Dr Venetia Brown

Professional biography

Since 2012, my career in higher education has involved teaching English for academic purposes, business English, research skills, and project-based classes to undergraduate and postgraduate students at Middlesex and Kingston universities. In 2015, I had the opportunity to teach English and ICT at the first women's university in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia. I also worked as a Digital Literacy Coordinator at Richmond, The American University in London. My passion for blended learning and educational technologies inspired me to pursue a PhD in Technology Enhanced Learning in 2018, allowing me to extend my practical teaching experience to the theoretical and practical applications of educational technologies. My PhD research focused on interactive web broadcasts' role in fostering distance learning students' engagement with practical lab and fieldwork. 

I am a Women in Higher Education Network (WHEN) member and a proud alumna of the 100 Black Women Professors NOW programme, an accelerator and change programme for UK higher education institutions. https://www.whenequality.org/100

Research interests

Currently, I am a Postdoctoral Researcher in Mixed Methods Research and AI in Education at the Knowledge Media Institute. I am involved in a UKRI-funded project exploring the intersection of artificial intelligence and justice. In this role, I lead a qualitative study examining how AI researchers from low- and middle-income countries and those who are minoritised learn about and apply ethical principles and conceptualise the impacts of AI on culture and society. See here for more information: https://shiftingpower.kmi.open.ac.uk/

Other research interests include generative artificial intelligence in education, critical AI literacies, alternative ethical AI frameworks, technologies for STEM learning, and online pedagogical practices. 

Teaching interests

As someone committed to equity of opportunity in education, I am the Academic Lead for the annual KMi Summer Scholarship for Black Students, which provides financial support, experiential learning opportunities and mentoring to young Black students to enable them to experiment with hot technology projects such as generative AI, robotics, blockchain, and knowledge graphs. https://kmi.open.ac.uk/scholarship/ 

I currently co-supervise a PhD student:

•  AI as a Critical Friend: Developing Teachers' Reflective Thinking