Dr Senathirajah Ariyaratnam is a clinical Senior Lecturer and an Academic Lead for Oral Medicine Teaching and Learning Programme for dental and therapist students at the University of Manchester, in addition to being a practising Specialist in Oral Medicine at the Manchester Foundation Trust. Raj is also leads Global Oral Health and Dental Social Responsibility activities at the University of Manchester. He is a trustee at the Manchester Global Foundation and Manchester Tamil association and was the President of Manchester Medical Society-Odontology.
Raj has 40 years of national and international teaching and clinical experience. He has interests in developing innovative sustainable student-led constructive flipped learning models, exploring students’ social responsibility concepts based on service learning pedagogy and internationalising teaching innovations. His global leadership in teaching demonstrates his exceptional commitment to service learning - that is combining learning goals and community service in ways that can enhance both student growth and community health. Through his Humanising Dentistry initiative Raj has successfully integrated the service learning pedagogy throughout the curriculum which resulted in combating dental health inequalities in hard to reach communities, both nationally and globally, whilst producing socially responsible graduates.
Experience in developing international CPD programmes guided him to pioneer the Global Online Learning Forum (GOLF) a blended learning platform to share knowledge and skills with global partners, particularly from Low and Middle Income countries (LMI).