Anne Tierney is an Associate Professor in the Learning and Teaching Academy (LTA) at Heriot-Watt University. She has a PhD in Higher Education from Durham University, an MEd and BSc in Botany from the University of Glasgow, two MScs from the University of Strathclyde in Practitioner Research Methods and Business Information Technology Systems. A lifelong learner, Anne also holds a postgraduate certificate in SoTL Leadership from the University of British Columbia, and a certificate in Progressive Inquiry from Helsingin Yliopisto. She is currently a participant in Heriot-Watt’s Global Leader’s Programme, and has just completed her first module.

Anne is part of the editorial team at the Journal of Perspectives in Applied Academic Practice (JPAAP), and reviews for journals such as Practice and Evidence of Scholarship of Teaching and Learning in Highter Education (PESTLHE), Teaching and Learning Inquiry (TLI), Innovations in Education and Teaching International (IETI) as well as Life Science teaching and learning journals. She is currently external examiner for the PGCAP at the University of Kent and SOEL programme at UBC. She was on the organising committee of Enhancing Student Learning Through Innovative Scholarship (ESLTIS) from 2019 to 2024 and is currently a member of the organising committee of Threshold Concepts Biennial conference, organsing conferences online in 2021, in Charles Sturt University, Port Macquarie, NSW in 2023, when she was conference President, and in UBC, Vancouver in 2025, where she will deliver the Past President’s closing keynote. She is also the current President of Improving University Teaching (IUT) an international conference registered in the Commonwealth of Massachusetts, a position she took up in 2024, after being social media co-ordinator and treasurer of the organisation from 2016. She has organised IUT conferences in Charles Sturt University, Port Macquarie, NSW in 2019, virtual conferences in 2020 and 2021, Ilia State University, Tbilisi, Georgia in 2022, Heriot-Watt Malaysia in 2023, University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee in 2024 and University of Westminster, London in 2025. Anne co-chairs the Scottish Tertiary Micro-credentials Network, which grew out of a QAA Scotland collaborative cluster in 2020.

Anne has responsibility for Scholarship, overseeing Enhancement Themes strategic and mini-projects. She is Course Leader for “Learning About Learning”, the foundation course in Heriot-Watt’s Advance HE-accredited PGCertTL for academics, professional services staff with a student-facing role and PhD students who teach. She also teaches on the capstone course, “Enhancing Practice Through Scholarly Inquiry”. Anne also mentors on the new Advance HE-accredited INSPIRE fellowship programme, supporting aspiring Senior Fellows, Fellows and Associate Fellows. Anne is the LTA contact for the School of Textiles and Design and for HWU Malaysia campus.

Anne’s research interests are in the Scholarship of Teaching and Learning, and the Scholarship of Educational Leadership, through the lens of Threshold Concepts. She developed this interest while she was a Higher Education Academy Centre for Bioscience Rep, and a research collaborator on projects such as Aiming University Learning @ Work, a partnership between the University of Glasgow, Glasgow Caledonian University and St. Andrews University, Enhancing Teaching-Learning Environments (ETL) in Undergraduate Courses with the University of Edinburgh, and the Re-engineering Assessment Practices in Higher Education Project with the University of Strathclyde which influenced her interest in SoTL.