Who we are
Research centre lead
Dr Chrissi Nerantzi (PFHEA, NTF, CATE) is a Professor in Creative and Open Education in the School of Education, leads the Imaginative Curriculum Research and Scholarship Centre and is a Senior Lead of the Knowledge Equity Network at the University of Leeds in the United Kingdom. Her research interests are in creativity, open, boundary-crossing collaborative learning and imaginative and AI-enabled curriculum design. Chrissi is a GO-GN alumna, the founder of the international open #creativeHE community, the co-chair of the ICDE Open Education Network and has co-created many OER and initiated a range of further open professional development courses, networks and communities have been sustained over the years.
Steering group
The Imaginative Curriculum Research and Scholarship Centre is guided by a small, dynamic steering group of educators with diverse expertise across creative education, curriculum design, sustainability, and research innovation. This group leads and coordinates the centre’s activities, shaping its strategic direction and ensuring alignment with our values of collaboration, openness, and inclusivity. Working closely with members and partners, the steering group fosters connections, supports imaginative projects, and creates opportunities for experimentation and scholarship that influence practice and policy across the education sector.
Dr Delyth Edwards
Dr Delyth Edwards (FHEA) is a Lecturer in Inclusion, Childhood and Youth, Access to Leeds Tutor and the School of Education Access and Success Lead. She is a Sociologist of Care Experience who has dipped in and out of disciplines over the years to teach and research Sociology across the fields of: Childhood and Youth, Social Policy, Memory, Social Work, Museum Studies and Media and Communication. She has recently become interested in exploring research ethics in childhood studies, both how ethics is ‘taught’ and how we ‘do’ ethics in research. Along with Shichong Li, she received RIF funding from the School of Education to develop and explore the project The Question of Ethics in Childhood Studies.
Dr Vasiliki Kioupi (Leading education for sustainable development research, scholarship and practice and coordinating imagining sustainable futures activities)
Dr Vasiliki Kioupi (FHEA) is an Associate Professor in Sustainable Curriculum at the Sustainability Research Institute of the School of Earth and Environment and a member of the leadership team implementing the Sustainable Curriculum principle of the university’s Climate Plan. She holds a doctoral degree in Education for Sustainable Development from the Centre for Environmental Policy of Imperial College London for which she received a prestigious President’s PhD Scholarship. Her research investigates sustainability transitions in Higher Education and the role of sustainability competences in empowering young people to act for the climate and sustainability. Recently, she has started researching the role of GenAI tools in sustainability education. She is also a Leeds Institute for Teaching Excellence Fellow and the academic lead for the Social Justice Jam.
Dr John Hammersley
Dr John Hammersley (FHEA) is a Lecturer in Design Studies, Curriculum Redefined Transformational Educator and Leader of the Pedagogic Research Group within the School of Design at the University of Leeds. John’s research is focused on applying dialogue as a framework for practice and understanding within art and design, demonstrating dialogical praxis as the enfolding and performance of knowledge in a manner intended to offset essentialist interpretations of design, art and dialogue.
Dr J Simon Rofe
Dr J Simon Rofe (FHEA) is an Associate Professor and scholar of Diplomacy at the University of Leeds. He is dedicated to student centred co-creating of learning; appreciative of the value of working collaboratively with a range of stakeholders; and a keen advocate of reflective practice. He held the role of Deputy Director of the Centre for Online and Distance Education (CODE) at the University of London 2020-24, including time as Acting Director (2021-22 & 2023-24). Simon was the inaugural Programme Director for the MA Global Diplomacy at SOAS University of London, and the first Head of Digital Learning between (2016-20; devising the institution’s first Online Learning Strategy in 2018. He has designed, developed and delivered (3Ds) numerous online and digital learning programmes under the aegis of the IR Model (Rofe, 2011) at a variety of HEIs, NGOs and the United Nations; he developed MOOCs in their first wave with Understanding Research Methods MOOC and then Global Diplomacy: Diplomacy in the Modern World and, having been widely published in the Scholarship of Learning and Teaching.
PGRs
Sam Lee
Muhammad Zulfadhli Bin Kamarudin
Mark Grattan
Zheng (John) Wang
Advisory group
This Advisory Group will be established to advise the steering group of the Centre on policies and practices relating to curriculum innovations across the education sector across the United Kingdom and internationally. Membership of the group is for two years.