Message from Alvin Birdi, Vice-Dean for Teaching, Learning and Students
21 Sep 2026
This week Alvin, our new Vice-Dean for TLS, celebrates Welcome Week, looks back at Confirmation and Clearing, and forward to plans for further improving our students’ experience.
Dear all,
Like millions of others around the world, I recently watched Christopher Nolan's The Odyssey. The film revolves around violations of Zeus's Law, a moral code that regulates ‘welcome’. At a time where intolerance appears to be rising in some pockets of society, it reminds us of the sustained impact of an active welcome that signals pleasure in another's arrival and indicates that they matter.
It gives me great pleasure to write this introduction in Welcome Week, just as the University gears up to receive thousands of students, both new and returning. I arrived in Manchester myself only a few weeks ago to take up the role of Vice-Dean for Teaching, Learning and Students (TLS) in the Faculty of Humanities, and I have been genuinely moved by the warm welcome extended by PS and academic staff across in the University and Faculty leadership teams, colleagues and old friends in my home Department of Economics and the Students’ Union (SU). I've no doubt that the students travelling here this week will witness a similar ‘Manchester welcome’ waiting for them.
In my first weeks, in early August, I worked alongside colleagues involved in Confirmation and Clearing. By any measure this is a difficult and fast-moving process, riddled with uncertainties and risks. It was a pleasure to observe the dedicated professionalism of the Admissions team, led by Amanda Grimshaw, and the collaborative instinct that drove the effort, working together with staff in the Faculty and its Schools. There were daily reports of progress, discussions of next steps, and tireless work answering phones in the sweltering heatwave. Despite the challenging external context with declining PGT numbers, HUMS has ultimately landed in a secure place. We owe the teams that worked during these supposedly ‘quiet’ weeks a great deal of thanks.
But with these successes in student recruitment comes the challenge of shoring up excellent student experience, particularly where programmes are growing. Here, too, there is good news: the 2026 NSS results show the Faculty's reported undergraduate student experience continuing its upward trajectory across all thematic areas. But there is more to do. We have some way to go to meet our sector benchmarks in key areas and closing that gap will matter materially for the next Teaching Excellence Framework (TEF) which, on current proposals, may arrive sometime between 2027 and 2030.
Over the past couple of weeks, I have been working with various colleagues including Rob Appleby (Associate Vice-President for Students); our Associate Deans, in particular Chris Godden (Associate Dean for Student Experience); Hannah Cousins (Faculty Head of Teaching, Learning and Student Experience); and our Schools’ Directors of Teaching and Learning, on the ‘Excellence in Student Experience 2035’ plans, which include specific actions directed at NSS improvement. Like Confirmation and Clearing, this has been a fundamentally collaborative piece of work, involving the SU too, and the plans are stronger for it. We are currently building an area of the Faculty’s Teaching Academy pages to set out clearly what this means for actions and reporting within Schools and programmes.
As the Manchester 2035 delivery strategy states: "Not everything can happen at once". So we will concentrate on some key areas to create focus and capacity. Our priority areas will be assessment and feedback, student voice and the experience of joint honours students. In the same collaborative spirit, one of my own priorities will be to find effective ways to share and spread the good practice that already exists across the Faculty, as well as to bring evidence-based practice from the sector. Just as important will be closely working with our students on these priorities so that they have real agency in co-creation and a genuine stake in shaping their education.
As the new semester begins, a new institutional AI in teaching and learning policy is now in place. Details are on the Start of year hub on StaffNet. My thanks to Mark Carrigan (Faculty Associate Dean for Digital Education) who has already been working with colleagues across the Schools to categorise our assessments into the four divisions the policy describes.
The changing landscape of AI, and what it means for higher education, will keep challenging us for some time yet. It is imperative that we think creatively and innovate in our education so we can be confidently assured of student learning, while still benefitting from the genuine pedagogic gains possible with AI. This will involve communicating transparently with students and helping equip them with the skills to use these tools ethically and responsibly in their studies and their lives after graduation. All of this will be best done through the same sharing of practice across Schools, the same close work with students and the same careful attention to risk that has been abundantly evident since I have arrived here.
There is clearly much to do within directions that are already established, such as the Course Unit Framework and the Manchester 2035 strategy, which includes Manchester Online and the promise of flexibility and personalisation at the heart of our education. As a Faculty we will have to think and work together to make some of these strategic terms concrete within our own context, and discuss how we can best realise these aims. We also need to reflect on how we ensure the distinctiveness and resilience of our programmes in the light of changing demographics and external economic conditions.
This is a full portfolio of work and I am immensely grateful to my predecessor in the role of Vice-Dean, Fiona Smyth, for her extensive help over the past month and the excellent foundations she has laid over many years in the Faculty, which will make my work significantly easier and more enjoyable. That, in the end, is what a good welcome does – it makes the way ahead easier.
I wish everyone the best as we start the new semester. I am looking forward to meeting and working with as many colleagues and students as possible over the coming months and years. Do get in touch if you want to discuss anything regarding education and student experience.
Best wishes,
Alvin