Dr Laura Justham: Inclusive engineering starts with how we design learning

Engineering education has never struggled with technical rigour. What it has struggled with, argues incoming trustee Dr Laura Justham, is helping engineers understand who they are designing for and why that should shape every decision they make.

Laura brings that same thinking to education. In her teaching at Loughborough University, she treats inclusion not as a specialist concern, but as a core design principle shaping learning, teamwork and decision-making – because how learning environments are designed determines who is able to participate and succeed.

As she begins her term with Engineers Without Borders UK, Laura shares her perspective on inclusion in engineering education, and what the discipline loses when we design learning for only one type of student.

Inclusion starts with how we design learning

Laura’s interest in inclusion didn’t stem from a single experience. It grew gradually through teaching, curriculum design, and years of watching how different students respond to the same environments.

What became clear to her was that engineering education often assumes a “default” learner – confident, technically capable, and able to perform under pressure in standard formats. Historically, that learner has also been implicitly male. When learning environments are designed around that norm, students who fall outside it are often overlooked and undersupported.

Laura first encountered this early in her own education, when she was one of the first girls in her A-level physics class. Teaching examples were framed through laddish humour that centred the boys in the room, while the girls were left sitting together at the back, largely outside the conversation. Over time, that separation mattered and it became harder to engage fully with the concepts being taught.

Over her career, Laura came to see that these assumptions don’t only affect those with visible differences. They also affect students whose needs are less obvious, and whose experiences don’t fit neatly into any single category.

“Even if you don’t identify as being neurodiverse, you’re not going to be the same as somebody else. Everybody’s intersectional.”

For educators, that insight has practical implications. Inclusion isn’t about asking students to disclose personal information or justify their needs, but about creating space for conversation and listening to what helps them learn.

“It’s about open and honest conversation,” Laura explains. “You don’t have to make yourself particularly vulnerable to be open and honest about the type of environment you learn best in.”

Designing for equity in group learning

Laura is known for her work on neurodiversity in group learning, but she is careful not to frame inclusion as something that applies only to a subset of students. Instead, she takes a neuro-inclusive approach, recognising that well-designed learning environments benefit everyone – something that becomes most apparent when students are required to work together.

“Privilege and power come from so many different angles,” she says. “It’s just ensuring that everybody has a voice, everybody’s got a space at the table.”

Left unchecked, group projects often reward confidence, availability, and familiarity with academic norms rather than contribution or insight. Laura’s response isn’t to lower expectations, but to question the assumptions built into how group work is organised.

One of the examples she uses when setting up group projects with students is deceptively simple: commuter students. Not necessarily marginalised, but structurally disadvantaged by assumptions about time, place, and availability.

“If you’re working with a commuter student,” she says, “don’t set a meeting for nine o’clock at night.”

Instead, she encourages flexibility – meetings between lectures, online options, choices that allow students to participate without penalty. None of this changes academic standards. It simply removes unnecessary barriers.

“Everybody needs to be able to show up and be the best version of themselves.”

She has seen what happens when this kind of thinking is taken seriously. Laura recalls a group project involving a student with profound hearing loss working in a fabrication workshop, an environment that could easily have excluded them. Instead, the group, supported by technical staff, adapted routine training activities and developed shared methods of communication that allowed everyone to participate safely.

For educators, the lesson is clear: inclusion in group learning doesn’t happen automatically. It has to be designed into the activity, not retrofitted when problems arise.

Systems shape behaviour – including educators’

Laura is clear that responsibility for inclusion doesn’t sit with individual students, or even individual educators. It’s systemic. Changing curricula, assessment, and teaching practice is difficult not because educators don’t care, but because they are working within time-pressured, risk-averse systems.

“Big step changes in pedagogy come down to the educators themselves. And it is very, very difficult to carve out the time to do it really, really well.”

That’s why Laura places so much emphasis on tools, frameworks, and shared language – ways of making inclusive practice easier for those delivering education.

She is also careful to acknowledge that educators, like students, are different.

“All of our educators are different as well,” she notes. “They’ve got certain needs and certain personal circumstances.”

Inclusion, then, has to apply both ways.

Why Engineers Without Borders UK

Laura’s connection to Engineers Without Borders UK grew from a frustration with engineering education that treats ethics, people, and impact as optional extras rather than fundamentals. What resonated was an approach that places those considerations at the centre of engineering practice, regardless of discipline.

“Responsible engineering transcends every single type of engineering. It doesn’t matter what discipline you’re in.”

For Laura, Engineers Without Borders UK also creates learning environments where contribution isn’t limited to technical confidence alone. Tools like the Reimagined Degree Map have helped translate inclusive values into everyday educational practice.

“Using the Map really helps to engage people,” she says. “It has helped our team assess where we’re at, reframe what we’re trying to do, and make things more accessible.”

Looking ahead, Laura is less interested in the number of programmes delivered or strategies written than in the ripple effects of cultural change. For her, success in her term looks like helping more educators teach inclusively, helping more students feel they belong, and supporting engineering to better reflect the society it serves.