Dr Ann Thanaraj is Assistant Director, leading the digital transformation of learning and teaching at Teesside University. She led a university-wide strategic and change transformation project in online learning, demonstrating outstanding impact across the university and the wider sector in online learning. Ann is a recognised thought-leader in online education and she has consistently advocated a compelling vision for the future of online learning. She has led a step-change and delivered transformational impact in design and delivery of high-quality online learning provision and has been the driving force behind realising visions of an outstanding online student experience and mechanisms for delivering high-impact online provision with confidence.

Ann’s work is a catalyst to commence Teesside University’s Education 4.0 ambitions and setting the sector standard for driving excellence in online course design and delivery through her work nationally, which has shaped practices on technology and learning, working at the intersection of strategy, design, learning and technology in higher education. Before joining Teesside University, Ann’s published work on academic perceptions of technology-enhanced learning significantly influenced the work of Teesside University in shaping an ambitious digital transformation programme which has delivered radical changes in the student experience.

Ann is very passionate to build on the affordances of legal education as an anchor discipline. She is founder and host of ‘Digital Lawyering’, an international initiative consisting of a global interdisciplinary audience to shape the direction of legal education for the digital age. In a quest to digitally transform legal education, particularly in today's rapidly changing legal landscape, where becoming a digital lawyer is vital to success within the legal profession, Ann is co-authoring the first ever textbook commissioned to prepare undergraduate and postgraduate students across the world on the concept of ‘digital lawyering’. Drawing on her experience as an educator, academic leader and researcher within the fields of online learning and legal education, Ann is most passionate about approaches to learning and teaching which embed high-impact, realistic and interdisciplinary experiential learning, particularly in reimagining this in online learning environments, as well as the infusion of digital literacies within curriculum so that students are equipped in creative ways to become future-ready for careers and professions that are evolving due to the impact of the Fourth Industrial Revolution.

Assistant Director - Digital Transformation (current);
Head of Online Learning (2019-2021 & award winner);
Head of Law (2014-2019 & award winner);
National Teaching Fellow and Principal Fellow, AdvanceHE;
PhD Legal Education: Digital Transformation of Legal Education and the Future Readiness of Law Graduates;
Accomplished author and recognised authority in the fields of Legal Education and Online Learning within the context of the Fourth Industrial Revolution;
Founder and host of ‘Lawyering in Digital Age’, an international initiative which brings together a global interdisciplinary audience to shape the direction of legal education fit for a digital age;
Called to the Bar of England and Wales;

Outside of work, I enjoy history and evolutionary anthropology; I love the beach, photography, and pre-1950s fashion.