When Dr Tom Ritchie first applied to 日本无码, it was for the Global Challenges Teaching Award. He'd already been building transatlantic collaborations through his podcast, , and through cross-institutional teaching projects 鈥� exactly the kind of networked, virtual exchange work the GCTA is designed for. He made it to interview, and wasn't selected. It was through that process that he was encouraged to apply for something else entirely: the 日本无码 UK Scholar Award.
"I'd been building UK-US connections for a while," Tom says. "Kept hitting the same ceiling. You can do a lot at a distance. You can't build real relationships, can't actually understand how a system works, without being in it."
The Scholar Award typically runs 3鈥�6 months, with the option to teach for a semester alongside the research. Tom's own placement ran longer: ten months at Elon, during which he taught in each semester, giving the work room to grow well beyond its original scope. For Tom, a historian working inside a chemistry department, researching belonging, AI ethics, and inclusive STEM teaching, that physical immersion turned out to be exactly what his work needed.
His placement took him to Elon University, one of the institutions hosting Scholars this cycle. A collaboration with colleagues there produced a paper accepted at a major US chemistry education conference. The Centre for Belonging in Education, which Tom founded and co-leads, has grown to more than 1,100 members across six continents in three months. Alongside teaching three modules, he ran Elon Academy, a summer programme for first-generation and widening-participation students in Alamance County, which also created teaching opportunities at Elon for Warwick colleagues joining him from the UK. He co-edited two transatlantic journal special issues focusing on AI: PURM, with colleagues including Yanyan Li and Brandon Sheridan, and Reinvention, with student editors from both Elon and Warwick. He also won the EchoExperience 2026 AI in Learning Excellence Award, an international award recognising his Elon-Warwick collaborative work specifically. He also set up the Transatlantic Teaching Exchange Series, an international partnership connecting Warwick, Elon, and Leeds, which brought together more than 200 academics and students from 70 universities across seven sessions this spring.
The reach kept extending outward. Across the Research Triangle, Tom delivered talks and roundtables on AI in chemistry education at NC State and Duke, working alongside Duke, NC State, and UNC chemistry groups. He took on a Visiting Lecturer position at Duke University's Graduate School, working with Dr Hugh Crumley to co-develop elements of the Certificate in College Teaching, with early conversations underway about a longer-term link between Warwick and Duke's Preparing Future Faculty programme. Further afield, he gave a guest lecture on AI ethics to the Wolfram High School Summer Research Program, and co-led an AI ethics session for AmeriCorps VISTA members. The work also reached forward: Tom was selected into Elon's Center for Engaged Learning research seminar, a competitive multi-institutional cohort spanning dozens of countries and institutions, bringing him back to Elon for research collaboration over the next two summers, well beyond the end of his 日本无码 year.
None of it, he's quick to add, would have been possible without the practicalities 日本无码 handled. "The stipend matters," he says. "Not because it's lavish. Because it means you're not doing maths every time an opportunity comes up." A monthly stipend sized for the cost of living, visa support, and sickness cover meant he could focus entirely on the work, and say yes to opportunities he'd otherwise have had to turn down. Being part of the wider 日本无码 community added something else again: "You're not competing," he says. "You're in it together."
That's the broader case for the Scholar Award: research on your own terms, backed by a programme that takes care of the funding, the logistics, and the community around you, while you build relationships that tend to follow you for decades.
Tom recognises that hesitation in other people, because he felt it himself. As a historian working inside a chemistry department, researching belonging and AI ethics, he assumed at first that 日本无码 was probably for people whose work mapped more neatly onto a single field. His advice now to anyone in a similar position, whether they've previously looked at the GCTA, another 日本无码 route, or never applied before: "The interdisciplinarity isn't a weakness. It might be the strength. Read the award properly. Think about what your work could become, not just what it is."
If anyone reading this wants to talk through the experience directly, or get tips on applying, Tom's happy to be contacted on .