We’ve caught up with recently promoted Pathway 3 colleagues to hear about their approaches to scholarship of teaching and learning and what advice they would give to others planning on applying for promotion.
Short intro about who you are:
I am a Pathway 3 academic in the School of Law. My scholarship is socio-legal and interdisciplinary. It is primarily concerned with how legal education approaches the question of the human. The question of the human has historically involved a figurative social construction of an ideal human. This construction has implications not just for how we experience, practice and teach the law, but also for what the nature of the law itself was, is and has the potential to become. In the recent past couple of years, this has mostly involved engaging with and producing scholarship on decolonisation and antiracism. At the moment, I am exploring the use of a wide array of literary forms as pedagogy – in essence, what are the best ways and materials with which to teach about law’s approaches to the human question? I was promoted to professor in 2023.
From your successful application for promotion can you give an example of using educational scholarship or evidence to transform your teaching or assessment practice, and what impact this had?
One example is my scholarly work on decolonisation and legal education. I have about 20 publications across different forms and themes, including an award-winning sole-authored monograph theorising decolonisation. This scholarship was developed iteratively and in tandem with my redesign of units that encourage students to think more critically about law, race, power, and knowledge production. Embedding my scholarship into my teaching has been useful in developing further scholarship. An example is my co-design and ongoing redesign of Law and Race, the first unit of its kind in the UK. The unit integrates a wider range of materials, including literature, film, and blogs, into teaching. The impact has been significant. The unit has been used as a model by other law schools, and the broader approach has influenced curriculum development and conversations about teaching across the Law School and Faculty. Most importantly, it has helped create learning environments where students can engage more critically and creatively with legal knowledge.
What innovative approach to teaching, learning, or curriculum design have you developed, evaluated, and shared with others?
One innovative approach I have developed is the translation of decolonial and antiracist scholarship into practical curriculum design within legal education. This has involved moving beyond traditional legal pedagogy, which often treats knowledge as fixed and transmitted from expert to student, towards a model that emphasises co-creation, critical inquiry, and student partnership. In the development of the Law and Race unit in particular, we relied on co-design. Students were considered as more than just recipients of knowledge, and we continue to work with them as partners in creating it. As such, the unit was co-created with students in response to concerns about gaps in the curriculum and the absence of critical engagement with race and colonialism in legal education. Secondly, my teaching does not rely solely on conventional legal materials; I designed my curriculum using an interdisciplinary approach that brings together law, literature, philosophy, sociology, film, poetry, blogs, and other media to help students engage critically with legal knowledge and its social context. Students are asked to watch documentaries, movies, speeches, and bring them into their socio-legal analysis. I have continually evaluated and refined this approach through student feedback and ongoing reflection on practice. Students consistently highlighted the value of engaging with a wider range of voices and methods, and reported that the curriculum I developed transformed how they understood law and their own role in shaping it. This approach has also produced highly creative student work and has encouraged students to pursue further research in the field.
I have built on these principles through initiatives such as Forever Africa Conference and Events (FACE), where students help shape programmes, events, and knowledge exchange activities. Through both curriculum design and student partnership projects, I have sought to create learning environments in which students are collaborators rather than consumers, and I have shared these approaches widely through publications, workshops, conferences, and sector-wide discussions on decolonial pedagogy.
Can you describe a time when you contributed to or led an educational initiative that enhanced teaching practice within or beyond your School?
One initiative I am particularly proud of has been helping to curate conversations and practical resources around decolonial and antiracist pedagogy within legal education. This work expands well beyond the development of a single unit. It involves building communities of practice for sharing and generating resources to develop pedagogical innovations. In 2019, I organised the UK’s first conference on decolonisation and legal education, bringing together academics globally and from across the sector to share ideas, challenges, and examples of practice. The conference later led to a special issue of The Law Teacher, providing accessible resources for colleagues looking to rethink curriculum design and teaching practice. The Law Teacher is the foremost pedagogical legal journal in the UK. This special issue was eventually republished as a Routledge volume of chapters with an updated editorial.
Within Bristol, I have led staff reading groups, supported curriculum review initiatives, contributed to institutional decolonisation projects, and mentored colleagues developing their own pedagogical approaches. Beyond Bristol, I have shared this work through workshops, keynote lectures, invited talks, publications, blogs, online resources, and the FutureLearn course on decolonisation. In 2025, along with colleagues from around the world, we established the global Critical Legal Pedagogies on Race and Empire Network. The network has nearly 200 members around the world, and its launch will take place on the 14th of September 2026. The vision of the network is to explore, innovate, and share anti-colonial and anti-racist approaches to teaching law. It examines how histories of race, colonialism, and empire shape legal education and substance worldwide. What has been most rewarding within these endeavours is seeing colleagues adapt these ideas within their own disciplines and institutions, and seeing innovation within the pedagogical communities being built. This demonstrates how educational scholarship can create meaningful change far beyond the original classroom where the scholarship was developed.
How have you built and demonstrated sustained impact through your scholarship of teaching and learning activities?
I have built sustained impact through a combination of scholarship, curriculum innovation, building community, and educational leadership. My work on decolonising legal education has resulted in a substantial body of publications, including a sole-authored monograph and scholarship of learning and teaching outputs that have helped translate decolonial theory into practical approaches for legal education. The monograph “Decolonisation and Legal Knowledge: Reflections on Power and Possibility” was published by Bristol University Press in March 2023 and won the Society of Legal Scholars’ Margaret Brazier Book Prize for Outstanding Mid-Career Scholarship in 2024. I regularly share my research and practice through keynote lectures, workshops, staff development activities, and collaborative networks. I also share my work through non-traditional means such as blogging, radio programmes, museum visits, film talks, etc. I write a widely-read academic blog – Foluke’s African Skies, which has over half a million views. My blog posts are used as recommended and required reading in several university courses around the world. I have also dabbled in podcasting and using social media to share ideas. Sustained impact, for me, means ensuring that scholarship reaches the people it needs to reach and changes practice. Through public education, publications, curriculum development, staff support, and sector engagement, I have worked to create lasting conversations and tangible changes in how legal education is taught and understood.
What advice would you give to colleagues who are planning to apply for promotion and wish to meet the E4 criteria?
My advice to colleagues aspiring to meet the E4 criteria is not to separate educational scholarship from your teaching. I believe the strongest cases emerge when scholarship, teaching, curriculum design, and educational leadership are deeply connected. The framework emphasises evidence-led and innovative approaches to teaching, dissemination of learning, publications, workshops, conferences, and leadership of educational initiatives. In essence, we should be telling a consistent story of the work we are doing. Like any story, there needs to be a clear and coherent narrative – a clear picture that fits together – as much as possible.
In my own work, I found it most powerful to begin with a question arising from practice. For me, that question was how decolonial theory might transform legal education in practical terms. Rather than treating this as an abstract research interest, I used it to inform curriculum design, classroom practice, staff development, and sector-wide conversations – testing the theories in class and in conversation. Over time, this generated publications, conference presentations, educational resources, workshops, and invitations to support colleagues within and beyond Bristol. The scholarship, teaching, impact and even leadership/citizenship roles all reinforced one another.
A second piece of advice is to focus on impact rather than activity. Do too much, and you will burn out. Do not say yes to everything. Come up with a good checklist of what your narrative needs and try to build on those. Focus on what can actually be changed – even if they are what feel like small changes in teaching practice, informed curriculum development, supporting colleagues, or influencing educational thinking in your discipline.
Finally, share your learning generously. The E4 criteria invite you to contribute to wider educational conversations through publications, workshops, conferences, peer support, educational resources, and collaborative initiatives. The most rewarding aspect of my own journey has been seeing ideas developed in one classroom influence colleagues, institutions, and students far beyond their original context. Educational scholarship becomes most powerful when it creates opportunities for others to reflect, adapt, and innovate in their own practice. When we can build an educational community that helps us all grow.
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