Jennifer (Jen) O’Brien is driven by a passion to effect change for sustainable development. Jen believes that higher education has a critical role to play in equipping students to address sustainability challenges. Her mission is to make "Education for Sustainable Development (ESD)" accessible and transformative for students from all backgrounds, disciplines and parts of the world.
A development geographer by training, Jen is interested in the intersection between innovative pedagogy and independent field or applied research. Working within the Sustainable Development Goals, Jen believes that students are a huge force for change and believes in students as genuine partners to the benefit of teaching and research. Jen deploys the ethos of the SDGs as pedagogy; that is working in partnership, respecting knowledges and leaving nobody behind in accessible, impactful teaching and learning.
That approach also means that we can teach sustainability, sustainably. By creating the University Living Lab, Jen has found a way to harness the 7.5 million hours of student research time via core assessment at the University of Manchester, through authentic, assessable assessment that is effecting change for sustainable development while enhancing employability – and at scale. It is also fun, a vital part of teaching and learning. Jen delights in challenge and has more than once pushed the pedagogic envelope to a point previously considered impossible.
Examples include using the Indian Himalayas as a classroom for the university’s first in-field taught module, and creating university-wide undergraduate, and later postgraduate, teaching in sustainability that brought together over 100 voices from policy, practice and the front line of sustainable development. Jen is Academic Lead for Sustainability Teaching and Learning at the University of Manchester, an Advance HE Principal Fellow and an Inaugural Fellow of the Manchester Institute of Teaching and Learning.
Jen leads the education challenge for the university’s newest research platform, Sustainable Futures. Jen inspires and equips learners to ethically address challenges of sustainability, inequality and social justice to affect positive change.