We present an analysis of narratives that emerged from a recent interdisciplinary design thinking careers intervention exploring how employability is represented within one UK University. We conducted a critical discourse analysis using a policy analysis framework that revealed four emergent problem representations. These exposed tacit assumptions…

Despite longstanding calls for social justice-oriented teaching, there remains limited understanding of how to achieve it. This paper reports findings from a research-development project that explored the experiences of UK-based primary science teacher educators participating in a nine-month equity-oriented professional development programme and…

Academic libraries, apart from their main function, which is to provide information services to academic communities, may also perform a number of social roles in the broad meaning of the term. Accordingly, they now tend to serve as the third place offering inclusion and animation activities to academic as well as local communities (including…

University-community engagement has been implemented by an increasing number of universities across the world, in a period characterized by growing international competition. The growth of interest in university-community engagement has led to multiple definitions of this term and a high level of complexity in defining what it entails. Using a…

The last decade has seen decline in the fortunes of the Library and Information Science (LIS) sector in the United Kingdom (UK), both in professional practice and in higher education. This paper sets out to assess the health and wellbeing of LIS teaching and research and to identify key strategies for its future survival. Over the past decade many…

This paper explores the experiences of eight Muslim women academics (MWA) within a range of sciences and humanities disciplines. The data draws from my doctoral study which examined the experiences of men and women Muslim academics at UK universities. Findings from in-depth interviews with participants highlight the intersectionality of…

There is a growing population of young people with autism entering higher education and successfully completing qualifications, however, their postgraduate outcomes are often some of the poorest. This study responds to the gap in research regarding the transition out of higher education and into the labour market for this group. It outlines a…

Objective: Alcohol misuse prevention often fails to account for or replace the pleasurable benefits of drinking such as relaxing and socialising with friends. Increasingly, alcohol-free dance music events are emerging, allowing people to gain the positive outcomes of dancing without recourse to alcohol. This study sought to explore whether…

The concept of rurality is at the centre of complex geopolitical, geosocial and cultural debates and research which foregrounds the concept of rurality is scarce. This paper seeks alternative perspectives on rurality through a secondary analysis of international doctoral theses contained in the EThOS repository of the British Library, an online…

This article addresses the negotiation of "queer religious" student identities in UK higher education. The "university experience" has generally been characterised as a period of intense transformation and self-exploration, with complex and overlapping personal and social influences significantly shaping educational spaces,…

This article explores the limits of student engagement in higher education in the United Kingdom through the social construction of student activists within media discourses. It scrutinises the impact of dominant neoliberal discourses on the notion of student engagement, constructing certain students as legitimately engaged whilst infantilising…

Mass expansion of the UK Higher Education (HE) sector is eroding its well-documented benefits -- leading many to question whether HE remains worthwhile. Avoiding the traditional approach of estimating the returns to HE, we investigate why many now feel that attending university will not yield any financial benefits. Using BSA data from 2010 we…

Autistic people are at high risk of dropping out of university, but little research has examined this issue. Fourteen autistic people participated in semi-structured interviews examining their experiences at university and the reasons they had dropped out. Thematic analysis identified patterns in participants' responses. Themes were categorised as…

This paper describes a new model of students' concern about indebtedness within a rank-based social norms framework. Study 1 found that students hold highly variable beliefs about how much other students will owe at the end of their degree. Students' concern about their own anticipated debt--and their intention of taking on a part-time job during…

Robust academic research on the topic of students involved in the sex industry is in its infancy, yet the relationship appears consistent and permanent. This paper draws on findings from the largest study into the stripping industry in the United Kingdom to explore the relationships between students, sex work and consumption. To make sense of the…