Richard is the Director of Postgraduate Studies at Cardiff University School of Physics and Astronomy, a very research-focused School with 55 academic staff, 49 postdoctoral research assistants, 93 PhD students, 30 MSc students, and 400 undergraduate students. He originally joined Cardiff University in the School of Biosciences in the Academic Year 2013/14 as a Lecturer on the Teaching and Research (T&R) career pathway, coordinating the existing MSc Biophotonics programme.
In 2015 he took the opportunity to pursue his passion for teaching physics at the School of Physics and Astronomy. This coincided with a transfer of career pathway to Teaching and Scholarship (T&S), and Richard was appointed Director of Postgraduate Taught Studies to lead the PHYSX MSc delivery and expansion. In 2017 Richard was promoted to Senior Lecturer, and in 2019 he was appointed Director of Postgraduate Studies, with overall responsibility for both the School's Postgraduate Taught (MSc) and Postgraduate Research (PhD, CDT) provision. He has implemented a highly effective “MSc students as a research group” teaching model, based on his broad multidisciplinary perspective and from best practice across multiple disciplines and contexts. He has implemented this teaching model across six MSc programmes and in two new CDT programmes. Richard has built up a tightly-knit and self-supporting learning community of master’s students and teaching staff who are highly skilled in operating within the research group teaching model, and he is co-located with his students in dedicated teaching and learning facilities.
Proud to have internationally received awards and nominations recognising the excellence of his teaching practice, Richard is especially proud of the two Cardiff University Students' Union Enriching Student Life Awards he received, as these were direct nominations from his students.