Kelly Matthews

Professor Kelly Matthews is a higher education researcher at The University of Queensland whose work focuses on student experience, curriculum, pedagogy, and assessment. Her research examines how students and staff participate in shaping learning, teaching, and governance, and how these relationships influence educational quality, responsibility, and institutional change.

Kelly’s research is grounded in a sustained commitment to informing practice and improving educational outcomes. Her work on student–staff partnership has clarified distinctions between partnership and representation, examined the conditions under which participation is meaningful rather than symbolic, and analysed how responsibility and expertise are negotiated in educational settings. Across her research program, she emphasises translating evidence into practical guidance for teaching, curriculum design, assessment, and governance. This orientation has supported changes in institutional policy, academic development programs, and classroom practice in Australia and internationally, with attention to feasibility, context, and accountability.

More recently, Kelly’s research has focused on students’ experiences of artificial intelligence in higher education, with particular attention to assessment and learning practices. She co-leads the multi-institutional Students & AI project, which investigates students’ access to, use of, and beliefs about AI in learning and assessment. Following the initial large-scale survey conducted in 2024, the study is being updated and re-run in 2026 to enable longitudinal analysis of change over time. Findings from this work are intended to inform practical decision-making about assessment design, academic integrity, and responsible teaching practice in AI-rich learning environments.

Kelly’s scholarship is widely cited and published in leading international journals, including Studies in Higher Education, Higher Education, and Assessment & Evaluation in Higher Education. As of early 2026, her work has attracted more than 6,400 citations, with an h-index of 39 and an i10-index of 89 according to Google Scholar. Citation impact analysis using Scopus indicates a Field-Weighted Citation Impact (FWCI) of 2.46 in her field, indicating that her publications are cited more than twice the global average for comparable research. Usage and readership data indicate sustained international attention, with a substantial proportion of outputs appearing among the top 10% most-viewed publications worldwide and a consistent share reaching the top 1%.

Kelly is the inaugural editor of the International Journal for Students as Partners, an open-access journal founded on an innovative editorial model comprising equal numbers of student and staff editors. Over its first decade, the journal has published more than 250 contributions, many co-authored with students, and has become a key global outlet for partnership scholarship, including work from underrepresented regions and the Global South. The journal plays a practical role in shaping the field by supporting accessible scholarship, diverse authorship, and research that is closely connected to educational practice.

Kelly is a Principal Fellow of Advance HE and an Australian Teaching and Learning Fellow, recognising sustained leadership and impact in higher education teaching and learning. She has been recognised with several awards, most recently a UQ Excellence Award for Leadership with a multidisciplinary team for positive impact on UQ's Teaching-focused (TF) academics.

She holds senior roles, including Academic Lead (Student Experience and Strategic Initiatives) and Director, Scholarship and Translation, at UQ's Institute of Teaching and Learning Innovation. Read more about this and her governance roles here.