Susannah Quinsee
Professor Susannah Quinsee is Vice-President (Digital and Student Experience) at City St George’s, University of London. As Vice-President, she is the strategic lead for digital transformation as well as leading institutional projects and strategy to support student experience. She is an EMCC accredited coach, a National Teaching Fellow, a SEDA Senior Fellow and AdvanceHE HEA Principal Fellow, and was an AdvanceHE Learning and Teaching Excellence Ambassador. She researches on university digital futures and playful practice and leadership and is a Lego Serious Play practitioner.
City St George’s, University of London is the University of business, practice and the professions. In August 2024, City, University of London merged with St George’s, University of London creating a powerful multi-faculty institution. The combined university is now one of the largest suppliers of the health workforce in the capital, as well as one of the largest higher education destinations for London students. Our academic range is broadly-based with world-leading strengths in business; law; health and medical sciences; mathematics; computer science; engineering; social sciences; and the arts including journalism, dance and music. We have approximately 25,000 students from over 160 countries studying in London.
City St George’s is a professionally focused institution based in central and south London. Many of our students commute to the university spending less than 10% of their time on campus. Or they are involved in placements in healthcare settings. We are particularly interested in this project as it meets with our strategic aims to place students at the heart of everything we do and consider new and innovative ways to engage our students in their learning. Our ambition for our students is to prepare them for the business, practice and professions that they will progress into from the University and therefore developing their creative thinking, problem solving and interpersonal skills are vital for the world of work. We believe that playful practice is a vital way in which to do this and we are excited to be a partner institution in this significant project.
Melissa Highton
Dr Melissa Highton is Assistant Principal and Director of Learning, Teaching and Web Services at the University of Edinburgh.
The University of Edinburgh is one of the world’s top research-intensive universities, ranked 4th in the UK based on the quality and breadth of its research – known as research power – and is Scotland’s top ranked institution, according to Times Higher Education’s REF 2021 power ratings. Nearly 90 per cent of the University’s research activity is in the highest categories – 4 star and 3 star – which are classified respectively as ‘world leading’ and ‘internationally excellent’.
The University’s Information Services Group designs, develops and operationalises educational technology systems and services which underpin learning and teaching at the University. Since 2018 we have been adopting a deliberately playful approach to service design and engagement. We aim to create inclusive, playful communities in which students learn cooperatively, trust our services and feel a sense of belonging. We hope that playful attitudes within our creative teams will engender an open and curious approach to problem-solving and increased innovation.
In developing our local strategy, we were influenced by Professor Whitton’s earlier work in this area and we can see clear benefit for the University in working with her team now on this further research. We want to ensure that this work on playful engagement continues to be research-informed and fosters an environment and culture where innovation, playful learning, and creative engagement are embedded in our practices. This is in line with the University’s aim to offer an educational experience that is inspiring, challenging, and transformational and support an inclusive, positive, healthy work environment.
Maarten Koeners
Dr Maarten Koeners is a Senior Lecturer at the University of Exeter Medical School with a PhD in medical biology. Over the past five years, his work has focused on strengthening the link between learning and joy through play, integrating insights from the neuroscience of play and design thinking into his academic practice. His commitment to innovative, playful education has been recognised through awards including the Educational Incubator Fellowship (2020), the Personal Tutor of the Year Award (2023), and The Areus Award for Most Inspirational Teacher (2024). He is also co-founder of InnoPlay (https://www.innoplay.co.uk/), alongside Adam Lusby, enabling innovation in individuals and institutions through design, play, story, and joy.
The University of Exeter is a member of the Russell Group and holds a Gold award from the Teaching Excellence Framework (TEF), reflecting its reputation for world-class research and teaching excellence. From its campuses in Exeter and Cornwall, the university delivers education that blends innovation and creativity with a strong focus on student partnership and high performance. Exeter is pioneering playful and prosocial approaches to education, equipping students to become Future Positive change makers.
Maarten’s interest in the RE:PLAY project lies in its alignment with Exeter’s ethos of innovation in education and his mission to embed joy and play into learning. By engaging with RE:PLAY, Exeter aims not only to advance the academic understanding of play but also to disseminate its outcomes across national and international networks, amplifying the project’s impact.
Rosie Jones
Rosie Jones is Director of Student and Library Services at Teesside University leading a diverse portfolio made up of multidisciplinary teams. She has worked in Higher Education since 2001 at five different institutions and held numerous senior leadership roles leading a range of large departments. She is a National Teaching Fellow (https://www.advance-he.ac.uk/ntfs/rosie-jones), Principal Fellow of the Higher Education Academy, Co-Chair of the highly innovative Playful Learning Conference, and strategic advisor to the national CILIP Information Literacy Group. She has published and spoken extensively on a broad range of topics including digital leadership, information literacy, learning space design and playful learning.
Teesside University delivers an outstanding student and learning experience underpinned by research, enterprise and the professions. Awarded The Daily Mail Modern University of the Year 2026, rated as Outstanding by Ofsted in all areas for its apprenticeship provision, along with a triple Gold rating in the national Teaching Excellence Framework 2023. As an anchor institution rooted in the Tees Valley, Teesside University has a rich heritage in widening participation, broadening horizons, and raising aspirations amongst students and the local community.
As current co-chair of the Playful Learning Conference and an active participant in the Playful Learning Association (part of the CATE award winning team) I have a breadth of experience of applying playful learning in universities and an understanding of how to support this at an senior institutional level. I believe this is valuable research that will fill a clear gap, change attitudes towards play in HE and increase wider scale adoption of this innovative practice.
Paul Hollins
Professor Paul Hollins is Professor of cultural research development at the University of Greater Manchester and supports research across the schools of the University. Prior to this Paul was Director of the Centre for Educational Technology and Interoperability Standards (CETIS) a Jisc service, is a steering group member of the Punk Scholars Network (PSN) and a Fellow of the Cybernetic Society. He has conducted research into play, games and technology for over three decades and currently leads the University’s Games Realising Effective & Affective Transformation (GREAT) EU /UKRI funded research project.
The University of Greater Manchester (UGM) was formerly the University of Bolton and has recently celebrated its two hundred year anniversary. The University is one of the most ethnically diverse in the UK with many of its students being the first of their family to do so and has a clear commitment to widening participation. The University is strongly supportive of the aims and ambitions of the project, a project focused on exploring new boundaries, pedagogic approaches and affordances of Play and playful approaches and is delighted to be a partner institution in RE:PLAY.
Keith Smyth
Keith Smyth is Dean of Learning, Teaching and Students and Professor of Pedagogy at the University of the Highlands and Islands, where he leads the directorate responsible for learning and teaching strategy, professional development and recognition, academic standards and enhancement, student support provision, and educational scholarship. Keith has interests in various dimensions of digital education practice, co-creative and critical pedagogies, open education, and academic development. Keith developed the openly licensed 3E Framework for designing technology-enhanced learning which has been used extensively across the HE and FE sectors, and is Vice Chair/Interim Chair of the Association for Learning Technology.
The University of the Highlands and Islands (UHI) is a geographically and digitally distributed tertiary university, offering access to Higher Education and Further Education within, across and beyond the expansive Highlands and Islands region of Scotland (an area that occupies two thirds of Scotland’s land mass). UHI is a federated university, comprised of ten Academic Partner colleges and specialist institutions, and with 48 campuses, research institutes and specialist learning centres spread across urban and rural locations. UHI’s curriculum and education offering spans site-specific, networked, blended and fully online modes of delivery and engagement, and where learners can study entry level vocational qualifications through to PhD study, with strong progression routes across this continuum. UHI currently has around 37,000 students, and within the university’s broad curriculum offering there are distinct programmes of study that relate directly to the geography, culture, history and industries of the region.
UHI is looking forward to being one of the participating universities supporting the research work of the RE:PLAY project, and will be contributing through facilitating feedback from our own staff and students on current and emerging uses of playful and creative approaches to learning and teaching and their value in providing an enriched learning experience. Our involvement in RE:PLAY will also allow us to learn about ways in which we can benefit from further development of playful and creative pedagogies here at UHI.