University studying a mix of micro-credentials and starting her fourth OU degree. She was the 2020-22 Vice President Education for The Open University Students Association, so she has both recent lived experience and an active interest in student engagement, academic policy and academic representation across the OU.

Whilst in that role she has helped support student reps, delivering their training and supported their engagement at all levels of the university’s governance structure. Students know best how to feed in about what students need. She has been actively involved in Quality Assurance and Quality Enhancement activity at the university, acting as Co-Chair for the Peer Review Group that monitors the teaching and learning delivered by our Boards of Studies. She is passionate about student voice and amplifying minoritised voices and has always ensured that the student perspective is kept front and centre in all that she does.

Daisy Bao

Student Committee Member (University of Edinburgh)

Daisy is a PhD researcher in Higher Education at the University of Edinburgh. She has been working on supporting student HE experiences for over 6 years with strong interests and research achievements in student-staff partnerships, student engagement, educational technologies (5G network), teacher education, and teacher professional education. Prior to being a PhD, Daisy was an officer and a policy maker in the Municipal Education Department where she supported the higher education affairs across 44 universities, as well as developed the new policy for vocational education with a team. Daisy was also a researcher in higher education at the Municipal Teacher Professional Education Centre, and has been a committee member in the municipal supervisor training scheme. Daisy has experience in quality assurance in HEIs, discipline design, HE staff professional development, student engagement, and EDI strategy in HE (e.g. curricula, extra-curricular activities, and student-staff interactions). More about Daisy can be found here. 

Emily Bastable

Student Committee Member (University of Southampton)

Emily Bastable is a PhD Student from the University of Southampton and uses participatory action research methods to understand how Knowledge Exchange and Enterprise can be integrated into the undergraduate curriculum. Emily obtained her fellowship status with Advance HE and has also served on the Quality Assurance Agency's Student Strategic Advisory Committee ('23-'25), which combines her experience in student voice and engagement with her current research interests in HE curriculum innovation. She also runs the blog for IARSLCE’s Graduate Student Network which champions graduate student voices, especially those from international contexts. 

Tom Langston

Marketing Officer (University College London)

Tom currently works at UCL, working to support Student/Staff partnership throughout the university. Working closely with the UCL ChangeMakers team, Tom helps develop and teach academic staff on working with students to improve the curriculum. In previous roles Tom worked with academics on the use of audience response systems to facilitate effective co-creation and partnership. Tom is currently undertaking his Professional Doctorate in Education at the University of Portsmouth, looking at how staff and students engage with blended learning. Tom looks forward to bringing his experiences both within and outside Higher Education and student engagement to RAISE and the Marketing Officer role.

Ashley Storer-Smith

Communications Officer (UCL)

Ashley is the Student Partnerships Manager at UCL. This role manages the ChangeMakers Programme as well as supporting on the wide range of partnership activity that happens across UCL. In previous roles, Ashley has worked leading student voice, engagement, and partnership work across a wide range of Students' Unions across England. Ashley has also worked NUS, Student Minds, OIA HE, and Unitu on student engagement projects and best practice sharing. Ashley has a MA Student Engagement in Higher Education with their these focusing on the effectiveness of student activism and Students' Unions within the digital age. Ashley has also published a wide range of work through blogs and articles including a chapter about Trans Student belonging in HE in the book Student Belonging in HE: Perspectives & Practice.

Dr Amarpreet Kaur

Special Interest Group (SIG) Coordinator (University of Birmingham)

Amarpreet is a Lecturer at the University of Birmingham in the School of Social Policy and Society. She is also the Student Experience and Employability lead for the Health Services Management Centre in the School, which exclusively serves postgraduate students. Amarpreet is a long-standing, passionate advocate for widening participation, EDI and enhancing student engagement in higher education; these values continue to inform her teaching and learning support practices. Amarpreet is also very interested in the use of technology and AI in teaching, and maintaining academic integrity.

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Amarpreet originally joined the RAISE network as student committee member in 2015 while she was completing her BA (Hons) in Sociology at Manchester Metropolitan University. She brought with her a wealth of experience in student voice having been a very active course representative, Chair of a mental health society, and a student panel member for programme review boards. She was the SIG coordinator from 2016-2018, during which time she was also a postgraduate welfare officer for her college at the University of Cambridge while undertaking her Masters. Since then, Amarpreet has completed her PhD in the Sociology of Reproduction at the University of Cambridge. 

Aimee Cuthbert

Student Union Staff Committee Member (Highlands and Islands Students' Association, HISA) 

Aimee Cuthbert is the Development Manager (Perth and Moray) within the Highlands and Islands Students' Association (HISA). Her role involves supporting HISA's strategic priorities being implemented across the university partnership through supporting her local teams, encourage student engagement, and improving the student experience while nurturing relationships with academic staff and local communities.
Having worked within students’ associations in Scotland for a decade, Aimee's roles in the sector have involved student voice, democracy, membership communications and student engagement. She has also helped shape sector resources such as the Professional Standards Framework for Student Engagement with sparqs and has led HISA's Board of Management Project, ensuring students voices are effectively heard within in UHI’s complex governance structures.
In September 2023, she completed her studies on the University of Winchester in MA Student Engagement in Higher Education, with research interests in students' associations/unions, student voice, extra-curricular activities and SU and institutional governance.

James Cantwell

Buddy Scheme Co-ordinator (The University of Cambridge)

James has a passion for student engagement, continual development and lifelong learning. He is a Communications, Engagement and PPIE (Patient and Public Involvement and Engagement) Manager at the University of Cambridge, Department of Public Health and Primary Care, Primary Care Unit. Previously, James was a Project Manager at the University of Southampton, delivering a young researcher training programme and citizens jury, providing policy recommendations for primary care and health services. Prior to this, he was a Communications Manager at the Institute of Educational Technology at The Open University. Alongside roles in professional services, James has supported research on a few projects. In 2023, James supported a student-staff partnership project exploring decolonisation and inclusion initiatives in UK HEIs. From 2017 to 2022, James volunteered as a Research Assistant on a project funded by the University of Hertfordshire, exploring and delivering mental health awareness training in higher education through a student-staff partnership model. James proudly served as a RAISE Student Committee Member in 2014-15.

Dr Emma Heron

Academic Representative (University of Northampton) 

Currently Head of Learning & Teaching Enhancement, I am a passionate believer in student agency, success and voice and am their absolute champion: improving students’ experiences is what gets me up in the morning. I have worked in Higher Education for over 25 years and over this time I have taught undergraduate and postgraduate students as well as design and deliver modules and personal tutoring systems. I have led on learning & teaching as well as student experience initiatives with institution-wide impact. I have line managed academic staff and professional services staff and have a unique leadership perspective as a result. As the creator of Listening Rooms (an innovative and award-winning approach to listening to HE students (and staff), and now adopted in HEIs across the UK), I am a national expert on university students’ experiences and have built a national reputation both as student voice advocate and as innovative qualitative methodologist.

Lucy McCormick

Professional and Learning Services Representative (University of Glasgow) 

Lucy is currently Induction & Transitions Adviser and the University of Glasgow and has worked extensively with diverse student groups transitioning into, through and out of UK Higher Education. Her career encompasses ESL teaching in the UK and overseas as well as teaching, student engagement and learning development roles across Further and Higher Education.

Stephany Veuger

Conference Co-ordinator - 2026 (University of Northumbria)

Stephany is an Associate Professor in Education at Northumbria University, serving as Teaching Excellence Lead and Head of Equality, Diversity and Inclusion (EDI) in the Department of Applied Sciences. With 15 years experience in bioscience and medical education, Stephany specialises in inclusive pedagogies. Stephany holds an MA in Educational Leadership and her work has been recognised through multiple awards for teaching excellence. Stephany has an international reputation for leading research that advances equity in higher education having led projects to develop innovative, inclusive practices through a “students as partners” (SaP) framework. Stephany’s work enhances programmes through cross disciplinary participatory action research, providing colleagues with the expertise and training in co-construction of knowledge with students as partners. Stephany also founded and leads the university wide SaP learning circle which seeks to develop innovations that support equality of participation and positive outcomes for all.