Disobedience and the pursuit of the unknown
Welby Ings
Welby is a challenging thinker and dynamic speaker whose creative and academic research has profiled in a wide variety of international forums.
Although across his 50-year career Professor Welby Ings’ has been arrested and disciplined by a variety of education boards, his contribution to learning and teaching both in New Zealand and internationally was recognized in 2002 by the Prime Minister’s Inaugural, Supreme Award for Tertiary teaching excellence and subsequent university medals for research and enablement. He currently serves as the elected academic staff representative on his university council, and he is often appointed by governments to working parties considering education reform. Described as a ‘disobedient’ thinker, Welby’s teaching has spanned all levels of the education system. He has supervised over 90 postgraduate theses in Art, Design, public policy, education and linguistics, and he is an international examiner in the same disciplines. Welby is also an active creator. His pedagogy is centered on the belief that a teacher is a learner whose journey must engage with the same pathway of fear and elation that students encounter when they learn. His views are sometimes controversial. He is not a supporter of fragmented learning, comparative testing and performance/criteria-based assessment. His best-selling book Disobedient Teaching (2017) went into multiple reprints within six months of its release, and his follow-up work Invisible Intelligence (2025) has received wide national and international acclaim. Welby’s work as a filmmaker has won numerous awards. His 2004 short film ‘the boy’ qualified for the 2006 Academy awards. In 2024, his feature film PUNCH received the New York Times Critic’s pick after accruing multiple international festival selections. His 2013 TED talk is available here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aumxbgOdkRU
If the role of higher education is to develop independent thought, how might we shape learning and assessment as resources that enhance courage, creativity and critical discernment? Illustrated using case studies that span 25 years of university teaching, the presentation unpacks the ‘humanity of scholarship’, examining ways in which institutions and educators can enable or disable groundbreaking thought.
Undergraduate curriculum transformation for an unscripted future: DCU Futures
Susan Hegarty
Susan Hegarty is Institutional Lead for DCU Futures, within the Office of the Vice President for Academic Affairs, where she has led the greatest innovation in the history of teaching and learning in DCU – a project called DCU Futures. DCU Futures has reimagined the undergraduate curriculum within DCU, embedding transversal skills and active, engaged teaching, bringing external partners right into the classroom. A geographer, her research focuses on citizen science for monitoring water quality, on the evolution of the Irish landscape and our use of that landscape. She is enthusiastic about transmitting the importance of Geography to the wider public, and to this end has taken part in a number of documentary series on both Irish and British television channels and is involved in a number of citizen science projects looking at water quality in Ireland. She is a Senior Fellow of the Higher Education Academy.