Prue Laidlaw

I'm Associate Professor and Academic Director of Education Strategy in the Division of Learning and Teaching at Charles Sturt University, a regional Australian university. My work focuses on assessment reform, curriculum design, and the use of AI in higher education, alongside a long-standing interest in the disciplinary nature of teaching and learning and the challenges of student transition into, through, and from tertiary education.

Before moving into this role, I spent over a decade teaching environmental management, preparing reflective and ethical professionals for the complex and changing field of environmental science. My research journey began with the protection of cultural heritage places from bushfire, before shifting for my PhD to the role of mobility in the development of rural Australia — recovering the stories of the itinerant and often-overlooked figures of 19th- and 20th-century colonial New South Wales: rabbiters, camel drivers, swaggies, land clearing gangs, and travelling dentists and lecturers. This research into itinerancy and settler colonialism remains an active parallel interest alongside my work in higher education strategy.