Charlene Earl

Charlene is a Global and Employability Learning Designer in the Curriculum and Educational Development Team (CEDT) at the University of Kent and is also a Senior Fellow of the Higher Education Academy (SFHEA). Charlene previously worked as a Programme Manager, managing Pre-sessional and In-sessional provisions at the University of Kent and at the University of South Wales.

Charlene has travelled extensively and taught EFL in several countries. These experiences led her to further explore the notion of intercultural awareness and competence through a joint research project with funding from HEA/Advance HE. The outcome of this project resulted in Talking Cultures, modules, short courses and stand-alone workshops encompassing intercultural awareness training in a variety of educational and professional settings. Charlene has co-designed and delivered a series of workshops to international medical healthcare practitioners focusing on intercultural and interpersonal language and communication skills. In 2018, Charlene was awarded the Barbara Morris prize for a ‘sustained and impactful effort to enhance intercultural awareness at the University of Kent’.

Charlene is passionate about enhancing intercultural awareness and helping students to develop their intercultural competence (ICC). Charlene is in the final stages of completing a PhD in Higher Education focusing on the development of ICC for students studying in Higher Education Institutions (HEI) in the UK. The central outcome of the longitudinal, mixed-method study is to explore how HEIs can best support students’ knowledge and development of ICC prior to, and during their studies. A further outcome is to create a set of evidence-based intercultural learning outcomes that can be usefully applied to programmes, modules and Internationalisation at Home (IaH) activities to monitor the development of ICC. To help develop her research, Charlene was awarded PG funding via the Migration and Movement Signature Research Theme.

Conferences and workshops

Charlene has delivered presentations and workshops at a number of conferences (Innovations in Internationalisation at Home (IIaH), 2019, 2021; SRHE International Research Conference, 2022; Kherson State University’s Learning and Teaching conference, 2022; Canterbury Christ Church Cutting Edges conference, Social Action in Language & Intercultural Communication, 2023) focusing on a range of topics from fostering cross-cultural engagement in Higher Education, exploring transferable skills acquired through specific intercultural and cross-curricular activities and assignments, and considerations applied to planning and creating activities to support internationalisation in Higher Education.