GW4 Building Communities Generator Award enables researchers to collaborate on refugee access to Higher Education.
Community Leads: Katharina Lenner (University of Bath); Lisa Lucas (University of Bristol); Sin Yi Cheung (Cardiff University); Nick Gill (PI) (University of Exeter); Isabelle Schäfer (Non-GW4 collaborator)
In 2022 the number of forcibly displaced people (FDP) globally surpassed 100 million for the first time. The United Nations High Commission for Refugees (UNHCR) aims to enrol 15% of eligible FDPs into HE by 2030. However, only 6% of the world’s eligible FDPs can access Higher Education (HE) currently.
Although an increasing number of UK universities promote the access of FDPs to HE, questions remain over how effectively they can engage, even after admission. Inflexible curricula, cultural differences, resource constraints, and personal and family concerns present formidable learning barriers.
Led by Professor Nick Gill, Professor and Director of Research for Human Geography at the University of Exeter, the Forcibly Displaced Students in Higher Education Community aimed to generate research-informed innovations that improve Forcibly Displaced Peoples’ access to Higher Education, enhance institutional practices through interdisciplinary research and disseminate best practices across GW4 institutions, the UK and internationally.
In 2023, the community were awarded just under £14,000 in funding as part of GW4’s Building Communities Generator Award. The GW4 Building Communities Generator Fund is an open research call offering up to £20k to support collaborative research and innovation communities across the four GW4 universities of Bath, Bristol, Cardiff and Exeter. It supports both the creation of new GW4 communities and the development of the strongest ideas emerging from our existing communities.
Using the funds, the community was able to deliver an end-to-end research project, from conception and design, through empirical data collection, analysis and write-up. This included 8 focus groups - 4 with forcibly displaced students, and 4 with professional services and academic staff from various UK universities.
The funds additionally enabled the community to organise an event (Nov 2023), which included participants from universities and organisations across the UK, and helped to consolidate and build a community of people interested in supporting students from forcibly displaced backgrounds.
The group were able to present their work at the Society for Research in Higher Education annual conference, using the analysis of data from the focus groups with students and staff. From the findings of the research and discussions at the November workshop, the community were able to produce two downloadable leaflets that can give vital information to forcibly displaced students as well as staff who support them in universities. Additionally, the research team also engaged with other organisations such as STAR and Universities of Sanctuary.
In addition to these outcomes, the group subsequently secured funding from the University of Bath to host another event on “Careers of Forcibly Displaced Students” in Bristol on the 13th June 2024. The event was attended by the careers services of universities of Bath, Bristol and Cardiff, alongside forced migrants themselves. The workshop was intended to serve as an opportunity to develop a funding application alongside these important partners
Professor Gill, said: “The fund has been instrumental in the forming of a new academic community working at the cutting edge of its field. The inter-disciplinarity of our team (as encouraged by the fund) makes us ideally positioned to win external funding and drive the academic discussion in our area of focus. The impetus to collaborate, the structures of support available, the flexibility of the funding and the ambition and reach of the scheme have each been exceptional.
“One of the primary aims of the project was to establish a world-leading team of researchers working on refugee access to Higher Education. Our community has matured and developed substantially since the start of this project. Scholars and staff who worked independently on very similar topics…are now connected and have opportunities to develop further collaborations. This is also true for the heads of career services, staff working to support forcibly displaced students at the four institutions in the GW4 Alliance.”
Our communities
The GW4 Building Communities Programme aims to build research and innovation communities of scale and capability, delivering a step change in world-class research that could not be achieved by one of the institutions alone. The Programme has two funding schemes:
- The annual Generator Fund which awards GW4 communities up to £20K for 6-month projects.
- The Development Awards which support new, and advance existing, collaborations across GW4 by funding single activities or resources with up to £5K. This is a rolling scheme, with no closing date.
More details of both schemes, and how to apply, can be found at the links above.
The fund has been instrumental in the forming of a new academic community working at the cutting edge of its field. The inter-disciplinarity of our team (as encouraged by the fund) makes us ideally positioned to win external funding and drive the academic discussion in our area of focus.
The impetus to collaborate, the structures of support available, the flexibility of the funding and the ambition and reach of the scheme have each been exceptional. "
