The BERA Academic Citizen of the Year is an award intended to recognise a colleague working in educational research who has made a significant contribution to the discipline as a whole and the academic community through their academic citizenship over the past academic year.

We are proud to announce that Dr Karen Guldberg has been named the BERA Academic Citizen of the Year for 2025

Dr Karen Guldberg is Head of the School of Education, Professor in Autism Studies and former Director of the Autism Centre for Education and Research (ACER) at the School of Education, University of Birmingham. Karen is passionate about making a difference in education through her research and teaching on autism studies and inclusive practice in education.  She has published the book ‘Developing Excellence in Autism Practice: Making a Difference in Education’ (Routledge) as well as over 50 peer-reviewed studies on the need for new methodologies in the field, on autism pedagogy and technology enhanced learning for autistic pupils. Karen has been Principal-Investigator (P-I) or Co-Investigator (C-I) on 32 research or Knowledge Exchange projects. She led the development of the Autism Education Trust (AET) partnership school-based professional development programme as well as the adaptation of this to Early Years. Over 400,000 educators have now completed this professional development programme. She chaired the Department for Education’s Neurodivergence Task and Finish Group for mainstream education and is a member of the DfE Expert Advisory Group for Inclusion.