2024 Prize Winners

Avoiding Peripheralisation: Swiss and British HEIs Participation in the European Universities Initiative by Agata Lambrechts, Università della Svizzera italiana & Swiss Federal University for Vocational Education and Training

Agata Lambrechts has been a Postdoctoral Researcher at the Institute of Communication and Public Policy at the Università della Svizzera italiana (USI) in Lugano, Switzerland since 2021. Previously Agata completed an ESRC-funded PhD in Education at the University of York, UK where she also worked as a Research Associate. Her research interests cover a range of topics in research and higher education studies, including institutional cooperation, research funding, diversity of higher education institutions, migration and higher education, doctoral education and academic careers, in particular – the gender inequalities in academic labour.

In this SRHE funded project, together with Antonin Charret, a Visiting Researcher at USI, Agata will explore the complex motivations driving Swiss and British HEIs’ participation in the European Universities Initiative (EUI), considering the specific environmental factors present. They will examine HEIs decision-making processes in applying for a place in the EUI, selecting alliances to join and the approaches to collaboration within the alliances. They will scrutinise the challenges and obstacles they have faced thus far due to their associate member status. Finally, they will explore the anticipated potential short- and long-term benefits of participation in the alliances. In doing so, they will shed light on how the Swiss and British HEIs are navigating the challenging environment to manage their legitimacy and maintain their international standing and engagement with European partners.

What counts? Who counts? Ethics in access and participation evaluation by Ruth Squire, Leeds Trinity University

Ruth is an evaluator-researcher at Leeds Trinity University, working in the Office for Institutional Equity. Their research focuses on policy enactment, widening participation, third sector organisations, and values in evaluation practice. Ruth completed her thesis titled ‘Third Sector Organisations in Widening Participation Policy: Networks, Expertise and Authority’ in 2022 and was co-editor of the book ‘The Business of Widening Participation’, published the same year. Having worked in Widening Participation for 15 years, and in evaluation work for 8, Ruth brings their experience as a practitioner and evaluator to their research and is particularly interested in the translation of policy into practice(s).

In this SRHE-funded project, Ruth will be exploring what evaluation practitioners in widening participation understand by ‘evaluation ethics’ and how they negotiate these in their work. In researching evaluators working within widening participation specifically, which has ethical and moral dimensions that have been politicised, this research will pay close attention to how institutional and national policies interact with the ethical considerations of evaluators. The research will combine a collaborative approach to building knowledge through workshops and shared discussion, with a reflective self-interview for each participant, allowing deeper consideration of personal conceptions and negotiations of ethics. The aim is to develop an understanding of how ethical considerations are negotiated in context and to explore together what this may mean for future development of widening participation evaluation.

From Highlands to Urban Higher Education: A Participatory Narrative Exploration of Rural Tibetan Undergraduates’ Transitions by Tongyu Wu, University of Bristol

Tongyu Wu has been recently awarded a PhD in Education from the University of Bristol and is currently transitioning from doctoral studies to an early researcher. Tongyu holds a BA in Chinese Language and Literature, and an MRes (Distinction) in Education. Tongyu’s primary research interests intersect with using diverse narrative methods in creative ways to explore students’ lived experience, identity negotiations, cultural productions, and epistemic justice in relation to wider issues of transition and inclusion in higher education.

In this SRHE-funded study, Tongyu will focus on the lived experiences of students transitioning from western rural Tibetan backgrounds into eastern urban universities in China. The research will examine the complex interplay between rurality and ethnicity and its influence on students’ learning trajectories towards higher education. By adopting an asset-based approach, this study will employ a participatory narrative inquiry to explore the local knowledge and cultural practices these students bring from their communities, and how these assets may facilitate them using their agency to navigate the challenges of getting to and adjusting into urban universities. This includes their geographical, linguistic, cultural, spatial, and embodied transitions. It is expected that this study will provide insights into the lived experiences of rural students from minority backgrounds by examining educational inequalities, cultural conflicts, and epistemic justice, and how these elements intertwine with their rural and ethnic identities.