A message from Khalid Nadvi and David Pattwell
17 Dec 2025
End of year message for School of Environment, Education and Development staff from the Head of School and Dirctor of Operations
Dear all
First, congratulations to the 1,900 SEED students who graduated this week. As always it was really special to see them enjoying the pomp and ceremony of graduation. Thank you to those colleagues who participated in the graduation ceremonies on Monday and Tuesday.
Congratulations also to Emma Shuttleworth, who was the SEED award-winner at the inaugural Faculty of Humanities Business Engagement and Knowledge Exchange Awards earlier this month for her partnership work on a number of environmental sustainability projects. It was great to see so many nominations from SEED for innovative partnership and knowledge exchange work - this really shows the reach and impact of our School.
2025 has seen many changes within SEED. Both of us are new to our roles, with David taking over as Director of School Operations in March and Khalid taking up the reins as Head of School in August.
We'd like to thank all our marvellous colleagues, especially in the School Office and the School Executive, who have supported us to rapidly settle into our new roles. We'd also like to thank Kay Hodgson, who left as SEED's DoSO in February, and Juup Stelma, who was Interim Head of School until July, for all their hard work and for helping to contribute to a smooth leadership transfer. Juup of course continues to contribute to the School's leadership through his new role as Deputy Head of School.
Social responsibility continues to be at the heart of SEED. For its second year our SEED Change-makers programme has given our students opportunities to create meaningful change and in May our Sustainability@SEED working group hosted our inaugural SEED Sustainability Symposium.
We continued our commitment to equality, diversity and inclusion with the launch of our SEED inclusive meeting guidance and highlighted the importance of influence and respect through the ‘Take a Moment’ campaign. We have also instituted confidential listening sessions to give staff a safe space to discuss historical or current experiences of inappropriate behaviour.
Several colleagues have obtained highly competitive research grants, achieved major recognitions, fellowships, or national advisory roles, reflecting the influence of SEED’s scholarship in advancing knowledge frontiers and shaping policy and practice. We have also welcomed new colleagues, both academic and PS, to the School.
SEED is geographically split over three buildings and this summer we saw the opening of the newly refurbished Ellen Wilkinson Commons space. This bright and welcoming multi-use area is already being very well used. We look forward to adding a fourth building to the SEED estate, with the planned move for the Geography department to the historic Rutherford Building next summer.
We've continued to adapt to a rapidly changing world, with the publication of our new School policy on AI and much work being done to adapt to the changing student recruitment environment and to respond to the ambitions of Manchester 2035.
We know that changes and challenges will continue into 2026, but we also know that we have a brilliant team of staff ready to rise to those challenges. Thank you so much for all your hard work in 2025. Have a lovely Christmas break and we look forward to seeing you in the New Year!
Very best wishes
Khalid & David