January message from SEED of School, Khalid Nadvi
29 Jan 2026
Our Head of School's monthly message: Manchester 2035 and the forthcoming visit from Duncan Ivison; inaugural lectures from Will Fletcher and Seth Schindler; updates from our most recent School Executive meeting; congratulations and fond farewells
Dear all
It’s probably now a little late to be wishing you a Happy New Year, but I hope that 2026 is treating you well thus far, and that you returned to work after the festive break refreshed and looking forward to a successful second semester.
The last couple of weeks have been exam season, and I’d like to thank all of you who have worked hard to ensure our exams go as smoothly as possible and to support our students through this stressful time. Particular shout-out to our Student Support Hub colleagues who have been providing students with wellbeing support and free breakfasts before their exams!
Talking about wellbeing, Time to Talk Day is coming up next week, it’s a day for all of us to come together to talk, listen and change lives. Talking openly and honestly can be the first step towards better mental health for everyone. Our brilliant SEED Wellbeing Champions are planning a drop-in session on that day, which I encourage you to attend if you can. Either way, I encourage you to take a few moments to check in with colleagues and maybe reach out to someone you haven’t caught up with for a while.
You hopefully will have seen that the Delivery Handbook and first Three-Year Work Package for Manchester 2035 have now been published, outlining how the University will deliver its ambitious ten-year strategy. I encourage you all to take the time to read these documents and consider how you can help to deliver Manchester 2035.
I also encourage you to bring any questions you may have about Manchester 2035 or the University’s direction of travel in general to the Q & A session we will have with our President Duncan Ivison next Friday. If you haven’t already booked to attend this you can do so here.
The week after next we have a very special event: inaugural lectures from two of our esteemed colleagues. I hope that many of you will be able to join us on Wed 11 February to hear Will Fletcher’s lecture on ‘Past environmental changes in the Mediterranean and North Africa’ and Seth Schindler’s lecture on ‘Geostrategic globalization and the future of cities’. Please do book your place soon so we can be sure we have enough space and refreshments for everyone!
As you hopefully know, the School Executive is SEED’s core leadership team. You’ll see that we’ve included a reminder of the membership of School Executive in this month’s eNews and I’d like to encourage you to reach out to us if you have any questions or suggestions about the running of the School.
At this month’s School Executive meeting we were joined by colleagues from admissions and marketing for a strategic themed discussion about steps we can take to diversify student recruitment, particularly PGT recruitment from overseas.
Sylvie Lomer, Jenna Mittelmeier and Miguel Antonio Lim in MIE have been examining the challenges SEED is facing with international student recruitment and Sylvie presented a list of proposals for action to start to address these, which we warmly welcomed. These include gaining access to and analysing data to better understand and promote access and employability pathways, Programme Directors being able to work with Marketing to best promote their courses and considering offering more opportunities for trans-national education and/or for embedding professional qualifications within our programmes. There was recognition that these issues are deep-seated and that success will rely on partnership working across SEED, Faculty and alumni relations.
The School Executive also received an update from Peter Kahn on the SEED T&L sprint and agreed several proposals for new online courses which will be pitched to a Faculty panel next month. The work put into these proposals by several members of staff was commended.
Before I close, I wanted to send congratulations to Cecilia Wong who has become only the 17th person since 1953 to be awarded the prestigious Gold Medal by the Royal Town Planning Institute, in recognition of her exceptional achievement in the field of town and country planning. Congratulations also to Sahil Gandhi who, alongside two colleagues from other universities, was awarded the Edwin Mills Best Paper Award by the American Real Estate and Urban Economics Association.
Finally, some farewells and welcomes: Tanja Müller is completing her tenure as SEED Director of PGR recruitment this month, she will be succeeded by Tanja Bastia from the beginning of February. Thank you to Tanja M for three years of dedicated support for our PGRs and welcome to the School Executive, Tanja B!
Farewell also to Lucy Adams who is leaving her role as School Operations Manager for a two-year secondment – Lucy also recently announced she is expecting a baby in June, so congratulations as well as heartfelt thanks are due. Our new School Operations Manager, Kerry Burke, will start to transition into role in March and will be joining us full-timeinApril. Kerry is currently Deputy School Operations Manager in the School of Medical Sciences.
February is looking like a very busy month – I look forward to seeing many of you at the Q & A session with our President on 6th, at our first inaugural lectures of the year on 11th and at the SEED staff social on 25th.
Very best wishes
Khalid