Dr Heather King has won the 2020 Supervisory Excellence Award for the Faculty of Social Science & Public Policy.

The Supervisory Excellence Awards recognise and reward supervisors for the outstanding supervision and support that they offer to doctoral students at King’s.

Dr King is a Reader in Science Education in the School of Education, Communication & Society. Her research examines how educators encourage learner engagement with science across different contexts. These include schools, museums, the natural environment and non-formal spaces such as maker-spaces.

She supervises doctoral students in several areas such as science educator practices in museums, STEM education in schools and the nature of learner engagement in science.

'It was a complete surprise to win the award! It is a joint award with my co-supervisors. I couldn’t do it without them!', Dr King said.

'Working with students is by far the best part of my job. I get to learn so much. I become part of research projects and lines of work that are all super interesting.

'I particularly like doctoral supervision because the process is one of helping to shape and engaging in iterative discussions over a longer time. I’ve been particularly lucky over the years to work with some really lovely individuals. The current batch are particularly wonderful!'

Kate Greer is a PhD candidate in the School and nominated Dr King for the award.

Kate says: 'Heather is such a great motivator. Both she and Melissa, my second supervisor, encourage me to believe that my work can make a valuable contribution and help me to bring my pre-PhD career to my research. They also encourage me to teach, write for publications, build academic networks and plan for post-doctoral work.'

Dr King is one of nine supervisors across King’s to receive an award. Each successful supervisor receives a certificate and a financial award of up to £1,000 to use towards their research. Find out more about the Supervisory Excellence Awards on the King's Intranet (internal link).