One of my happy places is the classroom. I love teaching and the joyful exchange of ideas with students. I am the proud recipient of a number of University and Divisional teaching awards and was delighted to receive an Ako Aotearoa Award for Sustained Excellence in Tertiary Teaching in 2020, the University of Waikato Nola Campbell Memorial eLearning Excellence Award in 2022, and the University of Waikato Vice Chancellor's Medal for Staff Excellence in 2022.

The foundations of what I consider to be excellence in teaching revolve around three ideas: discovery, the joy of connection, and creative risk. Discovery is what education is about, teaching the new, but also instilling in my students both the tools and the desire to discover things for themselves. Connection is also crucial to my teaching practice. The world can be a difficult, baffling, and lonely place, especially for students on the cusp of adulthood and I seek to bridge the distance between teacher and student by creating a learning environment that is welcoming and inclusive, where students can ask questions that challenge both each other and myself whilst always feeling safe and valued. I am also prepared to take creative risks in the classroom – from dressing up, to writing skits and provocations, to flipping the classroom – in order to engage my students and keep them excited about learning. By being innovative with my teaching practices and by taking creative risks I try to make my classroom a place of wonder, a place of magic.

My papers on adapting stories, utopias and dystopias, and reading nineteenth and twentieth century novels through a contemporary lens are linked by my absolute belief in the enduring relevance of fiction. I am interested in how stories change in the telling, as they move between cultures and genres, and I am fascinated by the way in which the contexts in which stories are written and read can shift their tone and meaning. Above all, I am inspired by the topicality of literature to the questions we grapple with in our twenty-first century world, with my paper on utopias and dystopias asking urgent questions about power, identity, and the role we all can play in making the world a better place.