May message from SEED Head of School, Khalid Nadvi
27 May 2026
In his monthly message to staff, Khalid celebrates the many colleagues who have recently received recognition for their work, shares some updates from School Executive and reflects on the very sad loss of one of our GDI PhD students.
Dear all
I start this month’s message on a very sad note, reflecting on the loss of GDI PhD student Hamid Khalafallah, who tragically died last month whilst on a research visit to South Africa. Hamid’s death has had a profound impact on colleagues and students in GDI and on all who knew him.
A memorial for Hamid will take place on 10th June – exact timing and location for this will be confirmed shortly. GDI colleagues are working with Estates to get a memorial to Hamid installed on campus, and also working with GDI PhD students to identify further ways of securing a legacy for the important research and advocacy work that Hamid was engaged in. Against the backdrop of such a tragedy, I’ve been touched to see the compassion, care and support that colleagues and students have shown each other, and to Hamid’s family, during this really difficult time.
This has been a real month of achievement for SEED, with many, many colleagues being recognised for their sterling work.
The University of Manchester’s Distinguished Achievement Awards are one of the University’s most prestigious internal accolades. The Awards are being presented next month, but I’m delighted to hear that colleagues from SEED have won both the Researcher of the Year (Pam Qualter) and Teacher of the Year (Miri Firth) awards, whilst MIE PhD student Freddie Jones will receive the Postgraduate Research Student of the Year award.
Earlier this month, I was thrilled to see in person three SEED colleagues (Daniela Cocco Beltrame, Niamh Kavanagh and Jen O'Brien) win awards at the Making a Difference awards, the University’s flagship awards for social responsibility. In addition, Amanda Banks Gatenby and Sara Jackson, Tom Fryer and The Very Local Maths Team were all highly commended.
SEED recognition has been from outside the University as well as from within. Cecilia Wong was formally presented with her RTPI Gold Medal on 29th April, becoming only the seventeenth recipient of the award since 1953. And Stefan Bouzarovski won the Royal Geographical Society’s Back Award in recognition of geographical studies which make an outstanding contribution to the development of national or international public policy.
At the Education North Awards (ENAs) Emma Shuttleworth, former SEED Head of School Martin Evans and SEED Emeritus Professor Tim Allott won the award for Best Sustainable Green Initiative for their Peatfix project. And our SEED Employability Champions initiative was highly commended at the Graduate Futures Institute Awards – congratulations to Bertie Dockerill, Shirley Jenner, Kelly-Ann Mallon and the entire team behind Employability Champions.
The breadth of recognition across these many awards - for research, teaching, social responsibility and all that colleagues do to add value for our students, our university and the wider world - is truly impressive. Well done everyone and huge congratulations
As you’ll likely have seen, the results from the 2026 Colleague Engagement Survey have recently been published. Alongside our Director of School Operations David Pattwell and the wider School Executive, I’ve begun analysing the results from SEED and we will be presenting about the findings and how we plan to respond to them at the next School Board meeting on 10th June. In sum, despite an improvement in the participation rate, the findings are concerning in various areas. We in the School Executive are very much in a listening mode as we try to understand from you how we can improve.
As Niki Banks will be stepping down from her role as Director of Social Responsibility this summer, I’m delighted that we have recently appointed Emma Shuttleworth to succeed her. Emma has now started work-shadowing Niki and will join the School Executive as Director of SR from 1st August.
At School Executive this month we approved the updated School Workload Allocation Model (WAM) principles, which have now been added to SEED StaffNet. We are now moving to a new strategy across the School where we will be developing a predicted WAM for the upcoming year rather than doing the WAM towards the end of the year. In essence we have adopted the approach that Geography has been using for some years now and it seems to work well. The predicted WAM for 2026/27 will be worked on in June and communicated to staff in due course.
The School Executive welcomed SEED Assistant Director for Fieldwork Chris Darvill for a detailed discussion about the future of fieldwork in the School. Field trips are very important to learning within SEED but also come with high financial and carbon emissions costs. We discussed the importance of ensuring that all field trips offer high pedagogic values and access to learning that cannot be delivered in a different way. There is no suggestion that fieldwork will cease, but we need to make sure that all field visits are fully justifiable and offer value for money. The SE adopted Chris’ report, and we will start implementing this in the next academic year.
We were also joined by Mark Carrigan for a briefing and discussion about the University’s rapid roll-out of Copilot for staff and students. All PS staff have already had Copilot activated within Microsoft 365 and academic staff will be provided with access from next month, with our students being given access at the beginning of next academic year.
There is a package of online training sessions available as Copilot is rolled out to staff. Feedback from PS colleagues who have already attended some of these sessions is that they are very useful and I strongly encourage all staff to make time to engage with this training.
As a School and as individual lecturers we need to understand and communicate how students should and should not be using Copilot within their learning. We already have School guidance on the use of generative AI in teaching and assessment and the School Executive have now agreed to work with SoSS who are already developing policies around the use of Copilot for students.
School Executive also received a briefing from Bo Murphy (SEED student rep). Bo, despite being in the midst of a takeaway exam, spoke about student voice and student concerns. School Executive agreed that we will include student voice discussions more regularly in our meetings and will be inviting the SEED student rep to attend SE once every quarter. I also want to thank Bo for the excellent job she has done in this role as she steps down.
As we look ahead to June, I know that many academic colleagues will be busy with marking, whilst many of our PS colleagues will be preparing for the end of the financial year and for graduation. I know several colleagues have raised concerns about the challenges of juggling competing deadlines, and we need to find better ways to handle this and I will be speaking to colleagues in Faculty on this. Having said that, if you can, please do take some time to engage with the many events we have going on across the School and the University. Just a few to be aware of:
· On 5 June the SEED Name Festival will celebrate student and staff names and their cultural significance.
· On 9-10 June colleagues in MIE will be hosting the highly topical Artificial Intelligence in Higher Education conference.
· On 10 June SEED is supporting the Manchester premiere of a new documentary about the global fight to overturn laws which criminalise LGBTQ+ people, Out Laws, part of the University’s Hive of Pride programme to mark Pride Month.
· On 11 June the SEED Changemakers Celebration will showcase student-led changemaking within the School – colleagues are very welcome to attend.
· On 16 June Refugee Week will be marked with the Eat Chat Rise Move workshop, hosted with support from the SEED Social Responsibility Fund.
· On 18 June we see the official launch of PPERC – the People, Place and Energy Research Centre, under the leadership of SEED’s Stefan Bouzarovski
These are just a few of the events we have going on throughout the month. Please continue to check our weekly events listings emails and the SEED Events page on StaffNet so you know what’s coming up.
Finally, we are bidding a fond farewell to our Head of School Finance Lizzy Langton, who is moving to AMBS, with Tracey Manifold taking over as Head of School Finance. Many thanks to Lizzy for six years of hard work in SEED and a very warm welcome to Tracey.
Wishing you all a good start to June and I hope to see many of you at the School Board on the 10th. In the meantime, for those of you (like me) celebrating this week, Eid-ul-Adha Mubarak!
Very best wishes
Khalid