WELS news

The Open University Business School and the Centre are bringing together keynote speakers from South Sudan to explore education for peacebuilding and development in high conflict contexts.  Speakers include Ambassador Agnes Oswaha, Head of Mission at the Embassy of the Republic of South Sudan, Hon. Pia Philip, Undersecretary in the Ministry of Peacebuilding, and Archbishop Samuel Peni of the Episcopal Church of South Sudan in Western Equatoria State.

The WELS School of Education, Childhood, Youth and Sport (ECYS) has been recognised with an Athena Swan Departmental Bronze Award for its work to promote gender equality.

Research by WELS academics has resulted in 14 nominations at this year’s Open University Research Excellence Awards, including a project heralded as ‘groundbreaking’ by Dame Elizabeth Fradd DBE.

OU students face many life challenges throughout their studies, and for WELS graduate Jacqui Ross hers came in the form of the menopause. She tells us how she navigated her way through the transition, as well as about her award-winning voluntary work and plans for what to study next. 

Dr Katharine Jewitt, Associate Lecturer, will be supporting Digital Schools to guide and implement its ongoing strategy to promote digital skills at nursery, primary, special education and secondary level.

Research by the WELS School of Education, Childhood, Youth and Sport (ECYS) has been used to create an innovative new reading app.

WELS Registered Nurse Degree Apprenticeship student, Jade Wareham, has been nominated for a prestigious Royal College of Nursing Student Award.

Monday 20 June is International Father’s Mental Health Day, and its timing – directly following Father’s Day – is no coincidence. Dr Martin Robb, a Health, Wellbeing and Social Care Senior Lecturer specialising in Fatherhood and Masculinity, explains why this event is equally as important, if perhaps not more so. 

The WELS School of Languages and Applied Linguistics (LAL) has contributed to an OU support package for Ukrainian refugees, which aims to help those affected by the war settle into their new homes in the UK and Ireland.

Kristina Hultgren, WELS Professor of Sociolinguistics and Applied Linguistics, has been awarded £100,000 towards her study of the role English-medium education plays in gender inequality within low and middle-income nations.