iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

Prof Damien Page @profdamienpage.bsky.social · 14h

This ‘books’ thing sounds interesting

Prof Damien Page @profdamienpage.bsky.social · 24/09/2026

Final walk around the old Uxbridge library before the refurb to create a centre of excellence in practice education. Right in the high street, right in the community. There’s something quite special about taking a building that has served a community and continues the legacy of learning.

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Prof Damien Page @profdamienpage.bsky.social · 08/09/2026

can do; we should also be asking what we should never outsource to AI. For me, human connection is firmly on that list.

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Prof Damien Page @profdamienpage.bsky.social · 08/09/2026

perfectly constructed AI response. I want them to know that a human being has read what they wrote and responded with care. Because education isn’t just about delivering information, it’s about relationships. It’s about encouragement. It’s about belonging. We should be asking not just what AI 4/

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Prof Damien Page @profdamienpage.bsky.social · 08/09/2026

time. But there is a difference between using AI to help you do your job and using AI to remove the human relationship that should be at the heart of it. If a student emails because they are worried, confused, struggling or simply need someone to listen, I don’t want them to receive a 3/

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Prof Damien Page @profdamienpage.bsky.social · 08/09/2026

and their finances in their education. They take on debt for a better future, for transformation. AI can enhance, it can guide, it can support, but students deserve the personal, the human. Yes, the emails might get annoying and yes, some students may have unrealistic expectations of response 2/

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Prof Damien Page @profdamienpage.bsky.social · 08/09/2026

At a recent conference, a senior academic giving a paper said that he used an AI agent to reply to student emails. I’m no Luddite; I’m no AI-denier; I understand the pressures of student expectation. But for me, using AI to reply to students is a red line. Students invest their lives and 1/

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Prof Damien Page @profdamienpage.bsky.social · 06/09/2026

harder questions when we’re invited to fill one.

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Prof Damien Page @profdamienpage.bsky.social · 06/09/2026

that’s not an oversight. It’s a series of choices, made by people who could have chosen differently. I’ve sat on plenty of those stages. I’ve also turned a few down once I noticed who else was on the bill. Seats on stages are always a choice. We should make ours more carefully and ask

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Prof Damien Page @profdamienpage.bsky.social · 06/09/2026

You choose which stages you sit on. Nobody puts you there by accident. Every panel, every keynote, every ‘in conversation with’ is a choice. Yours and the organisers. So when a stage looks the same as the last one (same institutions, same backgrounds, same voices nodding along to each other)

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Prof Damien Page @profdamienpage.bsky.social · 21/08/2026

the way things have always been done. Someone who has no patience with the status quo. And as always, there’s no job description, we want applicants to create their own job profile as part of their application. Full details below, reshares appreciated. jobs.bucks.ac.uk/vacancy/peop...

jobs.bucks.ac.uk

People Director (2121) | Buckinghamshire New University

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Prof Damien Page @profdamienpage.bsky.social · 21/08/2026

We’re now recruiting for a People Director at BNU. We want someone more interested in recruiting and developing talent than creating new forms and procedures. Someone who creates real inclusion rather than its performance. Someone who knows how to develop excellence and who likes to challenge 1/

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Prof Damien Page @profdamienpage.bsky.social · 15/08/2026

We now see what happens when the worst of higher education, the worst of the press and the worst of social media all come together at the same time.

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Prof Damien Page @profdamienpage.bsky.social · 01/08/2026

I’ve lived in Brighton for 2 years now and today, at Pride, is the city at its best. Community, belonging, allyship and one hell of a party. Nowhere like it.

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Prof Damien Page @profdamienpage.bsky.social · 18/06/2026

We need to now add hydration breaks to university committees

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Prof Damien Page @profdamienpage.bsky.social · 09/06/2026

We’re now going to make the gym free for our colleagues at BNU. That’s on top of free physio, free 24 hr access to counselling, free online GP, free mortgage advice, free will writing service, free financial assistance advice and free car parking. Maslow had a point.

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Prof Damien Page @profdamienpage.bsky.social · 06/06/2026

Through the interpersonal as much as policy. And then, if you’re fortunate, you become a boss yourself, and you remember every single second of it and do the opposite.

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Prof Damien Page @profdamienpage.bsky.social · 06/06/2026

through practices, norms, culture. You learn how bad leadership echoes, impacts felt years after they’ve left. You feel the precarity. You live the mistrust. The dread of what they’ll do next. You understand that bad leadership is incremental. It seeds through interactions as much as strategy. 2/

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Prof Damien Page @profdamienpage.bsky.social · 06/06/2026

Bad leadership is a treasure trove of learning. I’ve had good bosses and bad bosses. I’ve probably learned more from the bad ones. Learning to lead is as much about what not to do as what to do. You learn the personal impact of bad leadership. How it pervades an organisation, reverberates 1/

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Prof Damien Page @profdamienpage.bsky.social · 30/05/2026

community. A former library repurposed, reimagined as a centre of excellence in professional practice, training the next generation of vocational professionals. Designed for learning, designed for support, permeability. Pragmatic, principled, human. How university buildings should be.

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Prof Damien Page @profdamienpage.bsky.social · 30/05/2026

richness of learning. For the way a uni feels, the quality of engagement, money spent on their care, their nurturing, rather than grand designs. As the plans for our new Uxbridge site take shape, we keep coming back these principles. A site at the heart of the high street, the heart of the local

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Prof Damien Page @profdamienpage.bsky.social · 30/05/2026

Universities get carried away with buildings. Vanity-project mindset sets in early. Most students don’t come for shiny new buildings. Most students don’t come for the architectural prizes that cost extra millions on the build. They come for community. For the richness of human experience, the

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Prof Damien Page @profdamienpage.bsky.social · 23/05/2026

Very proud that BNU has been named as southeast university of the year by Whatuni. Voted for by students, rankings don’t get more meaningful than this. I’ve said it before, BNU is a special place. www.whatuni.com/student-awar...

whatuni.com

Best University of the Year in South East England: Whatuni student Choice Awards

Explore the most popular University of the Year in South East England based on reviews by 35,000+ UK university students over the last 12 months for the Whatuni Student Choice Awards.

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Prof Damien Page @profdamienpage.bsky.social · 14/05/2026

thoughtful, are the qualities we want from our people. Some people will never be convinced. But, given the outstanding people we’ve recruited, the objections don’t stand up.

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Prof Damien Page @profdamienpage.bsky.social · 14/05/2026

can remember on the day. There’s a thoughtfulness to the responses, considered, fluent, a greater depth of response than in traditional formats. We want people like that and I’ll take that trade over testing people’s ability to ‘think on their feet’ any day because being considered, being 2/

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Prof Damien Page @profdamienpage.bsky.social · 14/05/2026

Two years ago, as part of our inclusive recruitment approach, we started sending out interview questions 72 hours in advance. For all posts. And it’s been great. People come more relaxed (or as relaxed as they can be) and they bring the best examples of their expertise rather than what they 1/

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Prof Damien Page @profdamienpage.bsky.social · 02/05/2026

There is nothing like working with talented people. Nothing like the rhythm of a high performing team when it gels. Nothing like the fluidity of excellence, the easy flow of ideas, contention, challenge. We spend a lot of time at work. Far better to spend it with talented people.

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Prof Damien Page @profdamienpage.bsky.social · 19/04/2026

international students. They would be cherished, celebrated. Policy would recognise the economic, political and cultural contribution and maximise the benefits, creating a political environment where the UK becomes the number one choice for the students this country desperately needs.

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Prof Damien Page @profdamienpage.bsky.social · 19/04/2026

£37.4 billion net economic contribution. The enlivening of communities and classrooms. Global soft power value, global literacy. Cross subsidy funding of research. Cross subsidy of niche courses. Cultural richness and perspective. In a rational world, nations would genuinely welcome 1/

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Prof Damien Page @profdamienpage.bsky.social · 15/04/2026

Micromanagement isn’t about standards. It’s about anxiety.

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Prof Damien Page @profdamienpage.bsky.social · 15/04/2026

because it never gets used. If you hired well, your job is to get out of the way. Trust isn’t naive, it’s strategic, it signals belief, it cultivates innovation. The best teams I’ve worked with didn’t need managing. They needed direction, resource, and the freedom to deliver. 2/

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Prof Damien Page @profdamienpage.bsky.social · 15/04/2026

Nothing kills excellence like micromanagement. Nothing. I’ve seen it across FE and HE. Talented people, driven people, then a leader shows up who can’t let go. Suddenly the energy shifts. Questions replace initiative, permission replaces judgement and people stop bringing their best thinking 1/

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Prof Damien Page @profdamienpage.bsky.social · 11/04/2026

political rhetoric, a move to collaborative change, supportive partnership, an authentic care for students, to truly meet that criteria.

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Prof Damien Page @profdamienpage.bsky.social · 11/04/2026

and celebrated rather than seen as an inconvenient line on national accounts. A nation can be judged on many criteria; one of the most essential is how it treats universities and the students - both home and international - who benefit from it most. We need a move beyond 2/

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Prof Damien Page @profdamienpage.bsky.social · 11/04/2026

I’ve been in HE for 19 years and this is the most difficult context I’ve seen in that time. But I love what universities can be. I still have hope that one day higher education will be seen as a true social good once more, that the impact of universities will become rightly appreciated 1/

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Prof Damien Page @profdamienpage.bsky.social · 31/03/2026

and what you learned from failure, talk about your journey. Use AI to gain information about the employer and the role, use it to think through the job description and how your skills match, use it to assess ‘fit’ but write it yourself. Good organisations recruit authentic people.

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Prof Damien Page @profdamienpage.bsky.social · 31/03/2026

personality, a perspective, an expertise honed through the realities of work rather than the artifice of LLMs. Talk about real impact, real students, real leadership. (I’ve always used the rule of three before AI saturated prose with it so don’t even). Talk about the ‘how’ of success 2/

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Prof Damien Page @profdamienpage.bsky.social · 31/03/2026

Want your job application to stand out? Don’t use AI. For me, real writing is a differentiator for recruitment. When a panel are assessing applications, they want to hear a voice, they want to get an idea of what you would bring, real experiences rather than the generic. They want to feel a 1/

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Prof Damien Page @profdamienpage.bsky.social · 28/03/2026

Settings that didn’t require code-switching or adoption of regional pronunciation, settings where theory was expounded in the most resonant authentic accents. While accent bias in the sector is very real, we must remember that there are universities with less obsession with class and elitism, 4/

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Prof Damien Page @profdamienpage.bsky.social · 28/03/2026

I’ve only ever worked in teaching intensive universities (and only ever wanted to work in teaching intensive universities). My experience is one of academia in vocational settings, practice-based settings, rich with regional and international accents, proud working class cadences. 3/

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Prof Damien Page @profdamienpage.bsky.social · 28/03/2026

seemingly well-meaning senior academics at conferences gave me advice that I should tone down my working class accent if I wanted to progress. I never did. My accent has remained an indelible marker of my background. But that was conferences. And they can be a certain type of class-based hell. 2/

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Prof Damien Page @profdamienpage.bsky.social · 28/03/2026

‘For many scholars, especially those from ethnic or white working-class backgrounds, linguistic assimilation demands a Faustian bargain of accent switching, adopting RP as the currency of credibility’. Superb article in the comments on accent bias in HE. Early in my career, 1/

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Prof Damien Page @profdamienpage.bsky.social · 27/03/2026

Educational access is economic. Attainment is economic. Graduate outcomes are economic. If social mobility is the goal, then support must be weighted towards those with the least. Not rhetoric. Not positioning. Real investment in the students who stand to gain the most.

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Reposted by Prof Damien Page

Katharine Hubbard @katharinehubbard.bsky.social · 25/03/2026

Really proud to have written this with @profdamienpage.bsky.social championing the value of teaching staff who are disproportionately hit by cuts, but are what drives the fundamental activity of HE - educating students.#HigherEducation #TeachingAcademics www.timeshighereducation.com/even-hard-ti...

timeshighereducation.com

Even in hard times, teaching staff are vital assets, not costs to be shed

When teaching staff are casualised and cut while delivering the core business of universities, something is broken, say Katharine Hubbard and Damien Page

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Prof Damien Page @profdamienpage.bsky.social · 21/03/2026

Use AI to automate the mundane, of course. Let it do the boring work, the routine, by all means. Let it augment creativity and enhance the social. But preserve the human at all costs.

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Prof Damien Page @profdamienpage.bsky.social · 21/03/2026

Second, universities perform the creation of new knowledge rather than producing summaries of what already exists. Like learning, research is intrinsically human, endlessly creative, curious, perpetually inventive.

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