We are delighted to welcome Professor Sarah Jones, Pro Vice-Chancellor at the University of Gloucestershire, as she presents her inaugural lecture.
Sarah was recently told that she’s “not your typical academic”, and she will embrace this throughout her inaugural lecture. The atypical approach connects Sarah’s career from a global television correspondent to academic leadership, where her motivations are firmly rooted in creating excellent educational experiences to ensure the success of students in Higher Education.
In her inaugural lecture, Sarah will focus on taking different approaches, strategic risks and breaking the mould. It traces a unique career path full of twists, all of which revolve around curiosity and collaborations.
This will introduce several core research projects and the key ideas that have emerged. These have been focused on future methods of storytelling, media and education, breaking traditional ideas and rebuilding them in a way that is “just not very typical”.
The words of Coco Chanel run through this talk: “In order to be irreplaceable, one must always be different”.
Sarah is the Pro Vice-Chancellor at the University of Gloucestershire with a remit for teaching and research excellence. She started in October 2022, having previously held leadership roles in several institutions.
Sarah spent nearly a decade in television news, including a year seconded to New York to cover the 2008 US election. During this time, she travelled extensively with the candidates and she also appeared in the Sex and the City film. She made the move to working in universities, running journalism courses and carving out a career path that would fulfil her ambitions to increase educational opportunities for all students.
Sarah gained her PhD in Immersive Media, defining the concept of storyliving and how new media forms need new tools for understanding. This has led to numerous publications defining this field of practice and how people experience stories. This work has been developed in two books published with Routledge. Her work has been supported and developed with partners, including Google. Sarah’s applied research has used virtual and augmented technologies to tell stories in different ways, and these have been shown at film festivals globally and won awards. This work led Sarah being named in the top virtual reality innovators in the world, and she was invited to work with the UK Government to advise on immersive technologies.
Sarah is a Visiting Professor at the Centre for Excellence in Media Practice, a Senior Fellow of the Higher Education Academy and an Apple Distinguished Educator. She is also a committed eternal student, most recently achieving a Distinction in her Master of Business Administration and now looking at what to study next.
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