Neelam Wright is a Senior Teaching Fellow in the Centre for Higher Education Practice (CHEP), based in the Faculty for 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 care and personal development interventions for the Postgraduate Research community at Southampton, in collaboration with Wellbeing, EDI 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 holistic address, cultural intelligence and inclusive curriculum approaches. Her most recent collaborative projects have included working with LGBTQI+ charities and student networks to develop targeted wellbeing resources. She has co-developed research-informed learning resources to support PGRs with sleep regulation and racial trauma. She has partnered with central EDI teams to shape ethical Reverse Mentoring schemes to develop the intersectional thinking of senior leaders. Working closely with PGR partners and careers consultants, she has aimed to sensetively address anti-Blackness and broken pipelines in academia through wellbeing-informed careers coaching. Neelam was the project lead for the OFS funded Decolonising Training Project, helping to shape the benchmark Surrey Black Scholars programme. She is the co-author and editor for the forthcoming Inclusive Training Playbook for researcher developers (Routledge).

Neelam is also an active internationally published 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 programme modules on Indian Cinema.

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 under-represented individuals within higher education. She is involved in lobbying and strategic policy work to address structural inequalities in research and teaching across the sector.

Neelam is an invited member of the Vitae policy advisory group. She is nationally recognised as an EDI change agent in the researcher development context, with a current focus on disseminating best practice and addressing toxicity and exploitation. She has provided strategic leadership for policy at FACE, a not-for-profit HE anti-racism consultancy group made up of Black and Brown academics and students across the UK.

Neelam is proud to be part of the inspiring University of Southampton Disability Steering Group and the innovative CHEP Evaluation Working group.