Archives: Tutors

Julie works in education as a language trainer. Her principal second language is German, and she also speaks French and some Spanish. She enjoys working with others and helping people improve their skills and confidence, and has delivered Language classes at the University of Surrey. She also enjoys analysing and translating texts, using the knowledge she has gained through working with people from different cultures.

Vittoria is a native speaker of Italian and a qualified teacher with 40 years of experience, both as teacher in Italy and in the UK. She is experienced in teaching adults at all levels, from Beginners to Advanced. Vittoria has also run her own la

Vittoria has taught Italian for Adult Education Colleges in the past but in the South London area. She currently teaches Italian for GCSE and A Level to bilingual students, Italian to Adults, as well as Italian for Business. 

Christine’s yoga journey started over 15 years ago when she regularly started to attend all all types of yoga classes. Yoga really helped me to control my ongoing lower back pain and enabled me to manage my stress and anxiety.  Yoga, breath work, mindfulness and meditation has made a significant difference to my overall physical, mental and emotional wellbeing and has become an important part of her daily life.  

Christine completed a 200 hour Anusara® Immersion and Teaching Training  in 2018-2019.   In 2022, she finished my 300 hour Advanced Teacher Training. Christine is also a qualified Yin yoga teacher and also teaches meditation.  She is also Certified Prenatal/Pregnancy Yoga Teacher and Certified Postnatal/Postpartum Yoga Teacher with Poppy Perinatal Yoga.  Christine has also gained qualifications to teach yoga for the pelvic floor. Most recently, She have become a Forrest Yoga Inspired Teacher.

Christine teaches in the greater Guildford area, in and around Cheltenham and elsewhere by arrangement as well as online, indoors and outdoors.. She specialises in  Vinyasa (flow) Yoga, Hatha (Static) Yoga, Anusara® Yoga, Restorative Yoga, Yoga Nidra, Chair Yoga, Perinatal Yoga, Forrest-Inspired Yoga and Yin.  She is also a qualified to teach Pranayama (breath exercises), Meditation, Mindfulness and Relaxation Techniques.

Christine is passionate about anything related to yoga and sharing the joyous benefits of yoga with others in a safe, friendly and relaxing environment.  Her dharma (passion) is to hold space and empower individuals to practice embodied yoga, meditation, mindfulness and pranayama (breath work) with compassion, awareness and joy. Christine’s vision is to make yoga accessible, inclusive and workable for all bodies by offering versatile alignment options; delivering uplifting meaningful creative classes with heart and soul in a nourishing calm space that will impart a sense of overall wellbeing, community, serenity, and inspiration.  

Everyone is welcome at Christine’s yoga classes.  She always weaves a meaningful relevant theme into each of my classes and include breathwork, meditation, the full range of yoga poses, relaxation and selective readings, quotations or poems. She hopes that you walk off your yoga mat feeling recharged, rejuvenated and happier!

Christine is fully insured through Yoga Alliance Professionals. 

Artist Sarah E. Jones works in acrylic, mixed media and multi-media. Thematically she is drawn to landscape, seascape, nature and spirit. Elements of the natural world fuse with spiritual themes, reflecting the way that nature and spirit can be perceived as interconnected. She enjoys creating other realms in her work; mixing elements to make innovative portals to other worlds. Sarah also has a keen interest in the spiritual, and this comes through in her creative practice. Being an intuitive herself (psychic, medium, clairvoyant, claircognisant, clairaudient, clairsentient, healer & animal communicator), she has for many years spent time in that arena. She is also a certified Spiritual Life Coach and holds a Certificate in Psychic Awareness and Healing.

Alongside creating and exhibiting her work, Sarah spends much of her time teaching Art for Skill and Art for Wellbeing classes and workshops. She specialises in teaching adults, and her courses and workshops offer a unique blend of art, nature, mindfulness, neuroscience, and writing/journaling.

Sarah’s additional studies in Cognitive Psychology, NLP, Mindfulness, Stress Management and Meditation help her to create engaging bespoke classes and workshops for specific groups of students. She works within local community settings throughout Hampshire and Surrey, UK, delivering content for Colourwheel, Activate Learning and Learning in Libraries. She is also available to deliver bespoke content, one to one or in groups, online or in person.

Guy has taught undergraduate seminars, adult education classes for Surrey Adult Learning and The Guildford Institute. Today he teaches mainly online to small groups and individually. All genres of fiction are welcome as well as life-writing (memoirs, travel, self-help). Guy is also very supportive of neurodivergent writers.

Stella has taught creative writing since 1982, for the Guildford Institute, the University of Surrey, the WEA, and various other bodies, including Richmond Adult and Community College at accredited level and writing for pleasure. Her classes emphasise individual development and the channelling of writing ability. She includes all forms of writing, short stories, novels, poetry, memoirs, travel writing and plays. Stella’s courses are for all levels, and beginners are always welcome. Various aspects of writing are included, e.g. shaping short stories, beginning a novel, dialogue, creating characters, writing modern poetry, creating atmosphere. Imagination and craftsmanship are both important. A significant amount of time is spent in reading and discussing members’ work in friendly and constructive atmosphere. There are writing projects and reference to the effectiveness of published works.

Having a qualification as a personal assistant in France, Julie started to show interest in teaching French after a few years spent in the UK where she has been living for the past 17 years.

After getting a PTTLs certificate in 2010, she have acquired experience in teaching French to both children and adults in Guildford and the surrounding areas. Julie teaches people of all ages and abilities for educational institutions as well as privately. Julie prides herself on cultural awareness, sensitivity and flexibility.

Julie is patient and actively listens to her students. She enjoys helping others to learn, using the strengths of each individual. She will challenge her learners but will try to bring out the best of their potential to make sure that together, we work towards achieving their goals, their needs, and their requirements.

Andrew Newton is an award winning fine artist from Fleet, Hampshire, United Kingdom. 

He received his 1st class BA (hons) Fine Art degree in 2008, where after he continued his practice as a hyper-realist portrait/abstract painter. Exhibiting all around the country and abroad, whilst winning notable awards such as the 1st prize ROI award at the mall galleries. 

Since 2013 Andrew has taught technical painting and drawing skills to students of mixed ages, also working as an art instructor for Arthouse Unlimited in Godalming, Surrey. 

In recent years, Andrew’s art practice consists of different subject matter including portraits, expressive landscapes, distorted figures and interior spaces. His current painting style experiments from abstracted realism, expressionism to technical representation.

William Davies is a writer and researcher based in the southeast of England. He works on twentieth-century British and Irish literature and has written extensively on various authors and poets including Samuel Beckett, Harold Pinter and T. S. Eliot. He was awarded his PhD by the University of Reading in 2018, where he also worked as a lecturer until 2021. He is now a University of Reading Research Fellow and a freelance writer. His most recent book is the essay collection Samuel Beckett’s Poetry, edited with James Brophy and published in 2022 by Cambridge University Press. He has published three other books, including the monograph Samuel Beckett and the Second World (Bloomsbury, 2020), written for various academic journals and magazines, including the Radio Times, and worked on two BBC documentaries, ‘Beckett’s Last Tapes’ and ‘The Battle of the Brows’, both of which are available on iPlayer. He is also a General Editor of LONGITŪDINĒS, an arts and translation magazine.

Dr. Karim Esmail was educated at London, Oxford, Cambridge, and Harvard. He was awarded a British Academy Studentship and the Gregg Bury Prize at Cambridge. He was formerly, a Research Fellow at Oxford and Burney Student at Cambridge and a Visiting Fellow at Harvard and he lectures at both Cambridge and Oxford. Alongside international articles, he is the author of three volumes of an original philosophical work on the nature and existence of God. Classes with Karim consist of clearly structured lectures and an encouragement to ask questions and to make comments.  Students are assisted in their understanding of the subject and in their critical engagement with it.

Kathy is an ex-city lawyer who wrote H and I for the Oxford English Dictionary in a past life. She now writes history, and has written the Museum Guide to Dorking as well as books on the history of the Holmwoods, the Pethick-Lawrences and the fight for the vote in the Surrey Hills, the First World War in Dorking and the Dorking Mayflower travellers. Kathy has also lead battlefield tours in France and Belgium.She is now working on a book about Mary Neal, the Esperance Dancers and the Morris Dance Revival. Kathy is Chair of Dorking Museum & Heritage Centre and is also responsible for permanent and temporary exhibitions. She also runs the Museum’s guided walks team which offers guided walks in Dorking, on the Deepdene Trail and at Betchworth Castle. Kathy recently campaigned for the installation of two blue plaques in Dorking and Holmwood to mark the area’s contribution to the campaign for the vote for women and speaks regularly at events and on radio.

Dr. Colin Summerhayes is a marine geologist and oceanographer with expertise in the role of climate in forming marine sediments of different types, especially seabed resources of phosphate and oil and gas, and in interpreting the history of climate from sedimentary records. He was educated at University and Imperial Colleges, London, at Oxford, and at Victoria University, Wellington, NZ, then worked at the New Zealand Oceanographic Institute, at Imperial College London, at the University of Cape Town and at Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution. He then spent 12 years as a researcher in the oil and gas business, working first for Exxon and then for BP on new techniques for analysing basins and prospecting for oil rich source rocks, covering most of the world’s oil and gas basins from northern Norway to the Falklands Plateau. From 1986-88 he was a Branch Manager in the Exploration Division of the BP Research Centre, Sunbury-on-Thames, responsible for specialist research staff in Aberdeen, Houston, Holland and the UK. Leaving the oil business, from 1988-95 he was Director of the Natural Environment Research Council’s Institute of Oceanographic Sciences Deacon Laboratory, in Wormley, Surrey, managing some of the UK’s major research programmes on the role of the oceans in climate change. Having steered the institute through a major restructuring, he moved it to become the core of the new Southampton (now National) Oceanography Centre, of which he became Deputy Director. Leaving the UK in 1997 he served UNESCO’s Intergovernmental Oceanographic Commission, in Paris, as Director of the Global Ocean Observing System (or GOOS), which provides the ocean component of the UN’s Global Climate Observing System (GCOS), which detects changes and trends in global climate and provides advice to the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change. Dr Summerhayes was a member of the GCOS Steering Committee. From 2004 – 2010 he was Executive Director of the International Council for Science’s Scientific Committee on Antarctic Research (SCAR), based at the Scott Polar Research Institute of Cambridge University, where he is now an Emeritus Associate (from April 1, 2010).

Dr Louise Hardiman specialises in nineteenth and twentieth century Russian and Ukrainian art, the international Arts and Crafts movement, and the history of British-Russian cultural exchange. She is an independent consultant, writer, and lecturer who has taught undergraduate students and adult learners in various educational settings. Dr Hardiman is a firm believer in the benefits of lifelong learning. She knows well its opportunities and challenges, including the practicalities of how to fit study in alongside the multitude of other daily tasks.

Ronnie’s life has always revolved around art and music. He has drawn and painted all his life and made music (mainly singing; from opera through to rock and jazz) during much of it.

He was born and educated in Glasgow, then moved to Edinburgh where he taught art and ran a company, organising and playing music. Ronnie moved to the south of England in 2011, realising he needed a fresh start and new challenges in a new place.

The regular art classes which Ronnie now runs are very important to him. They aim to encourage artists to develop their own ideas and voice, and he finds it exciting and gratifying working with the artists as they progress. He feels it is the most difficult, but also the most rewarding part of art. Ronnie also gives regular talks, demonstrations and workshops on many aspects of art and creativity to art societies, educational institutions and the corporate world.

His own art centres around the idea of identity and how it manifests in many different ways from the theatrical to the everyday.    

Rita is a graduate of UCL, Department of Archaeology and currently lectures for The Guildford Institute and the WEA. She focuses predominantly on early classical civilisations, the origins of early man and the first urban settlements in Catal Hoyuk and Jerricho.  Her subject areas are Ancient Mesopotamia (Iran and Iraq), The Holy Land, Ancient Greece and Rome, Ancient Egypt, Empires before Alexander, The Ancient Persian Empire, The Etruscans and Greatest Cities and Sites of the Ancient World. The Origins of Civilisation and the fascinating Bronze Age world of the Mycenaeans in Greece and the Minoans in Crete is a particularly fascinating period to study. Over the many years Rita has been lecturing, she has taken students and visited most of the sites covered in her lectures.  All these sites are studied archaeologically and their Classical history is discussed in detail.

Rita lives in Molesey with her two rescued cats and small rescued dog called Digby. She has a son in Wales and a daughter who lives in the States which she visits regularly. Rita also has six grandchildren and two very young great-grandchildren.

In just a few short years, UK-based guitarist Nicolas Meier has carved a reputation out as one of the UK’s most original and uniquely talented guitarists. Drawing from a love of Turkish, Eastern and Middle Eastern music, Flamenco, Tango and more — all mixed with jazz -Meier is one of the rising stars in a vibrant British jazz scene. But, his versatility and musical fluency extends well beyond that … so much so, that his considerable talents drew the attention of rock guitar legend, Jeff Beck, who has since made Nicolas a mainstay in The Jeff Beck Group, carrying him on two world tours during the course of the last several years.

Meier originally hails from Switzerland; born in 1973 to parents who are great lovers of the arts, with wide-ranging musical tastes extending to the Classical, Jazz, Latin, Flamenco, Rock and (even) Pop genres. A true gypsy spirit with a disciplined maestro’s touch, Nicolas has embraced a number of different cultures and studied their music forms, nuances and idiosyncrasies.

Having made a lasting impression on gentlemen the likes of Jeff Beck, Bill Bruford and Steve Vai — just to name a few! — Nicolas Meier is unquestionably one of today’s most well-rounded, ambitious, masterful up-and-coming talents on guitar. Steve Vai’s Favored Nations Records released Nicolas’ brilliant solo album, Infinity, featuring Jimmy Haslip, on bass and Vinnie Colaiuta.

Nicolas has been the recipient of numerous awards. A truly dedicated student of the instrument, he has pursued advanced studies at Switzerland’s prestigious Conservatoire de Fribourg, and subsequently earned a scholarship to Boston’s illustrious Berklee College of Music. His burning passion for both rock and jazz persists to this day.

Daphne is an Art History lecturer who has a special interest in 19^th and 20^th century European Art. She delivered study tours to Florence for many years, so also has a particular love of early Renaissance art.

Daphne has taught for many years at the Guildford Institute and also A-Level Art History in Adult Education and in schools. Daphne gives talks all over Surrey for Art Societies, Women’s Institute and Probus groups and for anyone who asks her!

Now in semi-retirement, Daphne is giving more time to drawing and painting and exploring new techniques and subjects. She has exhibited her work at the Institute as well as with Guildford Arts, AppArt and at the Cathedral.

Devdan began Tai Chi in the early 1980s while a student at the School of Oriental and African Studies, London. He returned to Tai Chi in the mid-1990s and studied with the late Master Akira Lim. Today, he continues to study Tai Chi and Kung Fu with Stephen Lim, the current master of the Lim School of Martial Arts. Devdan follows the traditional approach of the Yang style focusing on the long form of 108 movements. He also has a wide knowledge of shorter forms, Tai Chi sword and Qiqong (Chi Kung) and practices various forms of Kung Fu.

This is all a far cry from a previous existence of studying to be an ethno-musicologist and teaching Indian classical music, which he continues to do occasionally. Devdan edited the first Asian arts magazine in the UK and then went on to be a travel writer freelancing with the Rough Guides for 20 years, specialising on India. He was one of four original authors for the Rough Guide to India.

Having grown up in the Himalayas, Devdan loves mountaineering and climbing and now does the occasional stint as a ski instructor at weekends and helps with disability snow sports.