It’s that time of year again!  

On Friday 8 May 2026, The Sussex Education Festival will return for its fourth year. The Festival provides a supportive and collaborative space to celebrate and share our experiences, research and reflections on teaching, learning and assessment here at Sussex.  

We encourage all colleagues involved in education (in any capacity), to consider submitting a proposal. We also welcome co-presenting with students and have some student participation vouchers available.  

This year’s festival has three themes and a variety of ways you can participate. 

Themes 

The three themes for this year’s festival can be interpreted broadly. We’ve suggested some topics below to get you started, but please see these as suggestions rather than limitations: 

Education for Progressive Futures 

• Interdisciplinary teaching and learning 

• Reimagining the ways we teach in changing educational landscapes 

• Equipping students to make a difference 

• Lifelong learning, employability and citizenship 

• Digital literacy and skills 

Impacting Student Experience 

• Building engaged learning communities 

• Encouraging and listening to student voice 

• Belonging and community building for diverse student populations 

• Student mental health and wellbeing  

• Designing and implementing impactful scholarship projects 

Transforming Assessment at Sussex  

• Authentic assessment and assessment for learning 

• Involving students in curriculum and assessment design 

• Responding to, and evaluating generative AI 

• Inclusive and accessible assessment for all learners 

• Supporting students to develop agency in assessments and feedback 

Presentation formats  

There are two presentation formats to choose from: 

1: Work-in-progress lightning talks (7 minutes) providing short reflections on current practice or projects. 

2: Longer presentations reflecting on outcomes of pedagogic developments, scholarship or research in your chosen area (15 minutes).  

No plans to present? Keep an eye on Learning Matters for details of our innovation showcase- there may be other ways for you to get involved in Sussex Education Festival 2026.  

How to submit your proposal 

Please submit your proposal to our Call for Participation form.  

The deadline for submitting is 17:00 on Friday 27^th February. 

You should receive a response from the Education Festival Steering Group by 20^th March. 

If we haven’t convinced you to submit a proposal yet, here is some feedback from presenters in previous years: 

‘I wanted to write to say what a brilliant day I had on Friday! So many of the talks were inspiring, and the general atmosphere was great all day.’ 

‘It was a really rich and stimulating day of ideas and fascinating discussions. It has helped to spur several ideas of things to try to improve my own teaching.’ 

‘I just wanted to say how much I enjoyed the whole day – such a rich and fabulous programme, sparking so much fascinating discussion… and helped to launch a few new collaborations and friendships with colleagues across Sussex.’