Advisory Group

The advisory group for IWMW events aims to identify key themes and subject areas of relevance to members of institutional web and digital team, to suggest possible speakers and to advise on the format of the event. Members of the advisory group are usually experienced members of institutional web teams, although we also try to ensure that there are new members of the group every year in order to provide fresh insights. We seek to ensure that the advisory group membership provides a geographical spread, with a range of areas of particular interest.

IWMW 2017 Advisory Group Members

There are 10 members of the advisory group for the IWMW 2017 event:

Mark Fendley and Tom Wright joined the advisory group this year. The others were members of the IWMW 2016 advisory group.

Note if you are considering submitting a proposal for the IWMW 2017 event you should feel free to discuss the submission with a members of the advisory group. If you know any of the advisory group members you may wish to discuss a proposal with them, otherwise please contact Brian Kelly or Claire Gibbons, the IWMW 2017 co-chairs. Initial contact should be made using email.

Brian Kelly

IWMW event founder and co-chair of the IWMW 2017 advisory group and IWMW 2017 event.

Brian KellyBrian Kelly helped established the first institutional web service at the University of Leeds in January 1993. Convinced of the importance of the web, Brian gave a series of presentations about the web at conferences around the country, at first to a sceptical audience (Gopher was felt to be the networked technology of the future at that time) but soon the relevance of the web became obvious.

In 1996 started work as UK Web Focus at UKOLN, University of Bath and worked full-time for a period of 17 years promoting use and best practices of the web. A key channel for this work was the Institutional Web Management Workshop (IWMW) series which was launched in July 1997.

Brian is the main contact for liaison with speakers and workshop facilitators, technical issues and financial and administrative issues.


Claire Gibbons

Co-chair of the IWMW 2017 advisory group and IWMW 2017 event.

Claire GibbonsClaire has been involved in IWMW since her very first conference in 2000, where the millennium bug failed to bite! Claire’s general mantra in life is ‘user first’ especially across all aspects of the student journey, and has presented and run workshops at many past IWMW events as well as been a member of the Advisory Group in 2015 and 2016. Claire is now a freelance consultant, working across HE and other sectors (currently) on content marketing, web and digital improvement projects and digital governance audits and strategies.  In order to support the long-term sustainability of the IWMW event Claire is co-chair of the IWMW 2017 advisory group and the IWMW 2017 event.

Claire is the main contact for sponsorship queries.


Mark Fendley

Web Development Manager, University of Kent

Mark manages a team of 8 web and digital professionals encompassing web and UX development. The team are responsible for developing services for students and staff, in addition to an ongoing website rebrand and CMS implementation/development activities. The University of Kent are extremely proud and excited to host IWMW in 2017.

  • Email: M.S.Fendley@kent.ac.uk
  • LinkedIn

Andrew Millar

Head of Web Services, University of Dundee

Andrew MillarAndrew leads a team of 15 to deliver the institutional web presence. He is currently involved in restructuring teams, developing web strategy and changing the culture of how they do web. Andrew would love to speak to anyone interested in delivering sessions on cultural or strategic change or new technical innovations.

  • Email: a.j.millar@dundee.ac.uk
  • LinkedIn

Kevin Mears

Senior Designer, University of South Wales

Kevin MearsKevin works as a part of a cross departmental team producing websites for a wide variety of stakeholders. He is especially interested in style guides, workflows and standards that drive better products. Kevin would be very happy to talk to anyone thinking of presenting how they work, especially new voices to this community.

  • Email: kevin.mears@southwales.ac.uk
  • LinkedIn

Rich Prowse

Digital Content Manager, University of Bath

Rich ProwseRich leads a seven strong team responsible for bath.ac.uk. For the past 10 years he has led on digital content efforts at top-ranking English universities.

He regularly talks at higher education conferences on content strategy, agile content development, and user experience design. Most recently he featured as an industry expert in .net magazine’s Exchange column. He is also Co-founder of Bath’s first content meet up.


Mike McConnell

Business Applications Manager, University of Aberdeen

Mike McConnellMike is the Business Applications Manager for IT Services at the University of Aberdeen. His role involves working with systems, processes and people to provide continuous service improvement for the institution.

Mike manages analysts and developers responsible for digital, web, library and corporate applications. He has 17 years’ experience of staff, customer, supplier and project management.


Chris Gutteridge

Systems, Information and Web Programmer, University of Southampton

Chris GutteridgeChris has worked on university web systems since 1997. Chris was the lead developer on the open-access repository EPrints 2 and 3.0 and more recently founded data.southampton.ac.uk and data.ac.uk. This month he is not evangelising open data systems because he’s busy building Drupal templates.


Paddy Callaghan

Senior Web Developer, University of Bradford

Paddy CallaghanPaddy works in a small team of 3.5 people. He is responsible for projects across a wide range of stakeholders and systems, in particular our CMS, while also providing guidance and support to their users (and anyone interested in web) across campus. Lately he has had a great interest in UX Management across the whole student experience.


Tom Wright

Director of Digital Student Life, University of Lincoln

Tom is an experienced marketing and communications professional with expertise in digital strategy and campaign planning in the Higher Education sector with a particular interest in student collaboration and user-generated content. Tom is a member of the Chartered Institute of Marketing and am a regular speaker at national and international conferences, both within and outside the HE sector. Tom is currently working at Lincoln University as Director of Digital Student Life with the remit of using student collaboration strategically to enhance teaching and learning and the student experience via digital tools and channels.