Nicholas Irvin
Nick is a Senior Lecturer and Senior Fellow of the Higher Education Academy (SFHEA).
His teaching and learning practice and scholarship focus on collaborative internationalisation, STEAM learning, positive design psychology and creative experiential pedagogical approaches.
His teaching philosophy is based on experiential and problem-based learning, whilst his teaching approach explores values of caring and nurturing in education, providing opportunities for exploration and reflection, using a holistic design lens.
Nick’s leadership responsibilities include, acting as course leader and project lead for the postgraduate Master of Arts, Design Management programme, which he has contributed to for over 10 years.
He has led and developed an innovative curriculum design and revalidation of the master’s programme, based on a flexible blended learning curriculum, for a TNE partnership in Hong Kong (2024). He previously wrote, validated and managed the BA (Hons) Level 6 Top-up course which he managed between 2019-2022.
Nick has also been invited to join as external examiner for the postgraduate masters MDes design programme at the University of Dundee, commencing a 3-year tenure from academic year 2026/27.
As module leader, Nick has experience of leading and supporting teaching and learning across undergraduate and postgraduate courses, and shares his enthusiasm for creativity, communication skills, innovative approaches to problem solving and encouraging strong visual design techniques. He is also keen to promote professional skills development, through self-reflection and motivation.
The Professional Development module at Level 7, provides the opportunity to critically reflect on the inner self, exploring positive psychology and self-analysis, whilst applying theory to practice, to map creative strategies to achieve career goals.
Nick has also led the Design Entrepreneurship (Level 6) module, a collaborative module involving design process and design thinking frameworks, forming the presentation of a visual business plan response to an audience for the BA (Hons) Design for Future Living course (2022-2025).
As former College Academic Lead (CAL) for Equality, Diversity and Inclusion (EDI), he supported colleagues and students, whilst communicating to a range of audiences. Nick co-developed the Reimagine EDI Symposiums in 2024 and 2025. An engaging and performative event, covering topics including gender, race, faith and mental health equality, to communicate best practice to colleagues and students, within the Faculty of Arts, Design and Media.
Nick is a STEAM champion, forming positive transdisciplinary approaches into the curriculum at BCU. He also provides support across the Department and the wider community, as Personal Tutor.
Nick provides mentoring to fellow colleagues for the Senior Fellowship SFHEA (Advance HE) and promotes personal, emotional and professional skills development, design frameworks (Kelley D, 2004), empowering students with confidence to thrive.