Celebrating 10 years of Arena Fellows: Gesine Manuwald

Prof Gesine Manuwald (Department of Greek and Latin) became a Principal Fellow in 2021. We asked her to reflect on her experience of the programme.

1. What is your role?

I am Professor of Latin in the Department of Greek and Latin in the Faculty of Arts and Humanities. That means that I research on the texts that survive in Latin from the ancient world (and from the early modern period), and I teach undergraduate and postgraduate students in aspects of Latin language, Latin literature and Roman culture.

Additionally, over the past few years I have had a number of leadership roles in the Department and in the Faculty and also for national subject organizations, where I have been involved in teaching and assessment planning, new degree programmes and education guidance among other things.

2. Why did you apply for Fellowship?

Over the years I have gone through the several stages of this scheme: I obtained Fellowship in 2010, Senior Fellowship in 2015 and Principal Fellowship in 2021.

I applied for Fellowship shortly after I had joined UCL since I thought that it would be good to have a UK teaching qualification as well and to gain a better understanding about teaching practices at UCL and elsewhere. I decided to go for further levels of Fellowship, when my career had advanced and I had been active in education leadership, as I felt that documentation and recognition of this work would be nice, and that the process of writing would enable me to reflect further on what I had done and what I could do in future, also in relation to advice taken from the literature, and because I wanted to do myself what I am continuously encouraging colleagues (both academics and professional services staff) in the Department to do.

3. Tell us about your experience of applying for Fellowship.

The application for Fellowship in 2010 had to be submitted directly to the Higher Education Academy, since the UCL scheme did not exist at the time. In comparison with that, the later applications with the help of colleagues from the Arena Centre were more straightforward and better supported. These application processes were a good opportunity and an incentive to reflect on my practices and experiences in education and education leadership, to consider them also from a more theoretical angle and to compare them against the practices of others and descriptions in the literature. The feedback on drafts and the support throughout by colleagues from the Arena Centre were helpful, encouraging and inspirational.

4. What are the ways that gaining Fellowship has helped you to teach differently and/or advanced your career?

Gaining Fellowship was the starting point for me to become one of the assessors for the UCL Fellowship scheme, a job that I have now been doing for many years. I still find the work enjoyable and rewarding since it allows me to learn what is going on in terms of education in completely different parts of the university, some of which is so creative and impressive and which can be surprisingly relevant for a subject like mine that might look quite specialised. This work has enabled me to stay in touch with a diverse group of people from all across UCL who are interested in education.

Reading more of the pedagogical literature when drafting the applications and discussing my educational practice with colleagues from the Arena Centre, has given me an external perspective on my approach to education and encouraged me to try new formats of teaching and education leadership in my own area.

5. Do you have any advice for someone thinking about applying for Fellowship?

It is worth doing! If one does not need to obtain such a Fellowship for another purpose, it might sometimes seem like a waste of time since there are always so many conflicting demands on an academic’s time and everything else always seems more important.

But gaining any kind of Fellowship is a nice recognition of the work that we all do in education (which usually is not visible as one’s research) and a stimulating process, which may give people new ideas about education and / or advance their career.