Faculty and Speakers
Pim van Zanen
Pim is director of marketing and communication at Radboud University, Nijmegen in the Netherlands. His department is responsible for corporate communications, student recruitment, and alumni relations. Prior to this, he worked as a consultant at a full service advertising agency. Pim has previous experience in the financial sector where he was responsible for customer experience delivered by the customer contact centre.
Malcolm Roberts
Malcolm started his career Higher Education communications as an Internal Communications Officer at the University of Sheffield. For four years he worked with staff across the university, telling their stories and planning communications activities and campaigns. The contacts he made in this role proved invaluable when, in 2012, he swapped audiences and became the university’s first Student Communications Coordinator. Over the following years he grew a specialist team around him consisting of experts in film, animation, social media and graphic design. In 2017 the team won its first Guardian and HEIST awards. Their success has continued with a string of sector recognised campaigns and further awards in 2019 from the Guardian, HEIST and two Learning on Screen Awards. Malcolm is now the Head of Student Communications and Creative Content at the University of Sheffield where he has worked for over a decade’ the longest that he has worked for any organisation. Everyday he asks himself how he has been lucky enough to land such an interesting, rewarding, and enjoyable job.
Jo Clarkson
Passionate about understanding students and placing them at the heart of decision making, Jo is an experienced multi- methods researcher, conducting projects spanning customer and prospect behaviour, satisfaction, pricing, brand and portfolio evaluation.
Jo started her career in pharmaceutical marketing, before settling in higher education in 2004. She’s an active member of the HE market research forum, and speaks regularly on insight.
Chris Dixon
Chris heads up a development team consisting of a core of full time, full-stack developers and well as a large number of paid student developers. Work areas include voice and chat interfaces, gamification, agile development and mobile phone applications.
Bobby Futter
Bobby joined the Student Communications Team at the University of Sheffield in 2016 while studying towards a degree in journalism studies. After graduating in 2018, he joined the team permanently and became Student Communications Coordinator. In this role he has revolutionised student focused content via the team’s channels, placing particular focus on developing more video content for social media and increasing engagement and impact in this area.
Bobby has led the production of a number of video projects working with students to authentically capture their voice and tell their story. This work has included a video series based around LGBT+ History Month, a Mental Health Day interview on coping with grief at university, and the development of regular student social media takeovers.
David Gilani
David started his career at the University of Southampton where he was a Students' Union sabbatical officer, before moving over to the University to establish their Student Communications function. He now works at Middlesex University as their Head of Student Engagement and Advocacy leading on their efforts to engage both current students and alumni.
He is a strong proponent of the student voice and in 2012 he founded the Student Publication Association, which supports student journalists across the UK and Ireland. He has also recently completed the Higher Education Management MBA programme at UCL's Institute of Education.
David is an avid blogger, writing on various topics related to higher education and youth engagement. You can read more his work via LinkedIn and David is happy to be contacted either on there or via [email protected]
Mhairi Gowans
Mhairi Gowans is a social media expert with six years of experience in digital communications, originally beginning in the museums sector. In 2017, Mhairi moved into higher education where she managed the social media for the University of Cambridge, using videos on student life as a way to engage applicants, students and alumni to great success. As of 2019, Mhairi has joined the advancement department at the London School of Economics where she intends to make alumni feel more connected with the School through the communication of current student activities.
Michael Lavery
Michael is currently serving as Interim Vice President of Membership, Marketing, and Communications at CASE. He is the founder and CEO of Brand & Reputation an international management consultancy firm working across education, health, culture and non-profit sectors . Starting his career working with global brands in the private sector, he then worked in higher education leadership for 12 years as Executive Director (External Relations) at Teesside University and Director of Communications and Marketing at Durham University. In these roles, he chaired various HE MarComms groups and was an adviser to the House of Lords. Michael is a Fellow of the Chartered Institute of Marketing and a member of the Chartered Institute of Public Relations (MCIPR). He is a previous track chair and member of the CEAC planning committee and served on the European Board of Trustees of CASE between 2014-2019 and is now a member of CASE’s European Regional Council. He has served on CASE’s Global Board and Executive Committee since 2017. He was presented with CASE’s distinguished Laureate and Crystal Apple awards in 2019 in recognition of his volunteer leadership and teaching contributions, respectively.
Emma Mundy
Emma has worked in marketing and communications for over 25 years in a variety of roles and sectors – most of her experience is in financial and professional services, and more recently education, where she discovered the sector that really inspires her.
She has worked for small advertising agencies on accounts such as Walkers and Bulmers to leading a global marketing team for Zurich Financial Services. In 2009 she retrained as secondary school teacher and had two of the toughest years of her career. What this change highlighted was her passion for education, but as a marketing professional (and not in the classroom!).
Emma has led the marketing services team for the University of Warwick since 2014 and has seen her team grow and extend to cover student communication.
Justin Shaw
Justin Shaw is a global consultant addressing issues of reputation, communications, engagement, influence and media performance in HE. He worked in the Communications Office of the University of Hertfordshire before establishing the UK's first consulting practice in higher education communications - supporting 250 clients (including 125 universities around the world). His early career was as a chief reporter, feature writer, news editor, and columnist and he was recognised as a Reporter of the Year.
Alyssa Willis
As UWE Bristol’s Student Communications Manager, Alyssa is the voice of the university and her campaigns and messaging help create the welcoming and supportive environment the university is known for.
To achieve her goals, she works across all areas and levels of the university to develop and create engaging content; curates messaging across multiple print and digital channels; and runs strategic multi-channel, student-facing campaigns throughout the year. Her team has four key communication priorities: transition, employability and enterprise, academic support and mental health and well-being.
Her background includes web development, digital marketing, digital communications and policy development. She has a degree in Political Science from West Virginia University.