Tracey Lancaster, Director of External Relations, University of Birmingham

Tracey heads up the External Relations team at the University of Birmingham. Her office's responsibilities include building international relationships, corporate events and marketing, public affairs, media relations as well as student recruitment at all levels around the globe, admissions and a creative media team. In 2005 the University undertook a major re-branding exercise which changed the way in which it presents itself to the outside world, as well as influencing the pedagogy and other major functions of the institution. Since the branding, stakeholder perceptions of Birmingham and the quality of the student intake has improved. The institution continues to raise its national and international profile.

Rick Brand, Head of Market Intelligence, Sheffield Hallam University

Rick's team provides strategic and tactical support for the University across all subject areas and levels, for UK student, international and business marketing. The team is a combination of Market Research and Market Analysis professionals focusing on customers, products and markets. Rick joined the University in 2001 after previously spending most of his working life in the UK retail industry. His experience there includes the areas of operational management, buying, merchandising, catalogue production, business development, marketing and market research.

Rick gained his first degree in Sociology at Leeds and his MBA at the Open University Business School. He is a chartered member of the Chartered Institute of Marketing, a member of the Chartered Management Institute, and an associate member of the Market Research Society. He is also Chair of Eventus, a not-for-profit social enterprise, supported by Arts Council England, specialising in applied arts.

He also has a Faculty role as Teaching, Learning and Assessment Coordinator, and has responsibility within the Humanities for Publicity work. This has led to the RPE course blog (long running - see www.r-p-e.blogspot.com ), Flickr site as well as a course Facebook group, and the use of Twitter in specific contexts. He is also closely involved in the development of technology-enhanced learning resources via the Hub project. Dr Webster attends, and speaks at, conferences on E-learning, as well as speaking at events within his field of academic expertise.

Tracy Playle, Director and Communications Consultant, Pickle Jar Communications

Tracy is a communications consultant with specialist expertise of social media communications. Having spent five years working in-house at the University of Warwick, including a stint as the Head of Research-TV, Tracy moved over to the dark side (consultancy) in 2007 and now works for a range of institutions in the education sector.