Helen is currently Head of Development and Partnerships for the DIME Group (Detroit Institute of Music Education and DIME ONLINE) and is also a Director and Trustee of People Dancing, an Executive Board member for DanceHE and a member of the Advocacy and Outreach Committee for the International Society for the Scholarship of Teaching and Learning (ISSOTL). She holds an undergraduate degree in Drama and Theatre and postgraduate qualifications in Dance from the Laban Centre for Movement and Dance and the University of Surrey.

Helen has worked as a Head of Department in both further and higher education and has also worked extensively in the field of community and participatory arts. In 2011, Helen joined London Contemporary Dance School as Head of Learning and Teaching after which she became Head of Quality and Registry at the Conservatoire for Dance and Drama. During this time she worked across a number of areas including learning and teaching enhancement, quality and academic standards, research and knowledge exchange, student engagement and registry. In 2014, Helen began working for the DIME Group as Head of Learner Experience and in 2015 transitioned into her current role.

Throughout her career, Helen has undertaken a number of consultancy and advisory roles in both mainstream education and the vocational sector where she has supported individuals and organisations including Youth Dance England, Akademi and OCR in the development of both strategic and operational objectives. Most recently she worked with staff and students at the National Centre for Circus Arts in the development of a new Learning, Teaching and Assessment Strategy. She has also undertaken evaluation activities on behalf of organisations in receipt of funding from the Baring Foundation and Leverhulme Trust.

Helen has extensive experience of quality assurance and enhancement activity and has worked nationally and internationally as a lead reviewer at departmental and institutional level. She is an Academic Associate of the Higher Education Academy and was a member of the Dance, Drama and Music Advisory Group from 2011-2014 and the Employability Summit in 2014. She has also undertaken consultation activities with the QAA, most recently as a member of the review panel for the QAA Subject Benchmark Statements for Dance, Drama and Performance. She is a registered International Expert (Dance) for the Higher Education Agency in Bosnia and Herzegovina and since 2011 has worked for the Centre for Quality Assessment in Lithuania (SKVC) as a Chair and Panel Leader for Dance, Choreography and Pedagogy.

An active researcher, Helen’s interests fall into three main strands: performance, practice and autobiography; pedagogy, especially the role of the student in the construction of knowledge; and professional development, particularly the role of the artist/practitioner in education.

She has presented her academic research nationally and internationally and as a keynote speaker has addressed the role of the arts in relation to health and wellbeing and, more recently, the internationalisation of the Arts curriculum in Higher Education. From 2009-2012, she was an Honorary Research Fellow at the University of Exeter as a partner researcher with ‘Dance Partners in Creativity’.