Dr Paula Kuzbit

Dr Paula Kuzbit is Head of Nursing and Midwifery at Canterbury Christ Church University, where she provides strategic and operational leadership for pre-registration nursing and midwifery education. She is a Principal Lecturer, Registered Adult Nurse and researcher with an academic and clinical career spanning nursing education, cancer care, curriculum development and academic leadership.

Paula has extensive experience in curriculum design, course leadership and educational innovation, with a particular focus on creating high-quality, inclusive and socially responsive learning experiences. She has led the development and professional reapproval of undergraduate and postgraduate pre-registration nursing provision and previously served as Course Director for the MSc Nursing programme. She is a graduate of the Advance HE Leading Departments programme.

Her academic work brings together education, research and professional practice, with a strong focus on social justice, inclusion and challenging inequalities in healthcare and nursing education.

Paula has extensive experience of teaching and leading nursing education across undergraduate and postgraduate programmes. Her teaching expertise includes nursing and social justice, cancer and palliative care, research and evidence-based practice, curriculum design and professional nursing education. She has also supervised undergraduate and postgraduate students undertaking qualitative research and literature review projects for over 20 years.

Her educational practice is informed by her clinical nursing background and a commitment to inclusive and anti-oppressive education. She has held a wide range of academic leadership roles, including Course Director, pathway lead, professional lead, year lead, module lead and curriculum project lead. Her recent scholarship includes work evaluating the impact of a Nursing and Social Justice module and work on teaching anti-oppressive, socially just nursing.

Her wider educational interests include student-staff partnership and co-design. In 2026 she presented work with Jenny Clements and Caroline Hunter on embedding student-staff partnerships in Nursing and Midwifery programmes at the Advance HE Teaching and Learning Conference.

Paula's research sits at the intersection of nursing, health inequalities, social justice, intersectional feminism and queer theory. Her work explores the lived experiences of marginalised people with healthcare needs and considers how nursing practice and education can challenge unconscious bias, discrimination and oppressive approaches to care.

She completed her PhD at Canterbury Christ Church University in 2023. Her thesis, Queering the Sick Room: A Queer Feminist Narrative Inquiry into the Lived Experiences of Lesbians with Cancer, used queer feminist narrative inquiry to examine lesbian experiences of cancer and healthcare.

Her more recent research and scholarship includes work on transformative LGBTQIA+ dementia care, the impact of nursing and social justice education, barriers to cancer care for LGBTQIA+ patients and anti-oppressive nursing education. She has also contributed to research concerning older people and community-based care through the European EMPOWERCARE initiative.

Paula is a founding member of INCISE, the Intersectional Centre for Inclusion and Social Justice, an independent research hub. Her research has attracted funding, including an NIHR award supporting an undergraduate student internship in nursing and social justice.

Paula maintains strong links with the nursing profession and the wider academic community. She is a Registered Adult Nurse and Lecturer/Practice Educator with the Nursing and Midwifery Council and is a member of the Royal College of Nursing, United Kingdom Oncology Nursing Society and European Oncology Nursing Society.

Her clinical background is principally in cancer nursing. Before and alongside her academic career, she held senior clinical and practice-development roles in oncology, including at the Kent Oncology Centre and Royal Surrey County Hospital.

Paula contributes to national and international academic dissemination through publication and conference presentation. Her work has been presented at events including the Advance HE Teaching and Learning Conference, University of Greenwich Researching the Rainbow, the Kent and Medway Medical School LGBT+ History Month Health and Medicine Symposium, Queering Paradigms and the European Cancer Conference.