The lack of diversity in leadership within the higher education sector, and within research will never be resolved without meaningful change in access to postgraduate education, better support for early career researchers, and better understanding of the barriers to equality in the research community.
GuildHE Research member institutions are in a unique position to counter inequalities due to the specialisms that we operate in, the locations that we are based in, and due to close links to industries and professions, for example creative arts and elite sport.
Overall numbers of doctoral students at our institutions make up a small proportion of postgraduate research students in the sector, but they represent students which are typically not funded by national funding schemes, and who are more likely to be mature, studying art time, and more likely to be female; in short students that might otherwise not be the subject for analyses of student experience.
In 2021 we published a specific anti-racism briefing on postgraduate access and attainment that delves into some of the challenges and contextualises PGR study at small and specialist institutions.
Commissioned research from the Institute for Community Studies into the lived experience of postgraduate research students from ethnic minorities at smaller and specialist universities has now been published. Read more about the project and find the report here.
Following recommendations from the report, and co-creation with a group of PGR students, GuildHE Research launched its Global Majority Network for PGR students at our Doctoral Festival in April 2024. The inaugural meeting took place on 10 July. To learn more about the network, please email Ellen Graves, Policy Officer at ellen.graves@guildhe.ac.uk
