arcadia@cambridge People

Helen Webster

Helen is a learning developer, helping students negotiate the complex conventions and practices of UK Higher Education, and reflect on their own learning to become successful independent learners. Her project will develop an implementation strategy within Cambridge University for the Curriculum for Information Literacy, which was the outcome of Emma Coonan and Jane Secker's Arcadia Fellowship.

She was a medievalist, with a B.A. in German from the University of Newcastle, an M.A. in Medieval Studies at the University of Bristol, and a D.Phil. from Oxford University on fourteenth century vernacular religious literature for lay women - medieval Widening Participation, in other words! She has taught German language and literature at several universities, but became increasingly interested in teaching and learning beyond her own discipline, qualifying as a teacher in 2000. She was Coordinator for the Learning Enhancement Service at the University of East Anglia, and is currently a consultant and trainer on UEA’s PreUniversity Skills and SkillsForUni programmes. Since January 2011, she has been working on the Transkills Project at CARET, facilitating the transition of first year undergraduates from School to University.

In her spare time, she loves all sorts of dancing, from ballroom to bellydance, and slaves to keep her four pedigree fancy rats in the rather luxurious lifestyle to which they have insisted on becoming accustomed.