Dr Paula Novillo Navarro joined King’s College London Language Centre in 2024 as a Lecturer in Spanish Language Education. She completed her Licenciatura in Translation and Interpreting at the Universidad de Granada, Spain (2004), followed by a Postgraduate Certificate in Education at the same institution (2007). She went on to gain an MA in Teacher Education in Spanish as a Foreign Language at the Universitat de Barcelona (2015) and a PhD in Language and Literature Teaching at the Universitat de Barcelona (2022).

At King’s, Paula teaches Spanish to undergraduate and postgraduate students across a range of programmes, including the Language Modules programme and the Doctoral Training Programme. She also delivers modules in collaboration with the Department of Languages, Literatures and Cultures and King’s Business School, and contributes to curriculum and assessment design.

Paula has extensive experience in teaching Spanish as a foreign language at all levels in both Spain and the UK. She has also worked as a teacher trainer, materials designer, and programme coordinator. She believes it is essential to engage in continuous professional development and critical reflection on one's own practice, which are the research lines of her doctoral thesis. She actively participates in research and teaching innovation projects to ensure her practice and curricula remain dynamic, inclusive, and pedagogically robust.

Her approach to teaching emphasises cultural awareness and the creation of engaging, learner-centred environments that enable students with diverse needs and goals to develop their competence in all aspects of the Spanish language and culture.

Research, Scholarly projects and Academic Awards

Dr Paula Novillo Navarro is currently collaborating on two projects in Spain. One of these projects (REDICE 24-3709) is being carried out at the University of Barcelona and aims to provide a comprehensive description of the digital competence of teacher educators and student teachers at the Faculty of Education with regard to the use of GenAI for academic writing. The second project (INTERAC-TIC, PID2023-148075OB-I00) is part of the realTIC research group, which involves researchers from the Universitat de Barcelona and the Universitat Oberta de Catalunya who work on the use of ICT in language teaching. Dr Novillo Navarro collaborates with this group. This project aims to reframe oral interaction practices in blended language learning programmes to facilitate with their transition from the face-to-face part of blended courses to online contexts. The study explores the dynamics of teacher-student and student-student interactions, examining how these interactions differ from traditional face-to-face settings and how they can be optimised in blended environments.

Aside from these projects, Dr Paula Novillo Navarro’s research interests include reflective practice in language teacher education and continuous professional development. She is also interested in critical thinking, which is an essential subject that can be approached from multiple perspectives in the language classroom.

Academic Publications:

'Batlle, J., Cuesta, A., Espejel, O., González Argüello, V., Novillo, P., & Pujolá, J.T. (2023). Pràctica reflexiva en interacció: La retroacció entre tutors i tutoritzats a les pràctiques formatives de postgrau. Revista del Congrés Internacional de Docència Universitària i Innovació (CIDUI), no. 6, https://raco.cat/index.php/RevistaCIDUI/article/view/416499. 

Novillo, P. and Pujolà, J.T. (2019). Analysing E-tutoring Strategies to Foster Pre-service Language Teachers' Reflective Practice in the First Stages of Building an E-portfolio. Universal Journal of Educational Research, 7(5), pp. 1234-1246. doi:10.13189/ujer.2019.070509.

Llanes, J. and Novillo, P. (2018). Virtual Masters training: Implications for teaching. Journal of Academic Perspectives, 3.

Novillo Navarro, P. and Alonso Lamilla, M.J. (2016). La práctica reflexiva: dos perspectivas de un mismo modelo formativo. In: M.A. Lamolda, comp. and O. Cruz, ed., La formación y competencia del profesorado de ELE. ASELE, pp.773-784. ISBN: 978-84-617-4539-5.