Dr Julia Petty has been a Senior Lecturer in Children’s Nursing, in the School of Health and Social Work at University of Hertfordshire (UH), since April 2013. She is a Principal Fellow and has recently been conferred the title of Associate Professor (Learning and Teaching). Before UH, she worked at City University, London for 12 years as a programme Lead for the post-qualifying neonatal nurse curriculum serving a range of NHS Trusts who she partnered with closely.
Her professional standing as a subject-specialist in the field of neonatal nurse education has developed over this timespan and continues to the current day within the context of children’s nurse education. Her current professional responsibilities include leading and teaching on both field-specific and cross-field healthcare modules, pedagogical research, degree and master’s supervision.
Julia also holds a range of other roles, including being a link lecturer for practice, personal tutor and assessor of new teaching staff within the University. She is also Chief External Examiner for the nursing BSc programme at Greenwich University (GU), Vice Chair and joint-Education Lead for the UK Neonatal Nurses Association (NNA) and UK representative on the Council of International Neonatal Nurses (COINN) Board of Directors.
Julia is passionate about nurse education, particularly in children's nursing and healthcare and has an ongoing specific interest in specialist neonatal education. Her other interest lies in the development of technology-enhanced learning resources including digital storytelling within neonatal nursing, the subject of her recent doctoral research. She has published regularly on these topics of interest for wider dissemination and shared learning in a range of peer-reviewed journals and is an author and co-editor respectively for two leading neonatal textbooks.
She is committed to supporting and enhancing the teaching and learning experience of her students and the staff she works with, both internal work colleagues and external partnerships. She also engages in relevant educational research projects that enhance the learning and teaching experience including the sharing and dissemination of outputs for the benefit of students and staff locally, nationally and globally. Her current research interests focus on narrative inquiry, the creation of digital stories and the parent's experience in neonatal care within a learning and teaching context.