Vitalia is a Senior Lecturer and Researcher working across the Faculty of Biological, Medical and Health Sciences (FBMH).

Current research interests include the environmental impact of dental activities; sustainability awareness amongst dental students and dental professionals; behavioural interventions to promote good oral health.

In 2016, 2017 and 2018 Vitalia was successful in securing funding for projects from FBMH Social Responsibility Engaging our Communities Fund (UoM). The focus of these projects was on preparing dental students to lead a socially-responsible and sustainable oral healthcare system.

Currently she is a Co-Principal Investigator on the research project, which focuses on the analysis of antibiotic prescribing in England based on the practice level data from 2019 and the examination of the association with area level socio-economic deprivation. 

Vitalia joined the School of Dentistry in September 2012. Her PhD and Master degree are in the field of Social Sciences and she has more than 20 years teaching experience in an academic environment lecturing and undertaking seminars (in-class and online).

Vitalia has a sound knowledge of research methodology and provides high quality teaching in relation to Research Methodology. From September 2017 she has been the Unit Lead for a faculty-wide course-unit in Research Methods and since then is actively involved in curriculum development of this course-unit. Vitalia incorporated innovation into teaching on her course-unit, which has been evaluated and found to be positive and successful.

Vitalia has continuously contributed to up-dating of the design and content of Blackboard Learn for the online postgraduate MSc in Restorative and Aesthetic Dentistry (RAD) to make them user-friendly, consequently leading to improvements in both the delivery and student-teacher interaction. She has a sustained record of effective supervision of over 110+ Masters dissertations on the MSc RAD.

Senior Fellow, The Higher Education Academy

Lead for Social Responsibility (SR) and Environmental Sustainability (ES) for the Division of Dentistry

Member, the UK Universities Climate Network

Member, the faculty-wide Small Group Teaching Oversight Group to support activities around the FBMH Online/Blended/Flexible Learning strategy

PGCE (Further, Higher and Adult Education), PhD., M.S.Ec.

Since March 2014 Vitalia has been a member of the UoM Sustainability in the Curriculum Community of Practice (CoP) and since then has been leading on integrating environmental sustainability in the dental curriculum.

In 2022 Vitalia took the Divisional Lead role for Social Responsibility (SR) and continue as the Lead for Environmental Sustainability (ES). She has successfully created and ran the ‘Sustainability in Dentistry Day’ for the last six years and supported various staff- and student-led projects. Her contribution was recognised twice in 2017 and 2022 as part of the Making the Difference Awards.

In 2021 Vitalia has contributed to the production of the excellent paper ‘Mainstreaming Climate Change Education in UK Higher Education Institutions’ which got a lot of attention during COP26. She also wrote a case study on ‘Integrating Climate Change Through Service Learning in Dental Education’, which was selected by the UK Universities Climate

For the last 8 years Vitalia has been contributing to the national/international debate on Education for Sustainable Development and took part in conferences and discussions surrounding this important topic. In 2018 Vitalia participated in two international conferences: the ISCN annual conference in Stockholm and Sustainable Dentistry Conference in London. In January and June 2022 she was invited to be a panel member in two sessions focusing on Embedding Climate Change Education within HEIs, firstly at a conference organised by Universities UK and secondly at the 2022 ISCN Conference.