Hollywood star Angelina Jolie has been praised by students following her first appearance as a lecturer.

The actor and director spoke to students taking the postgraduate course Women, Peace and Security at the London School of Economics.

The university said she talked about her experience and what motivated her work as UN special envoy.

Student Tazeen Dhanani tweeted Ms Jolie did “wonderfully” while Alana Foster described it as an incredible lecture. Dhanani added: “She’ll make an amazing visiting professor. So honoured to hear her inaugural lecture at LSE on sexual violence, rape, working with refugees.”

The star also answered questions from the students.

Prof Christine Chinkin, director of the Centre for Women, Peace and Security, said: “I am delighted that LSE postgraduate students have had the unique opportunity to learn directly from the valuable insights, perspectives and experiences that Angelina Jolie, UN special envoy and visiting professor in practice, brought to the class.”

She added that “critical and constructive” engagement on women’s human rights was “at the core of the education programme” at the centre.

Before the lesson, Jolie told the Evening Standard she was “feeling butterflies” as “this is very important to me”. The course is run by the Centre for Women, Peace and Security, which was launched last year by Jolie and former Foreign Secretary William Hague.

In 2012, the pair co-founded a global initiative to tackle sexual violence in conflict zones.

On Monday, Jolie said although she was proud of what had been achieved, “we are very focused on the next steps: taking the tools that have been developed into the field to help document crimes and support prosecutions, working with militaries to change doctrine and training, and pushing for the implementation of laws to protect the very vulnerable victims”.

The actor, an envoy for the UN refugee agency UNHCR, has long campaigned for women’s rights.

She wrote and directed the 2011 film In the Land of Blood and Honey about the Bosnian war, in which an estimated 20,000 women are believed to have been raped.