Dr Madeleine Knightley

As Faculty Academic Lead for Access and Open (A&O), I am the link between A&O and the Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences (FASS), with the aim of enabling greater success and enhancing the satisfaction of Access students and those students who choose to study an Open (rather than a named) qualification. I am also Co-Lead of the School of Psychology & Counselling (P&C) Athena SWAN self-assessment team, looking to maintain our School's status as Bronze Award holders. I am Deputy Chair of DD210, Living Psychology: From the everyday to the extraordinary.

In my role as P&C Staff Tutor, until November 2022 I co-managed the Associate Lecturer team based in the East of England; up to 2018, I oversaw the delivery of the psychology programme in the South West of England. This followed my own OU psychology degree and PhD (investigating cognition, affect and identity in women undergraduate students), which was awarded by the OU's Institute of Educational Psychology, in 2001.

I am a Chartered Psychologist, Associate Fellow of the British Psychological Society and Senior Fellow of the Higher Education Academy. I am also a Member of the International Society for Coaching Psychologists. I have held a visiting Fellowship at Curtin University, Perth, Australia; previous roles include Research Fellow at the University of Cambridge, Faculty of Education; Researcher at Anglia Ruskin University, Project Leader for the former National Institute for Adult Continuing Education (now, the Learning and Work Institute) and as a Research Officer at the University of Cambridge, Institute of Continuing Education.I have taught level 1 and level 2 psychology at the OU.

I  am involved with the charity Toilet Twinning (particularly the aspects of their work that impact on the education, empowerment and emancipation of girls and women) and volunteer as a Coaching Psychologist for a local charity supporting people back in to employment.