Dr Gemma Wattret PhD, SFHEA

My educational research interests are in the development of transferrable skills and employability, and widening participation, inclusivity and student success. I am currently undertaking several different educational research projects.

• Encouraging student reflection on feedback in the School of Life Sciences (MA Project).
Being able to self-assess and to judge one’s own work is a key graduate attribute and therefore an important skill for development within higher education. This project aims to increase students’ knowledge of assessment criteria (academic literacy) and develop students’ ability to reflect.

• Bridging the gap through Enterprise Education; the impact of the Enterprise in the Life Sciences Challenge (ELSC) in enhancing BAME student employability and success.
In 2021, I led a small team who was successful in the award of £1000 from the Student Success and Innovation Fund to run a project ‘The Life Sciences Enterprise Challenge’ to support the success of our Black, Asian and Minority Ethnic (BAME) students.

• Developing Life Sciences Students’ Digital Fluency and Employability at scale through authentic assessment
I am leading this project with Jennifer Delaney and Jason Steers. We introduced a new assessment into a second year skills module which enabled over 400 students to complete an authentic asynchronous video interview with an employer during the height of the pandemic to prepare students for the virtual recruitment process which is now widely used by employers.

• Student and Staff perceptions of the role of academic advisor and their experiences
I am leading this project with Dr Terry Gleave and Dr Rachel Floyd investigating student and staff perceptions of the role of academic advisor and their experiences.

• Lecture Capture Project
I am a member of the team on this collaborative project led by Prof Susanne Voelkel about the impact of lecture capture. The project is funded by the Faculty (ERSSG Collaborative Project). The other collaborators are Prof Susanne Voelkel, Dr Andy Bates, Dr Terry Gleave, Dr Carl Larsen, Dr Elliott Stollar, Prof Lu Mello and Dr Alan Boyd.

• Campylobacter is the most common bacterial cause of diarrhoeal disease in the developed world and produces a major health and economic burden. I am particulary interested in the application of molecular typing schemes and whole-genome sequencing to characterise the population biology of Campylobacter. A recent project characterised the population biology of Campylobacter isolated from humans and different livestock value chains in Nairobi, Kenya using porA typing and whole genome sequencing.

• I am also interested in the infection biology of Campylobacter jejuni in the chicken. This is important as understanding how different Campylobacter jejuni strains colonize poultry is important for developing strategies to reduce or eliminate C. jejuni carriage. We have shown that two C. jejuni strains have very different infection ecologies within the broiler chicken (Chaloner et al, AEM 2014 80 (20): 6366-6372). C. jejuni 13126 was found throughout the gastrointestinal tract, while C. jejuni M1 was largely restricted to the caecum and colon. Furthermore, C. jejuni 13126 was also more invasive and able to spread to the bird's liver. This has implications for control in the poultry industry and suggests that the contamination risk of edible tissues may be dependent on the bacterial strain involved.

I am interested in host-pathogen interactions. I also have a general interest in the “ecology” of arthropod-borne pathogens: i.e their natural cycles, diversity and host interactions. My PhD involved the application of contemporary microbiological and genomic approaches to study population structure of arthropod-borne bacteria, Bartonella henselae.