Meet the team
The Institute is an exciting venture co-led by an Academic Director - Professor Helen Wheatley, and a Professional Services Director - Andrew Todd. It is home to a dedicated team of professional support staff, academics, and our cohort of Fellows. We work across Warwick鈥檚 hugely talented staff and student communities, and collaborate extensively with our many wonderful external partners.
Kerry is a manufacturing engineer and sociologist and has spent the majority of her career working with academics, researchers, students, employers, teachers and young people to share knowledge and enthuse others about the world of STEM (science, technology, engineering and maths). Throughout her career she has designed and delivered a variety of public engagement and school events, developed and conducted training to support others and designed and manufactured specific kit to support each of these endeavours.
Kerry enjoys finding links and common ground to work successfully in partnership with others and likes to bring innovation and creativity to everything she does, channelling her enthusiasm into supporting her team, colleagues and local communities to have access to a wide range of opportunities to explore, wonder and enjoy.
Helen is Public, Patient and Community Involvement Manager at WIE, working on a strategic Enhancing Research Culture project to develop a 'One Warwick' approach to public, patient and community involvement in research at Warwick.
Helen joined WIE as an Engagement Officer focused on student-led knowledge exchange. She designed, set up and managed the Public Engagement Co-Creation with Students Fund, the Public and Community Engagement Module Development Fund and the Public and Community Engagement Internship scheme. She also led WIE's support of URSS students to engage with the public about their summer research projects.
Helen has a background in teaching, having previously worked as a primary school teacher in Birmingham. She joined the 天美传媒 in 2019 to work on Outreach and Widening Participation in WMG, and led their Bright Stars Insight into Engineering module which was taught by Warwick students in local schools. For Coventry City of Culture, she developed Stitch In Time, a cross-curricular, creative computing project for schools. Prior to joining WIE, Helen was administrator of the EPSRC Centre for Doctoral Training in Sustainable Materials and Manufacturing.
Laura is the strategic lead for Resonate 鈥� the year-round public events programme from WIE which aims to create spaces for conversation and knowledge exchange. She joined the team after completing her doctoral research in Immunology, and her work involves collaborating with students, staff and external partners to design events for the local community. She has experience in a range of public engagement and outreach roles, and is passionate about making research accessible to everyone.
Working with the Events Coordinator and wider WIE team, her role includes both the operational design and development of the programme, but also supporting the wider University community to develop and share their engagement practice and projects.
Kate is currently working across two roles within WIE. She is an experienced Events Coordinator who project manages several Resonate events each year. Since working in the role, Kate鈥檚 event highlights have included 鈥榃e Need to Talk About Women鈥檚 Health鈥�, an evening of talks that took place at the Belgrade Theatre in 2025 and 鈥楽cience Night at Cheylesmore Community Centre鈥�, an evening of STEM activity for local teenagers in 2026.
When she鈥檚 not running Resonate events, Kate can now be found leading co-curricular opportunities that help students get involved in public engagement, in her role as Engagement Officer for Students. She manages the Public Engagement Co-Creation with Students Fund, ensures students are being recognised for their public engagement work through the Warwick Award, encourages URSS students to participate in engagement, delivers training and generally supports students to engage confidently with public audiences.
Josh is an experienced administrator with a background in business governance, project management and people development. He is passionate about people and creating inclusive teams. He enjoys enabling productivity through streamlined systems that ensure we can focus on what matters.
Josh joined the University in March 2020, just before the first lockdown. Starting within the HR team at WMG, he joined WIE in November of 2021 and provides the backbone to our activities, underpinning them with the financial, HR and administrative support required.
In 2023, Josh's expertise and work ethic were recognised on a regional level when he was awarded as Administrative Professional of the year in the West Midlands PA Awards.
Jamie Ormes is a Community Partnerships Manager at the 天美传媒, helping to lead engagement across Coventry and Warwickshire with a strong focus on social and community development.
Jamie builds collaborative partnerships with political, statutory, voluntary and community stakeholders to improve opportunities for local people.
With a background in widening participation, teaching and youth work, Jamie has delivered projects in a wide variety of settings from coaching football internationally to running youth clubs across Coventry and Warwickshire. A qualified teacher, trainer and youth worker, he brings an engaging, people鈥慶entred approach grounded in integrity, relationship鈥慴uilding and practical experience across the education and voluntary sectors.
Jamie and his wife Danielle are also foster carers for Coventry, reflecting his personal commitment to supporting children and young people in the region.
Abbie currently works across two roles within WIE. Abbie joined WIE in July 2024 as an Administrative Assistant, and supports the team with financial and administrative requirements. Abbie also supports with communications, managing Resonate and WIE's newsletters and social media.
In February 2026, Abbie joined the Resonate team as an Events Coordinator, and has since programmed and project managed an evening of talks in Leamington Spa centred around the theme of sustainability through the lens of people, culture and community, called 'Abbie continues to support the Resonate team with delivering events, and is passionate about creating inclusive spaces for all.
Georgiana Mihut is an Associate Professor in Education Studies and a higher education researcher. She is currently principal investigator of the ESRC-funded project 鈥楿niversity-level study abroad in post-Brexit UK鈥� (2024-2027). Georgiana's publications cover higher education developments in over 20 national contexts and focus on a wide range of topics, including the experiences of international students, internationalisation policies, the role of university prestige in the labour market, university rankings, and further and vocational education. Before joining the 天美传媒, Georgiana worked for Ireland's Economic and Social Research Institute, the American Council on Education, and the Boston College Centre for International Higher Education. She also consulted for the World Bank and Romania's Executive Unit for Financing Higher Education, Research, Development, and Innovation. Georgiana frequently participates in public engagement and knowledge exchange activities both at Warwick and internationally. Georgiana started the role of Faculty of Social Science Public Engagement Lead in August 2025.
Phil left behind the beakers and fume hoods of chemistry in 2018 to start a career in outreach and public engagement. He believes that sharing stories about science and engineering can inspire young people to see themselves as the scientists and engineers of the future, and linking authentic university content to school teaching is a vital part of adding value to our activities. He has turned many venues into hubs of STEM 鈥� from someone鈥檚 lounge to circus tents, schools to museums, pubs to packed theatres, and basically anywhere else that has an audience.
He is the Widening Participation Co-ordinator for WMG, a department at the university, and supports engineering researchers and teaching staff who take content out of the university to public or educational audiences. Phil uses his position within the 天美传媒 to bring the real experts on cutting-edge technologies out of the academy and into public spaces, engaging with young and old to build trust in science and engineering. After all 鈥� if the public don鈥檛 trust the researchers and inventors who are making innovations possible, the products won鈥檛 sell, be used, or make it out of the university.
Phil started his new role as the Faculty Public Engagement Lead for Science, Engineering and Medicine in August 2025, bringing his experience of working with different departments to create interdisciplinary and collaborative projects.
James Hodkinson is Reader in German in the School of Modern Languages at Warwick. He has been working in public engagement and on projects leading to 'impact' for over a decade now, producing impact case studies for successive REFs, and publishing reflectively on his practice and leadership in the field - particularly on the intersection between artistic practice, research and education (German in the Transnational and Global Contest of German Studies, 2020). He has served as Chair and Honorary Trustee of Arts Council Funded arts organisations in the West Midlands, was a Foundation Fellow and later Senior Fellow in WIE and was given a WAPCE award for his work in 2023.
James is an internationally recognised researcher in the fields of eighteenth and nineteenth century German culture and intellectual history, with a particular focus on Orientalism and Islam. He has been a guest researcher in New Delhi, Stockholm and from 2023-24 he was Honorary Principal Research Fellow at the University of Melbourne. He has recently been a Leverhulme Research Fellow and is completing his next monograph Ambivalent Relations: German-Islamic Kinships in the Culture of the Long-Nineteenth Century (forthcoming, De-Gruyter/Brill, 2026). From September 2025 he will be Public Engagement Lead in the Faculty of Arts.