AJE bursary scheme recipients for 2024-2025

Towards the end of 2024, the Association for Journalism Education (AJE) opened its bursary scheme to support innovation in research and teaching.

It offered AJE members the opportunity to apply for small grants up to £2,000 to develop a project for publication – with applications from those new to HE or early career researchers and university teachers particularly welcome.

It aimed to support research and teaching innovation in journalism education – with grants offered to AJE members (or up to four members working as a team) to cover costs such as data processing, purchasing data or translations of data in pursuit of a research project etc. or costs associated with a proposed innovative teaching project, such as field trips, equipment or specialist technology and pilot events and workshops.

Successful applicants of the AJE bursary scheme for 2024-2025 are detailed below. They will present the findings / results of their projects and / or discuss and demonstrate its outcomes at the annual AJE Summer Conference in 2026, as well as submit a commentary or research article for the AJE Journal: Journalism Education by the end of 2026.

Johanna Payton, City St George’s, University of London

Project title: Future journalists – educating fulfilled and resilient practitioners

Project aims: To design and deliver interactive workshops across universities which encourage journalism educators to adopt creative approaches and pedagogies in their teaching and learning practice.

This project aims to embed the highest standards in the teaching of journalism by engaging colleagues with a creative model of learning and teaching within a supportive ecosystem that fosters resilience, belonging, diversity.

It also aims to help colleagues in journalism education who are dealing with post-pandemic issues including student engagement, mental health, behavioural issues and enhancing employability.

The idea of the model of learning explored in the workshops is that it can be applied at scale, or within individual programmes and modules

It will be designed to encourage colleagues to provide creative journalism education using evidence to show that students who experience creativity during their training have more enjoyment and fulfilment, enhancing student experience and helping colleagues to achieve improved evaluations.

The aim of the workshop is also to be accessible and inclusive, as well as engaging, fun, powerful, collaborative and meaningful for colleagues: helping to build a creative classroom culture which can include anything from playing word games to experimenting with artistic tasks and role play.

Data will also be generated from the workshops, and from follow-up surveys, to extend the knowledge on the topic of creative journalism education and share it at the 2026 AJE Summer Conference and in the AJE’s Journalism Education journal.

Bursary recipient biography: Johanna Payton is a Senior Lecturer and Director of Learning and Teaching for City Journalism. In 2023-2024, she was Creative Practice Lead for the School of Communication and Creativity, bringing together staff, students and industry across Journalism, Media and Performing Arts. This year, she also took on the role of Associate Dean, Student Experience, for the School.

Before becoming an academic, Johanna was a freelance journalist and editor, writing and reporting on lifestyle, sustainability and health, spending two years as a commissioning editor in the Guardian’s GLabs department. She also appears regularly as a guest on BBC Radio London.

Feedback to recipient: “It’s refreshing to see a focussed application that is approaching journalism education from a different perspective which aims to tackle the shift in our students‘ behaviour – particularly accelerated by the pandemic – and offers action to tackle the problems the UK faces with the engagement and performance of students.”

Michelle Rawlins, University of Sheffield

Project title: Creating and sharing a toolkit on how to report on domestic abuse

Project aims: To build an online, interactive toolkit, using audiovisual and VR tools, to support trainee journalists, journalism educators and newsrooms to report ethically and sensitively, on the topic of domestic abuse.

It aims to address the lack of newsroom engagement with existing guidelines by being interactive in nature. It will allow journalism educators to download, use and adapt resources in their own teaching.

Content will include voices of survivors, campaigners and charity representatives in audio/video format; virtual reality interview simulations; suggested reading lists, as well as sample educational lesson plans and ideas for teaching sessions on the subject of domestic abuse reporting.

The proposed toolkit will be based on comprehensive examination of existing guidelines, previous research and teaching practice which has already received extensive student and domestic abuse survivor feedback.

The aim will also to create a dedicated site. This will be free and easily accessible to all journalism educators, journalists and students. The toolkit would be embedded onto the site.

The aim would also be to share the toolkit with newsrooms and other university journalism departments to increase engagement and share best practice. Once the content is fully incorporated into the curriculum, this will also be published to the AJE website. A full research article will also be submitted to the AJE’s Journalism Education journal and a presentation of the project shared at the annual AJE Summer Conference.

Bursary recipient biography: Michelle Rawlins is the MA Journalism Course Leader at the University of Sheffield. She joined the School of Journalism, Media & Communication in 2019.

Michelle is also an award-winning journalist, author, ghostwriter and copywriter with over 25 years’ experience working for national newspapers, magazines and online publications.

Feedback to recipient: “This project deals with a hugely important topic and should be commended for its efforts to tackle such a critical issue. Overall, this is a strong proposal with some benefit for AJE members – based on research already carried out.“

Gary Stevens and Sanem Şahin, University of Lincoln

Project title: Journalism students’ news consumption habits and their journalism training

Project aims: To explore changing news consumption habits among student journalists – in order to understand how journalism
education should change to meet their needs – and develop recommendations which educators can respond to.

Data will be gathered from undergraduate and postgraduate journalism students and alumni from several universities, to understand their perceptions of news, preferred news platforms, types of news followed, and reasons for choosing specific news sources.

Efforts will also be made to map their daily consumption patterns and frequency, as well as explore their relationship with news and consider how they feel their journalism education aligns with their news consumption habits and supports their learning experiences.

The data will be analysed to identify common patterns in students’ news consumption habits and to provide insights into perspectives on their evolving experiences of news. This will help inform how journalism training could better address young people’s new ways of conceptualisation and consumption of news.

The findings aim to inform an assessment of existing curricula, and how it might be enhanced and aligned with students’ interaction with news. It is also hoped the findings will help identify existing gaps in education and to integrate practical training in – and theoretical understanding of – the required skills associated with these gaps, thereby enhancing students’ knowledge and employability credentials.

Insights gained will be shared with other institutions, including the AJE, in order to generate discussions about the evolving needs of journalism education. A paper will be presented at the annual AJE Summer Conference and an article submitted to the AJE Journalism Education journal.

Bursary recipient biography: Gary Stevens was a full-time and then casual member of BBC staff for more than 20 years, working on all aspects of radio production and presentation. He joined University of Lincoln in 2006 as a Senior Lecturer, and is now an early career researcher, having recently (2023) completed a professional PhD focusing on science journalism education.

Sanem Şahin is a Senior Lecturer in the School of Education and Communication at the University of Lincoln. She teaches journalism studies, ethics, human rights and war and media. Her research focuses on peace and conflict reporting, journalistic roles, marginalised communities, and exiled journalists.

Feedback to recipient: “There are lots of aspects to commend in this project and the applicants should be applauded for their efforts to understand journalism students’ consumption habits as a key part of developing the journalism curriculum in higher education.“