Dave is a Senior Lecturer in the School of Biological Sciences and was recently nominated by the University to apply for the Advance HE, National Teaching Fellowship scheme in 2027.
My time at the University of Bristol started with me studying bumblebees for my PhD, looking at why flowers would bother producing such complex displays, and a big part of the answer is energy. A bee that finds the nectar quickly has more left for everything else. I didn’t expect that to become a teaching philosophy, but here we are.
After my PhD, and a short spell as an administrative assistant in the School, I started lecturing here in 2018. Alongside teaching, I took on roles as School Disability Coordinator and Senior Tutor, and those one-to-one conversations with students changed how I teach more than anything else. Again and again, students weren’t struggling with the biology, they were spending their energy on everything around the biology. Unclear expectations, hidden rules, and working out whether they were allowed to ask for help. The barriers sat in the systems surrounding the teaching, not in the students themselves.
So my aim now is fairly simple: help students spend their energy on learning, not on avoidable friction – just like the bees. For me, that translated to making expectations explicit, structuring things clearly, reducing cognitive load, and making sure students feel safe and welcome enough to enjoy it (being a bit of a clown has helped with that last one too).
I’ve learned most of this from the students themselves. Since 2020, I’ve worked with 16 paid student partners on resources about decolonising the curriculum, disability and inclusive group work (aiming for 18 students by 2027). Each project has shown me elements of student experience that I was previously oblivious to. Things we can’t know as staff unless we give students the space to tell us.
One piece of work I’m especially fond of is our Inclusive and Accessible Teaching Guide, written with a staff colleague and a student partner. It pulls together practical, manageable changes colleagues can make straight away, and it’s been lovely to see it travel: the Digital Education Office featured it in one of its workshop series, and colleagues at UWE have picked it up too. Each change in it is a small action, but one less thing a student has to work out on their own.
None of this has been a solo effort. I’ve learned an enormous amount from watching colleagues teach with warmth, transparency and curiosity, and from the many people across the School and Faculty who’ve taken a gamble on trying something different.
Much of my work happens in spontaneous, collaborative bursts, without much space to step back and see how it all connects. The NTF is a rare chance to do that. Mostly, though, I’m looking forward to being part of a wider community, seeing what’s working for teachers across the sector, and bringing the best ideas back to Bristol.
A big thank you to the BILT team for their encouragement and advice when I was deciding whether to put myself forward, for which I’m very grateful.
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