Erin Conlon

Profile

I joined the University of Leeds as a teaching fellow in Academic Literacies in 2024. Prior to that, I taught academic literacies at the University of Huddersfield for students across three faculties as well as pre-sessional English in several universities in the UK and Japan.

Outside of higher education, for many years I was an English language teacher, teaching in both primary and secondary schools in Japan and Korea before joining the British Council in 2010, where I taught general, business, and academic English (including IELTS) to all ages and levels of student in multiple countries. I held leadership roles and was a teacher trainer in different contexts, including on the DELTA and in joint project with the MoE of Thailand. In addition to TESOL, I worked as a corporate trainer for the British Council Malaysia, developing and facilitating ESP training and assessment schemes for regional and international companies across a variety of sectors including banking, oil and gas, and telecommunications.

Responsibilities

• Module Lead
• Academic Integrity Co-Lead

Research interests

My research interests are situated mainly in the scholarship of teaching and learning, where I aim to better understand students’ and teachers’ experiences, cognitions and practices whilst they develop and communicate knowledge in higher education contexts. I have a particular interest in international students’ experiences with source-based writing and feedback literacy practices, especially from an intercultural lens. Recently, I’ve been fascinated by how GenAI and translation tools interact with these human experiences and practices, and am interested in understanding which aspects of teaching and learning in HE need to remain fundamentally human and which could be enhanced or replaced by GenAI.

Qualifications

• FHEA Fellow Higher Education Academy
• PGCHE Postgraduate Certificate in Higher Education
• MA TESOL and Educational Technology
• CELTA and DELTA
• BA English and Linguistics

Professional memberships

• ALDinHE
• BALEAP
• IATEFL

Student education

I teach on undergraduate and postgraduate modules connected to:

• academic literacies
• language teaching methods
• research methods

My role also involves supporting student learning across all programmes in the school

I supervise undergraduate and MA dissertations.