Category: Events

Reimagining the Higher Education Student: online book launch

Thursday, 22^ndApril 2021 (08.00-10.00 UK time; 17.00-19.00 Sydney time)

Reimagining the Higher Education Student, edited by Rachel Brooks and Sarah O’Shea, seeks to question the accepted or unquestioned nature of ‘being a student’ and instead foreground the contradictions and ‘messiness’ of such ideation. Given the increasing number and diversity of higher education students, the book offers a timely discussion of the implicit and sometimes subtle ways that they are characterised or defined.

In this launch event, we will provide an overview of eight of the book’s chapters, as well as some of the overarching themes addressed by the volume as a whole. The first session will focus on constructions of students in Australasia, and the second on students in Europe.

Session 1. 08.00-09.00 (UK time); 17.00-18.00 (Sydney time)

• Sally Patfield, Jenny Gore and Leanne Fray: On becoming a university student: Young people and the ‘illusio’ of higher education
• Matt Lumb and Matthew Bunn: Dominant higher education imaginaries: forced perspectives, ontological limits and recognising the imaginer’s frame
• Thornchanok Uerpairojkit and James Burford: Constructions of náksèuk-saˇa: Tracing contested imaginings of the Thai university student
• Paola R.S. Eiras and Henk Huijser: Exploring spaces in-between: reimagining the Chinese student in a transnational higher education context in China

Session 2. 09.00-10.00 (UK time); 18.00-19.00 (Sydney time)

• Emily Danvers and Tamsin Hinton-Smith:The shifting subjectification of the ‘widening participation’ student: the affective world of the ‘deserving’ consumer
• Kay Calver and Bethan Michael-Fox: Constructing the university student in British documentary television
• Elisa Alves and Russell King: Between international student and immigrant: a critical perspective on Angolan and Cape Verdean students in Portugal
• Anu Lainio and Rachel Brooks: Constructing students as family members: contestations in media and policy representations across Europe

You are welcome to join us for one or both hours. Please register for a place here. Once you have registered, you will receive a confirmation email containing a link to the meeting.

WHAT DOES IT MEAN TO BE A CONTEMPORARY

HIGHER EDUCATION STUDENT?

FREE Online conference, University of Surrey  

17 JUNE (1-4.30 PM) -18 JUNE (9.30AM-1 PM) 2021 (UK time) 

Keynote: Dr Gritt B. Nielsen, Danish School of Education, Aarhus University 

Call for abstracts 

Being a higher education student is an increasingly common experience across the world, with participation rates at or above 50 per cent in many nations. Nevertheless, there is relatively little debate about what being a contemporary higher education student actually means. While stereotypes of students are regularly deployed in the media and, in countries where high fees are charged, assumptions are frequently made about students becoming more ‘consumer-like’ in their orientation – empirical evidence is often solely lacking. This conference aims to redress this omission by exploring understandings of contemporary higher education students. We are particularly interested in papers that examine questions such as (but not limited to): 

• How do factors like gender, race, and social class account for differences in what it means to be a student? Can we speak of such a thing as ‘the student experience’? 
• Has what it means to be a student changed – how, why? How might higher education policies have impacted what it means to be a student?  
• Do different social actors share understandings about what it means to be student?  
• Are prevalent understandings of what it means to be a student problematic? Why?  
• In what other ways could students be conceptualised and/or imagined? What ways of understanding students – and higher education – should we be attempting to move towards? 

We will also present data on some of these themes from the ‘Eurostudents’ project – a cross-national comparisons of constructions of students within Europe. 

We welcome papers from scholars at all career stages and from a variety of disciplinary backgrounds including sociology, education, geography, youth studies, social policy, media studies and anthropology. Contributions from national contexts other than the UK are warmly invited. 

Abstract Submission: Please send abstracts of up to 500 words by 11^th April 2021 to the Eurostudents team at surrey.eurostudents@gmail.com 

Further information: The conference is being organised by the ‘Eurostudents’ research team (Rachel Brooks, Achala Gupta, Sazana Jayadeva and Anu Lainio). You can learn more about the project here:  www.eurostudents.net. 

#Eurostudents2021  

‘Students in Changing Higher Education Landscapes’

Friday, 14^th June, University of Surrey

Across many countries of the world, higher education landscapes have changed significantly over recent years. Market mechanisms have become more prominent, and politicians have become increasingly concerned about graduates’ transitions into the labour market. In some nations, although not all, students are now expected to make a substantial contribution to the cost of their higher education and, across mainland Europe, the Bologna Process has reshaped the nature of students’ experiences considerably. This one-day conference seeks to explore understandings of students in this shifting context.

We have an exciting programme of talks from scholars across the UK and beyond, as well as a keynote from Rille Raaper (Durham University). You can view the full programme here and can register for a place (£50 fee) here.

Students in changing higher education landscapes

One-day conference, University of Surrey, 14^th June 2019

Keynote by Rille Raaper, Durham University: Troubling the notion of student as consumer: Fabrications, contradictions and political engagement

Across many countries of the world, higher education landscapes have changed significantly over recent years. Market mechanisms have become more prominent, and politicians have become increasingly concerned about graduates’ transitions into the labour market. In some nations, although not all, students are now expected to make a substantial contribution to the cost of their higher education and, across mainland Europe, the Bologna Process has reshaped the nature of students’ experiences considerably. This one-day conference seeks to explore understandings of students in this shifting context.

We welcome papers – focussing on the UK, mainland Europe or further afield – that cover any aspect of the topic, including (but not restricted to) the following: representations of students in policy or media; the nature of students’ lives; staff understandings of students; staff-student relationships; students as consumers; students as political actors; student mobilities; comparative studies of students; and the impact on students’ experiences of their social characteristics, discipline of study and/or institution.

We hope to include papers from all career stages and a variety of disciplinary backgrounds. It is intended that the papers will provide the basis for a proposal for a journal special issue.

Abstract Submission: Please send abstracts of up to 250 words by 15^th April 2019 to Rachel Brooks at the University of Surrey: r.brooks@surrey.ac.uk There will be a £50 registration fee for attending the conference (to include lunch).

A one-day seminar funded by the International Journal for Social Research Methodology

Friday, 15th June, University of Surrey

Keynote speakers: Agata Lisiak (Bard College, Berlin) and Rita Chawla-Duggan (University of Bath)

Increasing use is made of both creative and visual methods in social research. Nevertheless, to date there has been very little discussion of the extent to which such methods can be used in comparative research. This seminar will explore some of the challenges of using these methods cross-nationally, examining the different cultural associations that may be brought to bear in different national contexts, and how these are accounted for in research design, data collection and analysis. It will also draw on the experiences of researchers working in this area, to explore how such challenges can most effectively be addressed. We welcome papers that address any aspect of using creative and/or visual methods in comparative research, or across spaces of difference more broadly defined (e.g. with groups from different ethnic or social class backgrounds).

Abstract Submission: Please send abstracts of up to 250 words by 14th April 2018 to Rachel Brooks at the University of Surrey: r.brooks@surrey.ac.uk. (There will be no charge for attending the seminar as all costs are kindly being covered by the International Journal of Social Research Methodology.)

Seminar Organisers: The seminar is organised by the Eurostudents research team at the University of Surrey (Rachel Brooks, Jessie Abrahams, Predrag Lazetic and Anu Lainio).

After a summer break, our reading group will restart next week. We’ll be meeting at the University of Surrey from 4-5pm to discuss Vikki Boliver’s article in a recent issue of Sociology: ‘Exploring Ethnic Inequalities in Admission to Russell Group Universities’.

Do email Rachel (r.brooks@surrey.ac.uk) if you’d like to come along; everyone is welcome!

We’re delighted to announce that we have received funding from the International Journal of Social Research Methodology to run a one-day seminar on the use of creative and visual methods in comparative research during the 2017-18 academic year.

Increasing use is made of both creative and visual methods in social research. Nevertheless, to date there has been very little discussion of the extent to which such methods can be used in comparative research. Our seminar will explore some of the challenges of using these methods cross-nationally, examining the different cultural associations that may be brought to bear in different national contexts, and how these are accounted for in research design, data collection and analysis. It will also draw on the experiences of researchers working in this area, to explore how such challenges can most effectively be addressed.

We’ll be issuing a call for papers later in the year, and more details will appear on this website.