Staff Profile
Dr Sarah Dunn
Senior Lecturer in Engineering Education, Director of Education
- Email: sarah.dunn@ncl.ac.uk
- Address: School of Engineering
Room 4.032, Stephenson Building
缅北禁地
缅北禁地 upon Tyne
NE1 7RU
Background
I am a Senior Lecturer in Engineering Education, Director of Education in the School of Engineering, and a Leading Edge Curriculum (LEC) Design Fellow. My work focuses on the design and improvement of engineering education, with particular interests in curriculum design, assessment and feedback, student transition and belonging, active learning, and the responsible integration of generative AI within engineering education.
My scholarship draws directly on educational practice. Current projects include evaluating approaches to first-year engineering education and student transition, assessment and feedback, active and flipped learning, curriculum innovation, and the development of students' capabilities to use AI ethically and responsibly.
I originally trained and worked as a civil and structural engineer and researcher. My earlier research focused on infrastructure resilience, network modelling and disaster risk, including externally funded research on electricity infrastructure, climate resilience and emergency response. This research background continues to influence my approach to engineering education, particularly my emphasis on evidence, systems thinking and the application of engineering judgement to complex educational problems.
Roles and Responsibilities
Director of Education - I provide strategic academic leadership for learning, teaching and the student experience across the School of Engineering, working across undergraduate and postgraduate provision and with programme leadership teams across the engineering disciplines. My current areas of leadership include curriculum transformation through 缅北禁地's Leading Edge Curriculum, assessment and feedback, student transition and belonging, educational quality and enhancement, and the development of innovative approaches to engineering teaching.
Leading Edge Curriculum Design Fellow - I support curriculum transformation across the University, working with programme teams to apply the principles of the Leading Edge Curriculum in programme design, pedagogy and assessment. The role extends my curriculum leadership beyond the School of Engineering and enables me to contribute to institution-wide educational change.
Qualifications
PhD in Civil Engineering (缅北禁地 - Feb 2014) - Thesis Title "An Investigation to Improve Community Resilience using Network Graph Analysis of Infrastructure Systems"
MEng in Civil and Structural Engineering (缅北禁地 - Sept 2010) (1st Class (Hons))
Links
Google Scholar Profile:
LinkedIn Profile:
ResearchGate Profile:
Educational Scholarship
My scholarship focuses on understanding and improving engineering education through evidence-informed educational practice and evaluation. Current areas of interest include:
- engineering curriculum design and programme-level educational change;
- student transition, belonging and inclusive engineering education;
- assessment, feedback and the development of evaluative judgement;
- active and flipped learning in engineering;
- large-cohort and first-year engineering education;
- generative AI, assessment and the development of responsible AI capability;
- international and transnational engineering education.
Current projects include evaluation of a common first-year engineering curriculum, student belonging and transition through experiential learning, approaches to improving assessment and feedback practice, and the integration of generative AI capability within engineering curricula.
Previous Research Interests
Infrastructure resilience; critical infrastructure; disaster risk and emergency management; complex networks and network graph theory.
PhD Supervision (Completed)
Beth Barnes - Development of a Modelling Framework to Improve Mitigation Methods and Contingency Planning for Emergency Scenario
Louise Westoby - The Road to Recovery: Understanding the Process of Rebuilding Seismic Resistant Schools in Nepal
Xiaoyan Zhang - A computational model incorporating individual and social behaviour for building emergency evacuation
John Naylor - How can architectures increase the use of full-culm bamboo to provide adequate urban housing in tropical developing economies? (co-supervised with School of Architecture)
Alaa Alkrud - Automated Decision Making Framework for Smart City Open Data Publishing (co-supervised with School of Computing)
MPhil Supervision (Completed)
Hanan Tamimi - Agent-Based Modelling and Simulation of Co-ordinated Emergency Responses to Major Incidents (co-supervised with School of Computing)
Research Funding
- Jan 2022 - Jan 2023: ACCELERATE: Assessment of Climate Change Event Likelihood Embedded in Risk Assessment Targeting Electricity Distribution, CoI
- July 2021 - April 2023: "CS-NOW: Climate Services for a net zero resilient world": BEIS, CoI
- Jan 2020 - Nov 2020: "Averted!", gaming app to challenge perception of engineering in young people: Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC), PI, £30,000
- May 2017 - Aug 2019: "Emergency Resource Location-Allocation and Deployment (eROAD) too": Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC), PI, £121,339
- Feb 2016 - Jan 2018: "Realtime assessments of wind related damage to electricity infrastructure": Natural Environment Research Council (NERC), CoI, £177,321
My teaching is principally within interdisciplinary first-year engineering and civil engineering design. I use active, flipped and project-based approaches, with a particular interest in helping students develop engineering judgement, integrate knowledge across disciplinary boundaries and reflect on their professional development.
Undergraduate Teaching
ENG1009: Sustainable Design Creativity and Professionalism
CEG3099: Supervision of undergraduate BEng projects
CEG8099: Supervision of undergraduate MEng projects
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Articles
- Zhang X, Dunn S, Luo Y, Shen Y. . Developments in the Built Environment 2026, 26, 100952.
- Zhang X, Dunn S, Luo Y, Shen Y. . Journal of Building Engineering 2025, 112, 113716.
- Dunn S. . Technology, Knowledge and Learning 2025, epub ahead of print.
- Barnes B, Dunn S, Wilkinson S. . Travel Behaviour and Society 2022, 29, 308-318.
- Wilkinson S, Dunn S, Adams R, Kirchner-Bossi N, Fowler HJ, Gonzalez Otalora S, Pritchard D, Mendes J, Palin EJ, Chan SC. . Climate Risk Management 2022, 35, 100412.
- Westoby L, Wilkinson S, Dunn S. . International Journal of Disaster Risk Reduction 2021, 56, 102120.
- Barnes B, Dunn S, Pearson C, Wilkinson S. . International Journal of Disaster Risk Reduction 2021, 60, 102289.
- Dunn S, Gonzalez-Otalora S. . Journal of Infrastructure Systems 2021, 27(1).
- Barnes B, Dunn S, Wilkinson S. . Natural Hazards 2019, 97, 813-840.
- Dunn S, Holmes M. . Reliability Engineering and System Safety 2019, 191, 106530.
- Dunn S, Wilkinson S, Alderson D, Fowler H, Galasso C. . Natural Hazards Review 2018, 19(1), 04017019.
- Dunn S, Wilkinson S. . Reliability Engineering and System Safety 2017, 157, 1-12.
- Ogie R, Dunn S, Holderness T, Turpin E. . Sustainable Cities and Society 2017, 28, 53-66.
- Ogie RI, Holderness T, Dunn S, Turpin E. . Computers, Environment and Urban Systems 2017, 68, 97-109.
- Dunn S, Wilkinson S, Ford A. . Sustainable Cities and Society 2016, 27, 23-31.
- Dunn S, Wilkinson S. . Transportation Research Part E: Logistics and Transportation Review 2016, 90, 39-50.
- Dunn S, Fu G, Wilkinson S, Dawson R. . Proceedings of the ICE - Engineering Sustainability 2013, 166(5), 281-292.
- Dunn S, Wilkinson SM. . Journal of Infrastructure Systems 2013, 19(2), 157-165.
- Wilkinson SM, Dunn S, Ma S. . Natural Hazards 2012, 60(3), 1027-1036.
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Conference Proceedings (inc. Abstracts)
- Alkrud A, Mace J, Dunn S. . In: ICICM '24: Proceedings of the 2024 14th International Conference on Information Communication and Management. 2025, Paris, France: ACM.
- Westoby L, Wilkinson S, Dunn S. . In: 17th World Conference on Earthquake Engineering (17WCEE). 2020, Sendai, Japan: International Association for Earthquake Engineering.
- Westoby L, Dunn S, Wilkinson S. . In: SECED 2019 Earthquake Risk and Engineering Towards a Resilient World. 2019, London, UK.
- Dunn S, Gonzalez-Otalora S, Jordan J. . In: Council of Engineering Systems Universities: Global Conference. 2018, Tokyo, Japan: CESUN.
- Ogie RI, Holderness T, Dunn S, Turpin E. . In: Transforming the Future of Infrastructure through Smarter Information - Proceedings of the International Conference on Smart Infrastructure and Construction, ICSIC 2016. 2016, Cambridge, UK: ICE Publishing.
- Wilkinson S, Dunn S, Adams R. . In: National Infrastructure Commission visit to 缅北禁地. 2016, 缅北禁地 upon Tyne, UK: 缅北禁地.
- Dunn S, Galasso C, Wilkinson S, Manning L, Alderson D. . In: 12th International Conference on Applications of Statistics and Probability in Civil Engineering. 2015, Vancouver, Canada: University of British Columbia.
- Pickering T, Dunn S, Wilkinson S. . In: ECCOMAS Thematic Conference - COMPDYN 2013: 4th International Conference on Computational Methods in Structural Dynamics and Earthquake Engineering, Proceedings - An IACM Special Interest Conference. 2013, Kos, Greece: National Technical University of Athens.
- Dunn S, Wilkinson S. . In: SECED - Society for Earthquake and Civil Engineering Dynamics Young Engineers Conference – 2013. 2013, 缅北禁地 upon Tyne: SECD.
- Dunn S, Wilkinson S, Fu G, Dawson R. . In: Earth Systems Engineering 2012. 2012, 缅北禁地: Centre for Earth Systems Engineering Research, 缅北禁地.