Professor Nicola Englyst

Nicola has a real interest in education and has held a variety of roles over the years. She enjoys meeting with students whether for teaching, supervising students undertaking research projects or other activities. She has also enjoyed developing the Understanding Insulin MOOC and was delighted when it won a national award, the Diabetes Quality in Care award for educating healthcare professionals in 2021.

• Deputy Head of School (Education) (2025-current)
• Director of Undergraduate Programmes (2021-2025)
• Postgraduate Director of Programmes (2018-2021)
• Programme Leader for MSc Diabetes Best Practice (2015-current)
• Development and running of Understanding Insulin MOOC (2015-current)
• Endocrinology and Life Cycle Module Lead, BM5 (2009-2015)
• Semester 4 Lead for BM5 (2011-2015)
• Lecturing to BM and MSc students
• MMedSc and BMedSc project supervision
• PhD, MD and MSc project supervision

Prof Englyst graduated with a BSc (Hons) and a PhD from the University of Aberdeen before moving to Cambridge to complete her first postdoctoral research position.

She then moved to the University of Southampton in 1999 where she was awarded a University Career Track Fellowship followed by a Fellowship from Research into Ageing and a National Endowments for Science, Technology and the Arts CRUCIBLE Fellowship.

Prof Englyst was appointed as Lecturer in Physiology in 2007 to a post that combined research with teaching, and in 2015, Nicola was appointed as Associate Professor within the Faculty of Medicine as well as Programme Leader for the MSc Diabetes Best Practice, developing this programme to improve patient care in diabetes. In 2018, Nicola took on the role of Postgraduate Director of Programmes, taking responsibility for working with the programme teams to improve quality of all our masters programmes in the Faculty. In 2021 she became Director of Undergraduate Programmes, working with our medical student programmes, and was recently appointed as Deputy Head of School (Education) (2025).

Nicola has an interest in e-learning and how it can reach a global diverse group of learners and developed the Understanding Insulin MOOC which runs several times each year to help educate about safe use of insulin. She was recently awarded a national Diabetes Quality in Care Award with the Insulin MOOC team. So far, they have had over 13,000 learners in more than 70 countries. In 2021 Nicola stepped onto the education pathway as Principal Teaching Fellow to be able to dedicate more time and enthusiasm to teaching activities and is now Professor of Medical Education.

Prof Englyst’s research interests over her career have ranged from laboratory research based around coagulation, in a translational approach ranging from what happens at the molecular and cellular level through to what happens in the patient to more recently expanding into educational research and examining patient-centred language on social media.

Prof Englyst is the Chair of the Faculty of Medicine Mentoring Scheme which provides a mentoring service for all staff. As well as maintaining a database of mentors, Prof Englyst organises mentoring workshops and training for both mentors and mentees. Prof Englyst has been involved with the Faculty of Medicine’s Postdoctoral Association since its inception, and currently serves on the committee. One of her main focuses just now is trying to provide opportunities for early career researchers to gain some educational experience.

Ultimately, this is a busy job but she says that she wouldn't have it any other way. Involvement with lots of different activities in education, mentoring and research helps her make links between these different areas in a unique way.