Biography
Dr Emma Folwell is Head of Interdisciplinary Studies at Birmingham Newman University. She leads on strategic curriculum design, programme development, and student engagement across the Foundation Year and BA Applied Humanities. Her work focuses on inclusive teaching practices, transition support, and the integration of academic coaching and mindfulness into the curriculum to support student wellbeing and success.
Emma co-created the university’s first accelerated BA programme and has played a key role in expanding online and interdisciplinary provision. Her leadership in programme redesign focuses on enhancing first-year student transitions, improving progression and retention, and addressing awarding gaps through inclusive assessment, academic coaching, and curriculum innovation.
An historian by background, Emma’s research initially focused on poverty, gender, and political conservatism in the US South. Her book The War on Poverty in Mississippi: From Massive Resistance to New Conservatism (University of Mississippi Press, 2020) explores state-federal relations and white resistance to social reform in the post-civil rights era. She is a Fulbright Scholar and has received research support from the Lyndon Baines Johnson Presidential Library, the Royal Historical Society, and the British Association for American Studies.
Profile
Research Interests
Emma has led and collaborated on a number of pedagogical research projects exploring inclusive curriculum design, student transition and retention, and the role of coaching and mindfulness in higher education. Her current work includes:
- Assessment by engagement: a project investigating the impact of co-creation, formative feedback, and confidence-building assessment strategies on student autonomy and attainment.
- Academic life coaching as an alternative to personal tutoring: explored in a forthcoming co-authored SEDA/Routledge publication.
- Integrating mindfulness into accelerated degree programmes: a case study at a post-1992 university
- Ipsative assessment: exploring innovation in assessment within interdisciplinary degrees.
Emma was invited to co-deliver the keynote address at the AdvanceHE Symposium on Students as Co-Creators (2025), where she presented with colleagues Beyond the Grade: Making Assessment Matter. She is an active contributor to national discussions on assessment, access, and attainment.
Teaching
Emma’s teaching practice is shaped by a commitment to inclusive, interdisciplinary education that supports student development both academically and personally. With over a decade of experience teaching at undergraduate and postgraduate levels, she has designed and delivered programmes across a wide range of subject areas, including History, Politics, Applied Humanities, and academic skills. Her work spans Levels 3 to 7 and places particular emphasis on student transition and engagement.
She has led major curriculum developments, including the co-creation of the BA Applied Humanities (accelerated degree) and the redesign of the university-wide Foundation Year. These programmes incorporate innovative assessment strategies, embedded academic coaching, and personal and professional development planning, all designed to promote progression, retention, and student belonging.
Emma integrates mindfulness and reflective practice into her programme design and has explored the potential of these approaches in supporting student wellbeing and focus, particularly within accelerated learning environments. Her teaching is research-informed, drawing from her own work on academic coaching, employability, and assessment by engagement.
Other Activities
Membership of Professional Organisations
Emma is a Senior Fellow of Advance HE and a Fellow of the Royal Historical Society. She is an active member of several academic communities, including the British Association for American Studies, the Historians of the Twentieth Century United States (HOTCUS), and the Foundation Year Network.
She is a peer reviewer for the Journal of the Foundation Year Network and the Journal of Learning Development in Higher Education. She has also served as a monograph reviewer for the University Press of Kansas and the University of Mississippi Press.
Conferences and Other Research Activity
Emma regularly presents at national and international conferences on topics related to student transitions, curriculum innovation, and higher education pedagogy, as well as American history. Selected presentations include:
- Invited Keynote: Beyond the Grade: Making Assessment Matter, AdvanceHE Symposium on Students as Co-Creators (January 2025)
- Reimagining the Humanities: Coaching for Collaborative Learning and Teaching, RAISE Conference, University of Leicester (September 2024)
- Assessment by Engagement: Co-creation and Transition in the Foundation Year, European Access Network, Abertay University (June 2024)
- Applied Humanities: Using Coaching as a Tool for Collaborative Learning and Teaching, AdvanceHE Symposium (January 2024)
- Poverty Wars in Mississippi, Mississippi Department of Archives (October 2021)
- The Evolution of Massive Resistance, Elon University (April 2019)
- Additional historical conference papers presented at the American Historical Association, Southern Historical Association, and HOTCUS.
Publications
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Articles in Peer-Reviewed Journals
Folwell, E. J., & Brennan, J. D. (2025). Assessment by engagement: building confidence and autonomy in the first year. Assessment & Evaluation in Higher Education, 1–14. https://doi.org/10.1080/02602938.2025.2483268
Folwell, E. (2014). ‘The Legacy of the Child Development Group of Mississippi: White Opposition to Head Start in Mississippi, 1965-1972,’ Journal of Mississippi History, 76 (1) Spring / Summer, pp.43-68.
Books
Folwell, E. (2020). The War on Poverty in Mississippi: Massive Resistance to New Conservatism. Jackson: University of Mississippi Press.
Chapters in Books
Folwell, E. and Lewandowski, C. (forthcoming). ‘Academic Life Coaching: An Alternative to Traditional Personal Tutoring’, in W. Garnham and Sue Beckingham (eds) Creative Approaches to Personal Tutoring. SEDA/Routledge.
Online
Folwell, E. and Lewandowski, C. (2024) Reimagining humanities: how pedagogical innovation can transform crisis into opportunity, AdvanceHE blog. https://www.advance-he.ac.uk/news-and-views/reimagining-humanities-how-pedagogical-innovation-can-transform-crisis-opportunity
Folwell, E. (2021) ‘The War on Poverty,’ Mississippi Encyclopaedia, Center for Study of Southern Culture, https://mississippiencyclopedia.org/entries/the-war-on-poverty/.
Folwell, E. (2015) Journey to Justice – the Civil Rights Movement Exhibition: resources and links, http://journeytojustice.org.uk/projects/exhibition-resource-and-credits/.
Selected book reviews
Michael E. Staub, The Mismeasure of Minds: Debating Race and Intelligence between Brown and the Bell Curve, (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2019), Journal of Southern History, 2019.
Robert Daniel Rubin, Judicial Review and American Conservatism: Christianity, Public Education, and the Federal Courts in the Reagan Era, (University of Cambridge Press, 2017), English Historical Review, 134 (566) February 2019, pp.264-266.
Brian Ward, Martin Luther King in Newcastle Upon Tyne: The African American Freedom Struggle and Race Relations in the North East of England, Newcastle, (Tyne Bridge Publishing, 2017) Patterns of Prejudice, 53 (2), November 2018, pp.232-225.
Teena F. Horn, Alan Huffman and John Griffin Jones (eds) Lines Were Drawn: Remembering Court-Ordered Integration at a Mississippi High School, (University of Mississippi Press, 2016), Journal of Southern History, 83 (2) May 2017, pp.476-477.
Christopher P. Lehman, Power, Politics, and the Decline of the Civil Rights Movement: A Fragile Coalition, 1967-1973, (Praeger, 2014) Reviews in History, October 2015, http://www.history.ac.uk/reviews/review/1845
Glen Feldman (ed.), A Nation within a Nation: The American South and the Federal Government, (University of Florida Press, 2014), Journal of American Studies 49 (1), February 2015.