DrJulie Hartill

Julie is Principal Teaching Fellow and Deputy Director at the Centre for Academic English (CfAE), Imperial College London. She assists in the strategic planning and management of the centre. She leads on curriculum development and review with specific responsibility for CfAE's income-generating programmes. 

Drawing on her experience and expertise in course design, Julie steers the development of pre-sessional courses, overseeing syllabus and assessment development and promoting a positive student experience. She is consultant lead on assessment and grading projects and collaborates with colleagues to design commissioned provision. Julie co-leads the CfAE's ongoing quality assurance (QA) process with CfAE Director, Dr Julie King. The QA process is being carried out to align CfAE provision more closely with the academic and learning and teaching strategies being implemented at the university. The goal is to provide targeted, relevant and inclusive provision that is available to all members of the university at the time when they need it. 

Background
Julie's academic background is in Applied Linguistics and English Language Teaching, specifically English for Academic Purposes (EAP). She completed a PGCE and later an MA in TESOL at the University of Leicester School of Education, where she developed her deep fascination with the impact of classroom practice on learning processes. In 2002, she gained her PhD in Language and Linguistics from the University of Essex, using qualitative methods to explore course design in EAP. Since taking up post at Imperial in 2001, she has specialised in EAP for STEMM. 

Julie is a Senior Fellow of Advance HE (formerly Higher Education Academy (HEA)) and has been recognised as Microsoft Innovative Educator Expert (MIEE) for 2022-2023 for the fourth consecutive year. She has been external examiner for English, EAP and Pre-sessional modules at London Metropolitan University, University of Sunderland London and University of Sunderland. She is actively engaged in scholarship in EAP and regularly presents or writes on course development and design, digital innovation and promoting student engagement and autonomy.

Research and scholarship

Julie's research and scholarship interests include EAP for STEM, innovation in EAP course design and assessment, digital course delivery, classroom interaction and developing student autonomy. Recent Conference Presentations include: 

'Using an integrative e-portfolio as an assessment-for-learning tool for speaking online' Paper presented at British Association of Lecturers in EAP (BALEAP) Conference Exploring Pedagogical Approaches in EAP Teaching, April 2021 [online]

“People are more likely to speak behind the screen”: Exploring the hidden affordances of running a large-scale interactive event online. BALEAP 1st TEL SIG Conference: Technology-enhanced learning and EAP in the post-COVID-19 era with L. Chiu, & R. White, October 2020 [Online]

'How we empower teaching and learning by getting teachers to learn and students to teach' Session for Microsoft Training Academy at the BETT Show 2020 (with L. Chiu), 22-25 Jan 2020.

'From testing to teaching and back again' Paper presented at BALEAP Conference on Innovation, Exploration and Transformation Leeds, April 2019

Her publications include: 

Jones, J. and Hartill, J. (2025) 'Language assessment literacy' in Routledge Handbook for Program Administration Ed.s Brown, A. Crane, C., Dupuy B.c. and Ene, E. Routledge.

Northern, A. and Hartill, J. (2022) 'Responding to the Challenges of Moving an On-Campus Pre-Sessional Course Online During the COVID-19 Pandemic' in Cases in Teaching English for Academic Purposes (EAP) During COVID-19 (Kohnke, L., ed). IGI Global.

J Hartill and Lefevre, D. (2010) ‘Developing Web-based Corpora for EAP in G. M. Blue, (ed.) Developing Academic Literacy Oxford: Peter Lang AG 155-168

Julie has acted as a peer reviewer for open access Journal of Learning Development in Higher Education since 2023.