Research in Teaching

HERC provides significant value to the Open University in terms of its teaching and learning.

Its members work across a wide range of disciplines and provide expertise in more than one hundred thematic areas. These include many facets of social harm, criminalisation and criminal justice, prisons and punishment, criminal and legal psychology, face recognition, and a variety of topics relating to gender and sexuality, to name a few. Its members research timely topics which have real world impact, such as studies of post-truth politics, right-wing populism, policing and terrorism.

Members contribute to over thirty modules across all levels of teaching, across multiple qualifications, including:

• BA (Hons) Criminology
• BSc (Hons) Professional Policing Practice
• BSc (Hons) Psychology
• BSc (Hons) Forensic Psychology
• BSc (Hons) Social Psychology
• MA in Crime and Justice
• MSc in Psychology
• MSc in Forensic Psychological Studies
• MA International Relations

In addition to this, HERC members offer research-informed teaching across a number of free-to-access learning platforms. Members have used OpenLearn and FutureLearn to teach, collaborated with the BBC to create films, been employed as experts in podcasts, and written articles for The Conversation. Additionally, the HERC blog has been used extensively to teach, providing useful and accessible content for students and the public.

Research published on the HERC blog is also employed in teaching by numerous educational institutions within and beyond the UK, including: the University of Brighton, the University of Bristol, Keele Univrsity, Liverpool John Moores University, London South Bank University, Middlesex University, the University of Portsmouth, the University of Surrey, the University of Sydney, the University of Waikato.

If you would like to know more about ways that you can incorporate research from HERC, please contact the HERC co-directors, Lara Frumkin and Daniel McCulloch.