About
Neelam Wright is a Senior Teaching Fellow in the Centre for Higher Education Practice (CHEP), based in the Social Sciences at the University of Southampton. She is part of a group of academic development leads in the doctoral college's professional development team.
Her role involves working closely across all faculties and disciplines with multiple internal stakeholders in order to holistically develop our doctoral educational provision.
Neelam’s current focus is on review and enhancement of pastoral interventions for the PGR community at Southampton, in collaboration with Wellbeing and Research culture specialists. Her project work is designed to be internationally aware, interdisciplinary, innovative, sustainable, inclusive and considerate of sector-wide best practice.
Neelam’s teaching philosophy is focused on cultural intelligence and inclusive curriculum approaches. Her most recent research and HE projects have focused on anti-racism and belonging. She was the project lead for the OFS funded Decolonising Training Project, as part of the Surrey Black Scholars programme. She is the co-author and editor for the forthcoming Inclusive Training Playbook for researcher developers.
Neelam is also a film scholar with research expertise in international postmodern cultural politics, film policy, decolonisation and cross-cultural translation between South Asia and the West. She has published several articles on this topic and is the author of Bollywood and Postmodernism (2015) which is used internationally in Film Studies programmes.
Neelam has over 15 years’ experience as a Mentoring practitioner in HE. Her unique researcher mentorship training has been successfully implemented within doctoral schools, HR organisation development teams, academic staff mentoring programmes (Health Sciences) and the National Physics Laboratory. Over the years, Neelam has managed, supported and participated in programmes for FE & HE students, PGRs, ECRs, Black Asian and Ethnic minority staff, Deaf, disabled and refugee students, senior leaders and University executive board. Neelam is particularly passionate about inspiring allyship in HE and volunteer coaches to empower and develop the careers of women of colour within higher education. She is involved in lobbying and policy work to address structural inequalities in research and teaching across the sector.