Rate My Professor Kirsty Alexander

Kirsty Alexander is the ScotGEM Lecturer in Medical Education in the School of Medicine at the University of Dundee. She holds an MA with First Class Honours in German and International Relations from the University of St Andrews, awarded in 2010. Following graduation she worked in widening participation to medicine, which sparked her interest in access to healthcare education. In 2015 she was awarded a fully funded PhD position at the University of Aberdeen and graduated in 2018 with a thesis entitled "Perceptions, discourses and values: Exploring how key stakeholders construct, negotiate and enact widening access to medical school." Between 2019 and 2022 she worked at the Research Department for Medical Education at University College London before moving to her current position at the University of Dundee in March 2022.

In her role she contributes to the evaluation of the Scottish Graduate Entry Medicine programme and conducts research on generalism, rural medicine and innovative curricula. Her work centres on ensuring a medical workforce that meets population healthcare needs, with particular emphasis on generalist specialties, rural and underserved areas. Methodologically she specialises in qualitative approaches including Critical Discourse Analysis and Realist Evaluation, and has experience with mixed-methods studies using large datasets such as the UK Medical Education Database. She teaches across all years of the ScotGEM programme, supervises undergraduate portfolios and Masters students, and co-supervises a PhD project exploring the impact of contextual information in UK medical school selection processes. Her professional interests also encompass workforce impact, widening participation and equality, diversity and inclusion in medical education.