Professor Katja Strohfeldt

Role

Professor Katja Strohfeldt works with the Pro-Vice-Chancellors (Education and Student Experience) to provide leadership for education and the student experience across the University.

As a member of the senior Teaching and Learning executive team, Katja is responsible for:

providing inspirational leadership for the University’s Teaching and Learning community
providing leadership, supporting and overseeing teaching, learning and the student experience (in collaboration with the relevant Schools Director of Teaching and Learning (SDTL) and the School Director of Academic Tutoring (SDAT) within the cluster of schools which she represents
developing, leading and driving forward the University’s strategic priorities in Teaching and Learning, aligned to the overall University Strategy, within her school clusters
securing enhancements in Teaching Excellence and the student experience through data-driven school and institutional improvements.

She is the Associate Pro-Vice-Chancellor (Education and Student Experience) working with the School of Agriculture, Policy and Development, School of Archaeology, Geography and Environmental Science, School of Built Environment, and School of Mathematical, Physical and Computational Sciences.

Biography

Katja has held a number of key posts including Admissions Tutor for Pharmacy and School Director of Teaching and Learning for the School of Chemistry, Food and Pharmacy, as well as Warden for Stenton Hall. She studied biology and chemistry at the University of Wuerzburg in Germany, followed by a PhD in Chemistry. She moved to University College Dublin to work as a postdoctoral research fellow in one of her current research areas – metal-based anti-cancer drugs. She joined the University of Reading in 2006 as a Lecturer in Pharmaceutical Chemistry in the School of Pharmacy, where she has worked for more than 10 years, was promoted to Associate Professor in 2012, and Professor in Pharmaceutical Chemistry and Education in 2018.

Katja has a research group looking at metal-based anti-cancer agents and potential new anti-cancer drugs. Her second area of interest is the quality assurance of herbal medicines. She is an invited member of the British Pharmacopoeia’s Expert Advisory Group on traditional complementary medicine.

Katja was appointed Teaching and Learning Dean at the University of Reading in July 2017 and is passionate about problem-based learning (PBL) – a student-centred teaching approach which uses real-life case studies to teach complex concepts. Katja became Associate Pro-Vice-Chancellor (Education and Student Experience) on 1 August 2024.

She has published a core textbook – Essentials of Inorganic Chemistry: For Students of Pharmacy, Pharmaceutical Sciences and Medicinal Chemistry – with chapters complemented by problem-based learning case studies to support self-directed studies.

Katja is a University Teaching Fellow and a Principal Fellow of the Higher Education Academy (PFHEA). She is also a member of the Royal Society of Chemistry and an academic representative on the regional steering group.