Programme Highlights
Professor Neil Selwyn
These days *everyone* seems to have something to say about the future of higher education – often simply as a cynical attempt to make money, justify unpopular reforms, or simply to denigrate the idea of universities altogether. This conference offers the SRHE community the opportunity to seize back the idea of ‘the future’ and put it to more honest use – as a means of reimagining what we want universities to be, to talk about the values and virtues of higher education, and reflect on what roles we think higher education might play in a fast-changing world.
In this opening talk, Neil Selwyn introduces a number of starting points from which the rest of the conference can progress. These include embracing the unknowability of the future, why we need to think about futures (plural), and how anticipating (un)desirable futures is a great way (in John Urry’s words) to ‘disturb the present’ and start making changes in the here-and-now. Regardless of your discipline and area of research interest, this talk aims to inspire you to start thinking about higher education futures along more expansive, forward-thinking and hopeful lines … the future starts here!
Professor Siân Bayne
This talk connects with the conference’s aim to explore visionary and imaginative futures for universities. Higher education futures are often presented as being determined for us by technological and other shifts that discursively construct themselves as primary, driving imperatives for change. In this context it is important that – as a global community of scholarship – we actively develop alternative ways of imagining, advocating for and building desirable futures based in the values, interests and core purposes of higher education itself. In this keynote, Prof Bayne will draw on research in the scholarship of utopia as one way of approaching this task. The talk will aim to provoke discussion among the SRHE community around how we might conceptualise our preferable futures, and what forms of research, advocacy and debate are needed to secure them.
The speakers will consider how international mobility and engagement shape universities and societies, and how technology is creating new forms of internationalisation beyond physical mobility. As students, academics, knowledge and technologies move across and increasingly around traditional borders, the panel will explore what those borders now mean for universities and those who work and study in them. Bringing together different perspectives on the changing borders of higher education, the panel will consider both the opportunities and challenges these shifts create
Speakers:
Professor Maia Chankseliani – International Student Mobility: Borders and Possibilities
Dr Jenna Mittelmeier – The impossibility of ‘global’ universities in a bordered world
Professor Rajani Naidoo – Universities in the Age of AI: Reclaiming Humanity and Redefining Human–AI Boundaries
The SRHE Networks provide the primary means of bringing together researchers in special interest groups through facilitating meetings with fellow researchers to share research issues, exchange ideas and review current thinking and new developments.
Come along and meet the SRHE Network Convenors and the SRHE Team. This is a great opportunity to find out more about the various SRHE Networks, share your thoughts and ideas, and discuss the Society’s activities and programme of events. Whether you are a first-time delegate, a newer researcher or an SRHE member, we would love to say hello. This is a friendly, welcoming space to meet the team, make connections and learn about how you can get involved.
Poster presenters are invited to be available by their posters for a live discussion with conference attendees. This is a chance to showcase your research, receive feedback and connect with colleagues. Kindly sponsored by Quirkos, there will be two prizes for poster presenters; all posters will be judged by members of the SRHE Committee and by conference delegates. The Delegate Pack will include the voting form with further guidance. Voting will open on Tuesday 1 December and end after lunch break on the following day.
Poster prize winners will be announced at 18:30 on Wednesday 2 December – good luck to all involved.
With Dr Kate Carruthers Thomas
A relaxed session addressing a serious topic. What structural and individual factors impact career development and progression in higher education? This session showcases a research-informed board game (adapted from Snakes & Ladders) designed and produced as part of a BA/Leverhulme-funded project: Playing The Career Game: Using game-based methodology to critically consider the effectiveness of targeted career initiatives. The game is currently ‘on tour’ around six UK universities and this session offers an opportunity for SRHE delegates at all career stages to explore, enjoy and discuss this experiment with game-based methodology. The perfect conference cool down and warm up to the evening’s entertainment! Please register for your seat at the table! https://bit.ly/4B6P4Gz
With Dr Richard Davies
Several years ago, UK universities pursued ‘Investors in People’ awards. The obvious joke was that investing in people ought to be what educational institutions did anyway.
Today, that joke has a sharper edge. When budgets tighten, what happens to the commitment to support academic careers? Who gets opportunities to develop, whose ambitions are recognised, and who is left to find their own way?
These questions reach beyond promotion and professional recognition. They concern the kinds of academic lives universities make possible—and the role academic developers can play in shaping them.
This 50-minute world café brings together colleagues to exchange experiences, question assumptions and explore practical possibilities. Through three rounds of small-group conversation, we will ask:
Where are we now? What is happening to support for academic careers, and where are the gaps, inequalities and promising practices?
What should we be working towards? What would meaningful support look like across different career stages, roles and aspirations?
What can we do together? How can we influence institutional priorities, and what could our Academic Practice Network contribute?
Whether you are an established member or joining us for the first time, bring an experience, a question or a possibility to explore.
With Dr Martin Gough and Dr Paula McIver Nottingham
The Postgraduate Issues Network was established in 1995 to help interested parties find out about new developments in the field of postgraduate education, the purpose which we continue. Recent and planned events with invited speakers and facilitators have considered the ideas of independence in research, belonging and inclusion in the Academy, supervisor development, different types of Doctoral and Master’s education.
The Network offers its members more than a series of meetings: it is a truly practice enhancing, as well as knowledge generating, network of people offering mutual support, in which ideas, concerns, materials and help are shared in a collaborative, collegial way. And we invite you to tell us about your interests in more detail.
This session aims to cover getting to know you better as a practitioner and a researcher and to discuss how future Network events can make a difference to you and others, and to developing the field of knowledge about postgraduate education. We shall invite you to talk about topics in the postgraduate domain that interest you. We welcome other ideas from you, since, as an important objective, this will suggest ideas for future events which will be both important and of interest.
Pause. Breathe. Reimagine.
In a world that constantly asks us to think ahead, when do we give ourselves permission to pause?
Join us for an engaging and restorative 30-minute experience exploring the fascinating connection between breath, body and mind.
Through playful experiments and an immersive guided breathwork meditation, culminating in a short, future-focused visualisation, discover how consciously working with your breath can influence your physiological state, support moments of calm and create space for fresh perspectives.
Inspired by the conference theme, Future Ready Higher Education, this session invites you to step away from the busyness of academic life, reconnect with the present moment and explore how you can meet the opportunities and challenges ahead.
You’ll leave with simple, practical tools to support you in everyday life, whether navigating a demanding day, preparing for an important conversation or simply needing a moment to reset.
No experience necessary. Just bring your curiosity and a willingness to pause.
Delegates are warmly invited to join Chris Millward, SRHE trustee, for an early-morning 5K run. As well as being a good way to start the day, the run launches Chris’s fundraising for SRHE: he will be running the 2027 London Marathon in support of a dedicated fund for research into lifelong learning. His fundraising page is now live at https://2027tcslondonmarathon.enthuse.com/pf/chris-millward, and he would be very grateful for members’ support.
For those who would prefer not to run but would still like some fresh air and exercise before the day begins, Dr Clare Loughlin-Chow, our CEO, will lead a 3K walk leaving at the same time. All are welcome.