Professor Karen Ottewell

Profile

Karen is the Director of the Academic Development and Training for International Students section of the Language Centre which provides training and support to assist international students at the University in further developing and honing the skills required to succeed in an English-speaking academic context.
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Susan Nowak 

Profile

Susan joined the Language Centre in 2022 and is responsible for all administrative support for the ADTIS section. This includes the organisation and enrolment of students on the Pre-Sessional and In-Sessional programmes. She is also responsible for administering numerous language assessments including those required as part of the postgraduate application process for admission to the University.

Dr Simon Atkinson

Profile

On the Pre-Sessional course Simon teaches postgraduate students who are just about to start studying at the University, helping them prepare for challenge of studying in a foreign culture. On the In-Sessional course, he supervises undergraduates, postgraduates and post-docs from all Cambridge departments and colleges, although he specialises in teaching scientists. He was also the main teacher on short academic English courses for visiting Chinese university students run by the China UK Development Council. Outside the Language Centre, he supervises undergraduates at Gonville and Caius College in academic skills.

Before taking up his Language Centre post in 2009, Simon taught English for Academic Purposes in other UK institutions, primarily SOAS, University of London. He also taught for a year in Wuxi, China, preparing students for a Bachelor of Commerce degree at the University of New England, Australia.

Simon graduated in 1993 from the University of Leicester with a BSc degree that was three quarters physics and one quarter physical geography. After that, he moved to the University of Salford, where he gained an MSc in environmental management, and a PhD on environmental management in the electricity industry. He then worked as a journalist for over 4 years on The ENDS Report, the leading UK journal of environmental management and business, before starting teaching Academic English.

Outside of work, Simon is a keen practitioner of yoga, which takes him around the UK and beyond, often on his fold up bicycle. He has been learning Sanskrit since 2001 and he has written an academic book about yoga:

Atkinson, S. (2022) Krishnamacharya on Kuṇḍalinī: the Origins and Coherence of his Position, Bristol: Equinox Publishing

Dr James Womack

Profile

James Womack has taught at various universities in the UK and Europe, including Moscow State University and the Complutense University in Madrid. He studied for a BA in English and Russian, and then completed a Master's degree and a PhD on literary translation, concentrating on ideological aspects of translation: how the translator 'gets in the way' of the text he or she is translating.

As well as his ADTIS responsibilities, he currently teaches undergraduate translation for the Spanish and Russian Sections at Cambridge, as well as Spanish literature to undergraduates at Fitzwilliam. He gives occasional seminars on translation techniques at colleges in the university.

James is also a poet and a professional literary translator from Russian and Spanish. He teaches Creative Writing at Oxford University, and is extremely interested in creative writing pedagogy and how it might feed into a wider academic understanding of what 'creativity' might mean. Current translation projects include poetry by Vladimir Mayakovsky and Manuel Vilas, as well as a selection of work by imprisoned Turkmen dissident writers.

Peter Storey 

Profile

Peter Storey studied at the University of York before attending Cambridge as a postgraduate student and completing an MEd degree in 2012. Thereafter, he taught for several years in the state school sector, before transitioning to teaching in higher education. He has taught English language and academic skills programmes at the Universities of Leeds and Sheffield, in the case of the former serving as the leader of academic English pre-sessional modules for international students studying STEM subjects. In addition to his work in the UK, Peter has taught overseas in Beijing and Chengdu.

As an educationalist, Peter is particularly interested in principles of curriculum design and development, especially exploring how teachers’ philosophies and experiences translate into pedagogical practice. He tries to bring a considered, student-centred approach to his own teaching and is always open to new ideas and practises in education.

Beyond teaching, Peter is a keen musician – a pianist, organist, and amateur composer. He also enjoys long-distance running and competing in triathlons. He is an enthusiastic traveller and intermediate-level speaker of several European languages.

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Professor Mike McCarthy

Profile

Michael McCarthy is Emeritus Professor of Applied Linguistics in the School of English, University of Nottingham, UK. He holds/has held Visiting Professorships at the University of Limerick, Ireland, Newcastle University, UK, and Penn State University, USA. He is an Honorary Professor of the University of Valencia, Spain. Mike did his MA and PhD degrees at Downing College, Cambridge. He has been involved in the study and teaching of English for more than 50 years. For the last 30 years, he has worked with large, computerised corpora of English texts, investigating them to establish how the vocabulary and grammar of English are really used at the present time and how they are evolving and changing. His research has focused on spoken English.

He is author of 56 books and 116 academic papers dealing with research and teaching of the English language. He has taught in the UK, the Netherlands, Spain, Sweden and Malaysia. He is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Arts.

When not teaching and writing, he grows vegetables and fruit in his garden, goes on long country walks and plays Irish traditional music on the fiddle (though not all at the same time).
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Ms Jeanne McCarten

Profile

With a background in modern languages, Jeanne’s first job - as an English teacher - set her off on a career in English language in a number of roles, including teacher, editor, publisher, author and language researcher.

After working as a teacher in Sweden, France, Malaysia and the UK, she joined Cambridge University Press, initially as an editor working on coursebooks. Later, as Publishing Director, she led a team specialising in the areas of grammar and vocabulary and became involved in the development of the spoken English sections of the Cambridge English Corpus – a large database of language use. Her interest in how corpus research can improve English teaching materials, especially with regard to the spoken language, inspired her next transition to writer.  She is co-author of the internationally-renowned print and online courses Touchstone and Viewpoint published by Cambridge University Press, which draw heavily on corpus research. In her roles as publisher and author she has travelled extensively and delivered papers at several international conferences.  

Jeanne continues to do corpus research, about which she has published several academic papers, and to write materials.  

She teaches on the ADTIS pre-sessional and in-sessional courses, designing and delivering workshops and classes, using her corpus research, materials writing and teaching skills.

Away from her computer and the classroom, Jeanne enjoys gardening, especially growing things she can eat, and plays Irish traditional music on the fiddle (aka violin).
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Dr Susan Jackson

Profile

Sue read Natural Sciences at Cambridge in the 1970s, followed by a PhD in Materials Science. She became a Chartered Engineer, having worked for nine years at The Welding Institute (TWI) and has worked in the University in various roles since 1990, including as Executive Secretary of the Cambridge Environment Initiative and as a Senior Research Associate both in the Department of Engineering and in the Centre for Applied Research in Educational Technology (CARET).

She has been involved with ‘Researcher Development’ for many years now, designing and delivering workshops, both as part of the Centre for Personal and Professional Development and most recently at the Department of Engineering. She is an Associate Fellow of the Higher Education Academy. As a Fellow of Lucy Cavendish College for twenty years, she was also both an Undergraduate and Graduate Tutor. Gaining a professional qualification as a Life Coach proved useful for the part of her roles that she most enjoyed - interaction with the students. She is looking forward to continuing this role as part of the ADTIS programme.

Outside of work, Sue enjoys cycling, swimming, tennis and yoga. A highlight of the lockdown months in 2020 was completing 2,500miles on a tandem with her husband( not all in one go!).

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