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Sector Advisory Group Bios

Professor Judy Williams


PROFESSOR JUDY WILLIAMS 
Pro-Vice-Chancellor (Education and Students)
Queen’s University Belfast

Professor Judy Williams is Pro-Vice-Chancellor (Education and Students) at Queen’s University Belfast, a role she took up in September 2023, having previously served as Associate Vice-President for Teaching, Learning and Students and Director of the Institute for Teaching and Learning at the University of Manchester. She is a National Teaching Fellow and Principal Fellow of Advance HE, with a national reputation for educational leadership, academic enhancement and innovation.

 

At Queen’s, Judy leads the University’s education and student experience portfolio and its institution-wide approach to AI, working across education, research and professional services to move from experimentation to responsible adoption at scale. Her work has included the development of Queen’s institutional AI strategy, the award-winning AI and Digital Innovation Hub, and significant programmes of innovation in AI-enabled learning, assessment, student support and staff capability.

 

Nationally, Judy is Northern Ireland’s representative on the UK Quality Council and is actively involved in shaping sector responses to generative AI, assessment and educational transformation. She works with the Russell Group on generative AI and assessment and contributes to wider sector work with organisations including Jisc, QAA and Advance HE. A particular focus of her work is how AI can be used to enhance human capability while ensuring that assessment remains valid, authentic and meaningful.


Students have to be at the heart of how we rethink assessment. In an AI- and digitally enhanced landscape, our challenge is not simply to make assessment more secure, but to make it more meaningful – designing assessment that supports learning, enables student success and gives students authentic opportunities to demonstrate what they know, what they can do and how they can apply their learning. For me, assessment validity is fundamental to this: ensuring that what we assess genuinely reflects the capabilities our students will need to thrive in their future lives and careers.