COIL/Virtual Exchange; Third Space Learning; Language Teacher Education; Threshold Concepts Pedagogy; Blended and Online Learning (including accessibility issues); Interculturality; Decolonisation of the curriculum for social justice; Internationalisation of the Curriculum/Internationalisation at Home; Female Leadership in HE/intersectionality/EDI; HE literacies.

Dr Marina Orsini-Jones is  Professor in Global Higher Education Practice (Applied Linguistics) in the Research Centre for Global Learning  where she is Theme Lead for Promoting Equity and Equality in Education. Her most recent research (2025) relates to how women can find their voice in the liminal Third Space of Collaborative Online Interational Learning and engage in powerful  and empowering knowledge-sharing. Prof Orsini-Jones was formerly Associate Head for Internationalisation and Course Director for the MA in English Language Teaching and Applied Linguistics in the School of Humanities. She obtained her doctorate in 2012 with a dissertation titled: Towards a role-reversal model of action-research-supported threshold concepts pedagogy in languages and linguistics. Prof Orsini-Jones has presented at over 100 national and international conferences, including over 20 as invited plenary speaker, on topics relating to applied linguistics and teaching and learning in Higher Education. She is part of the editorial review boards of various educational journals (e.g.  Innovations in Education and Teaching International) and Associate Editor for the International Journal of Computer Assisted Language Learning and Teaching (IJCALLT) and the Journal of Virtual Exchange (JVE). Prof Orsini-Jones has pioneered research on e-learning innovation and accessibility since the 90s, when she created an action-research-informed multimedia CD-ROM to teach Italian language, culture and society that was adopted by the Edexcel examination body for ‘A’ level Italian and by various HE Italian departments worldwide. In 2013 she was awarded a National Teaching Fellowship  from the HEA (Higher Education Academy), in recognition of the national and international impact of her innovative research and practice in languages and linguistics both within and outside academia. In 2016, she obtained a Principal Fellowship of the Higher Education Academy (now Advance HE) in recognition of her leadership in HE.  In 2021 Prof Orsini-Jones created a Research Network for AILA - Association Internationale de Linguistique Appliquée or International Association of Applied Linguistics - in collaboration with Prof. Kyria Finardi from UFES in Brazil and Prof. Azirah Hashim from Universiti Malaya in Malaysia: English as a Medium of Education, Multilingualism and the SDGs: Equity, Diversity and Inclusion. Prof Orsini-Jones has published work (over 50 scholarly outputs) in her areas of expertise that include threshold concepts pedagogy, decolonial practice, EDI and intersectionality and the Collaborative Online International Learning (COIL)/Virtual Exchange (VE) Third Space, Equity and Inclusion in Higher Education. She is an expert in the internationalisation of the curriculum at home and has led numerous COIL-VE research projects (with research grants awarded by the Higher Education Academy, the British Council and the British Academy/Leverhulme) with partners based in Brazil, China, France, Mexico, Spain, Sri Lanka, The Netherlands, Türkiye and Vietnam.  Her most recent research project (2023-2025) is  Female Voices in the Third Space: Researching Equality, Diversity and Inclusion in South-North Collaborative Online International Learning.  In 2023-2024 she also contributed to the British Council funded project Tamkeen, aimed at supporting female academics in leadership in Egypt. Prof Orsini-Jones supervises doctoral students on topics related to language teacher education, COIL-VE, EDI and leadership in HE, including students on co-tutelle doctoral programmes with Higher Education Institutions in Brazil and Australia. Prof Orsini-Jones also has extensive experience as external examiner in the HE UK sector at undergraduate and postgraduate (including doctoral) level.