July 2017
Summer School
Dr Emily Danvers coordinated the summer school ‘Research Methodologies Training for Equality and Diversity’ from 28 June-29 July which comprised a programme of activities - from research communication workshops to participating in an expert meeting about Gypsy, Roma and Traveller inclusion – to support Roma scholars, or those researching Roma. The summer school was part of HEIM Work Package 6 and the two key aims were for participants to:
- Write a reflective think piece about ‘Equality, Diversity and Internationalisation’. These will be published on the HEIM website by the end of August
- Present their research at a CHEER international conference ‘Disrupting International Discourses: Discussing Equity and Inclusion’.
Five participants attended:
- Imre Balong,University of Pécs, Hungary
- Mate Dezso, Eotvos Lorand University
- Tom Bass, Roma Education Fund
- Radu Lacatus, Babes- Bolyai University, Romania
- Ion Goracel, Western University of Timisoara, Romania
The summer school was a really productive space to exchange knowledge with researchers and colleagues working in different international contexts and to reflect on how the concepts of ‘equity, diversity and internationalisation’ might apply to Roma. We look forward to future collaborations with our new friends!
CHEER Graduation: 20 July
Congratulations to Dr Rose Kiishweko from Dar es Salaam, Tanzania, a CHEER PhD scholar who graduated this month. Her highly original and exciting thesis was on Albinism in Higher Education in Tanzania. Rose was supervised by Louise Morley, with Linda Morrice as her second supervisor.
June 2017
CHEER in Japan
CHEER members traveled to Japan for a week on 18 June 2017 to be hosted by the Research Institute for Japan, UK and Europe (RIJUE), University of Hiroshima. The team included CHEER’s Director, Professor Louise Morley; Co-director, Dr Emily Danvers; Research Fellow, Dr Charlotte Morris; Head of the Department of Education, Dr Simon Thompson; Assistant Director of the Doctoral School and doctoral researcher, Paul Roberts; and CHEER doctoral researcher, Daniel Leyton.
The purpose of the visit was to develop CHEER's research partnership with RIJUE; to collect data and exchange knowledge for co-authored papers and to discuss ideas for future research and publication collaborations.
The three research strands - agreed at a Sussex symposium in February 2017 - included Internationalisation with a focus on the experiences of International academics, Doctoral Studies, investigating training and skills development, andHigher Education Pedagogies with an emphasis on critical thinking.
See more details and photographs on the CHEER in Japan web page.
May 2017
Professor Louise Morley’s Guest Professorship at the University of Gothenburg, Sweden
May saw the end of Louise Morley’s prestigious Guest Professorship at the University of Gothenburg, Sweden. She spent a total of 12 weeks there between October 2016 and May 2017. In that time, Louise worked with Swedish colleagues to set up a Centre for Higher Education in Sweden, developed a research bid to the SPHEIR Programme, and conducted a research project on The Neoliberal University with Dr Petra Angervall, Dr Caroline Berggren and Dr Susanne Dodillet. She also gave a lecture series on Gender in the Neoliberal University.
Louise worked closely with the Swedish Secretariat for Gender Research where she gave lectures and workshops on Gender Mainstreaming. She also presented a range of seminars including Lost Leaders: Women in the Global Academy, at Mid-Sweden University Seminar Series, Sundsvall, Sweden, and The Hidden Narratives of Internationalisation, University of Gothenburg Seminar Series, October, 2016, and Troubling Intra-actions: Gender, Neoliberalism and Research in the Global Academy, Critical Education Seminar, University of Gothenburg Seminar Series, October, 2016.
Louise contributed to a symposium on The Neoliberal University at the 2017 NERA (Nordic Education Research Association) Conference in Copenhagen, March 2017 with colleagues from Uppsala (Minna Salminen Karlsson), Linnaeus (Charlotte Silander), and Gothenburg (Caroline Berggren) Universities in Sweden and the University of Helsinki in Finland (Sonja Kosunen).
Louise also attended a number of events including a seminar by Professor Karen Barad who was visiting Gothenburg from the USA to receive her honorary doctorate. Louise was delighted to spend time with eminent scholars of Higher Education Studies including Professor Elisabet Öhrn, Professor Dennis Beach, Professor Anders Olofsson and Dr Helen Peterson.
The Guest Professorship is opening up links between Sussex and Gothenburg. For example, in March 2017, Paul Roberts from the Doctoral School at Sussex visited Gothenburg to research doctoral studies in Sweden as part of an Erasmus+ programme. Louise is looking forward to co-authoring research papers and continuing her productive and enjoyable collaboration with higher education researchers from across Sweden.
April 2017
1. New book published
Louise Morley is the editor of a new edited collection published by Routledge, entitled Gender and Access to and Participation in Higher Education: The Europa World of Learning Essays 2017 (ISBN: 9781857438321).
The collection interrogates gender in the global academy and includes contributions from Hong Kong, Sri Lanka, Sweden and the UK. It addresses a range of contemporary challenges including gender-based violence, the exclusion of Roma women, the absence of women from senior leadership, gender equality policy paradoxes, and the negative socio-cultural constructions of women who choose to follow the life of the mind. The two-volume set includes chapter contributions from a number of CHEER members and Associates, including Maithree Wickramasinghe, Tamsin Hinton-Smith, Emily Danvers, Barbara Crossouard, Sarah Jane Aiston and Caroline Berggren.
2. Louise Morley presented the keynote Gendered Ecologies in Higher Education at the GenderInSITE Elsevier Foundation Seminar Integration of Gender Perspectives in Science and Technology in Higher Education: Contributions to the Advancement of SDGs, Buenos Aires, Argentina, April, 2017. The international seminar was attended by delegates from across Latin America, Europe and North America from a range of universities and projects, including UNESCO; The National Center for Women & Information Technology, USA; The GenPORT consortium and The International Council for Science. Recommendations from the seminar, including Louise's Manifesto for Change [PDF 333.22KB] from her research on women in leadership, were going forward to UNESCO.
3. On 5 April, Dr Rebecca Webb, Dr Tamsin Hinton-Smith and Dr Emily Danvers presented at the University of Sussex's Teaching and Learning Conference at which they ran a practical workshop drawing on their experiences of running a writing group for doctoral students. See the writing group's blog for more details of this initiative. In their presentation, they spoke back to dominant discourses of doctoral academic writing as individualised, isolating and linear by describing how the writing group aimed to foster a supportive, critical and creative space to write and to talk about the process of writing.
March 2017
1. Erasmus+ funding supports CHEER researcher
CHEER’s collaboration with the University of Gothenburg was further strengthened through the use of valuable 
EU mobility funding. Paul Roberts (Doctor of Education researcher and Assistant Director of the Doctoral School) visited the University of Gothenburg’s Faculty of Education and Gothenburg’s Grants and Innovation Office from 27-29 March 2017. Opportunities arising from the visit include: Improvements to the support for early career researchers being incorporated into the University of Sussex’s ‘HR Excellence in Research Award’ plans; links with members of the Swedish Gender Research Secretariat (whom we hope to welcome to CHEER); as well as a number of ideas of how the research and activities of CHEER and Gothenburg’s Faculty of Education could develop.
“This visit was of great benefit from an academic, professional and personal perspective. I would strongly encourage staff and students to engage with the Erasmus+ scheme and to lobby for its retention in light of BREXIT.” Paul Roberts
2. Louise Morley presented Troubling Intra-Actions: Gender, Neoliberalism and the Global Research Economy in the symposium Equity in the Neoliberalised Swedish University? at the Annual Conference of the Nordic Education Research Association (NERA), University of Aalborg, Copenhagen, in March. Other presenters included Caroline Berggren, University of Gothenburg and Charlotte Silander, Linnaeus University (Enterpreneurship in Higher Education), and Minna Salminen Karlsson, Uppsala University (Teacher-student Relationships in the Managerial University). The discussant was Sonja Kosunen, University of Helsinki. The symposium was attended by academics, students and equality officers from across the Nordic region.
3. On 14 March, Daniel Leyton presented a Research-in-Progress Seminar on his doctoral research ‘Widening Participation to Higher Education in Chile’. It was fascinating to hear his emerging findings about how global concerns with educational inclusion produce specific ‘desirable’ subjectivities for the students who are ‘included’.
4. Congratulations to Dr Emily Danvers who received Senior Fellowship of the Higher Education Academy. This award recognises Emily’s proven, sustained track record in leading high-quality teaching and learning in higher education.
February 2017
1. On 23 February, CHEER members, Dr Tamsin Hinton-Smith, Dr Emily Danvers and Tanja Jovanovic presented a Research Café for the Centre for International Education (CIE). Entitled Roma Students' Experiences in European Higher Education: Exploring Gender, Identity and Marginalisation [PPTX 5.76MB], their paper gave details of the HEIM project to MA students and departmental colleagues.
CIE Research Cafe: 23 February 2017
2. Who is the Critical Thinker in Higher Education?
Dr Emily Danvers and Dr Tamsin Hinton-Smith were keynote speakers at a University of Portsmouth research seminar on 15 February entitled ‘Who is the Critical Thinker in Higher Education’. Organised by Dr Francesca Salvi and the Women & Gender Studies Research Cluster, the seminar explored how critical thinking is encouraged and enacted by faculty and students and becoming a critical thinker intersects with students’ identities. Emily drew on her research with undergraduate students about how the student critical thinker is embodied and contextual and how discourses of criticality de-legitimate knowledge and bodies deemed ‘other’. Tamsin drew on her extensive experience teaching critical thinking to explore how the critical thinker and how teaching critical thinking might be more ethically re-imagined. The event was attended by an audience of students and staff and prompted a lively discussion about the multiple factors shaping ‘becoming’ a critical thinker for students and the importance of continuing to foster space for critical thinking in higher education practice.
3. CHEER has provided a written submission to the UK House of Commons Women and Equalities Committee inquiry into ‘Tackling inequalities faced by Gypsy, Roma and Traveller communities’. The summary of findings looks at strategies for the inclusion of Gypsy, Roma and Traveller communities in higher education.
January 2017
1. CHEER welcomed Dr Dorothy I-Ru Chen from the National Chi Nan University, Taiwan, on Thursday 19 January.
Dr Chen visited Professor Louise Morley to work on a research bid, and Professor John Pryor and Paul Roberts to explore how the UK doctorate compares and contrasts with doctorates in Taiwan. Dr Chen was especially interested in the interventions and strategies for doctoral training in the UK.
2. CHEER Welcomes Dr Charlotte Morris as new Research Fellow
Charlotte comes with a wealth of experience working in higher education, researching and supporting students with a particular specialism in student mental health and wellbeing. Charlotte will be working with us to support CHEER’s research activities and to promote and grow the research centre.
3. Proposal Presentation on HE Reform in Lebanon
CHEER doctoral researcher, Helen Murray, presented her research on ‘Higher Education in Conflict: The politics of higher education reform in Lebanon’ on Monday 16 January. It was wonderful to hear about this fascinating topic within higher education research and we hope to hear more data and analysis from Helen as her research progresses.
December 2016
1. New book published by CHEER Visiting Professors, Heather Eggins, The Changing Role of Women in Higher Education. With chapters by Miriam David (Women and Gender Equality in Higher Education), Louise Morley, Madeline Berma, and Bahiyah Dato’ Hj. Abdul Hamid (Managing Modern Malaysia: Women in Higher Education Leadership).
2. Tamsin Hinton-Smith, Emily Danvers and Rebecca Webb spoke at the ‘Ethics of Writing’ conference at the University of Brighton on 8 December on the topic ‘So is it a feminist group? Some reflections on ‘feminist’ ethical premises and practices of one post-graduate writing support group’. Their paper focused on the 'Writing into Meaning' doctoral group which ran this term at the University of Sussex and the extent to which this offered a productive, supportive space to think differently about writing practices and academic lives more broadly. The 'Writing into Meaning' blog has more information on the nature of the group, the kinds of activities that take place and the incredible student writing it has generated.
3. Congratulations to Tamsin Hinton-Smith who received Senior Fellowship of the Higher Education Academy. This award recognises Tamsin’s proven, sustained track record in leading high-quality teaching and learning in higher education.
November 2016
1. Dr Barbara Crossouard provided a keynote address in Delhi, India, entitled ‘Women in STEMM in the UK: more questions than answers?’ which was delivered to the Trilateral Workshop on Women in STEMM (Science, Technology, Engineering, Mathematics and Medicine) with the Australian Department of Industry, Innovation and Science in partnership with the Ministry of Science and Technology, India and the British High Commission (New Delhi). In attendance were Ministry officials, ambassadorial staff from the three host countries, professional associations and institutes (including the Indian National Science Association, Indian Institute of Science, George Institute for Global Health, Royal Society, UK) and national bodies working on equality in higher education (such as the Equality Challenge Unit, UK), as well as academics from each host country.
2. Louise in Taiwan
University of Tainan - keynote speaker
Louise was the keynote speaker at the International Conference on Public Education and Equity, University of Tainan, 18-19 November, presenting Lost Leaders: Women in the Global Academy. Hosted by the Department of Education in the National University of Tainan, the conference was attended by academics, doctoral scholars, policymakers and community organisations from the Asia Pacific region.
Doctoral Lecture
Louise also presented a lecture to postgraduate scholars and staff on The Hidden Narratives of Internationalisation. The presentation was based on research findings from Work Package 2 of the HEIM project.
Knowledge Exchange
While in Taiwan, Louise had meetings with a range of colleagues in the field of higher education, including from the Ministry of Education, the Higher Education Evaluation and Accreditation Council of Taiwan and the Chinese Taipei Comparative Education Society.
CHEER is looking forward to future research and doctoral collaboration with colleagues in Taiwan.
3. Louise in Australia (1)
Deakin University - keynote speaker
Louise was one of the keynote speakers at the 'Disrupting Higher Education Dialogues International Conference', Deakin University, Melbourne, Australia, 23-25 November, presenting Troubling Intra-actions: Gender, Neoliberalism and Research in the Global Knowledge Economy, and participating in panel discussions throughout the conference.
Sponsored by the Research for Educational Impact (REDI) Strategic Research Centre, the conference offered theoretical and future oriented provocations on a wide range of relevant issues through a dialogue among leading international and Australian scholars. It was attended by academics, doctoral scholars and a range of community organisations and trade unions.
4. Louise in Australia (2)
Louise attended the Australian Association for Research in Education Annual Conference, Melbourne, 27 November- 1 December, presenting Women in Higher Education Leadership in South Asia: Willfulness and Willingness in the symposium 'Leading in the Neoliberal University: Gender, Voice and Inclusion in the Global Academy' led by Professor Jill Blackmore, with Professor Lyn Yates as the respondent.
5. Tamsin in Cuba
Dr Tamsin Hinton-Smith, Senior Lecturer in Higher Education, presented her research on Universities and Inequality: Reasserting class exclusion at the Conference of New Political Science, University of Havana, Cuba, 14-18 November. Her paper paper drew on an ongoing funded research project that aims to put class back on the agenda in addressing HE inequalities. Interviews with teachers, pupils and parents at schools selected for low university participation rates are used to explore and expose the mechanisms by which working-class young people continue to be excluded from universities, particularly the elite institutions that feed into positions of political power, in spite of interventions ostensibly aimed at increasing equity of opportunity.
The photo shows Tamsin with her co-confrencees and presenters, Dr Diana Pardo, Professor of Spanish and Department Chair of Modern Languages at the University of Central Oklahoma; and Roosa Jolkkonen, Doctoral candidate in social Policy at Oxford University.
6. CHEER-hosted Research-in-Progress Seminar
CHEER doctoral researcher, Kourosh Kouchakpour presented his work on Monday 14 November to peers and faculty. In a presentation entitled ‘Students’ Experiences of Participation in Learning: a Case Study of the BSC programme in Civil Engineering in an Iranian University’, Kourosh chose to focus on one particular aspect of his thesis about institutional barriers to learning. He provided a fascinating insight into the complexity of factors affecting students’ participation – from gender discourses to the nature of university authority and its interconnections with state power. We look forward to hearing more!
7. Visit from Roma Scholars
CHEER welcomed three visitors this month: Danut Dumitru (Director of Advocacy, Roma Education Fund, Romania), Gabriela Petre (PhD researcher, Romania) and Albena Velcheva (PhD researcher, Bulgaria). These scholars and activists associated with the Roma Education Fund (REF) are working to close the gap between Roma and non-Roma in education. The REF are a key partner on our HEIM project which looks at how principles of equity and inclusion can be applied to internationalisation strategies and programmes in higher education.
Danut, Gabriela and Albena met with colleagues from the Widening Participation team here at Sussex to share best practice and ideas for supporting marginalised groups to access higher education opportunities across Europe. The group also worked together to produce a film about Roma in higher education in which experiences were shared of Roma in higher education and experts of advocacy for Roma educational rights. The film will be launched at a HEIM event on 12 July 2017. Details to follow.
8. New Mediations of Feminist Sociology of Education - featuring Professor Miriam David
Monday 7 Nov 2016
2-6.30pm
Nunn Hall, UCL, Institute of Education
Contact Joanna Gzik to reserve a place: j.gzik@ucl.ac.uk
October 2016
CHEER welcomes Dr Emily Danvers as a new Lecturer in CHEER. Emily will be contributing to research and teaching in the Department around her specialist areas of higher education pedagogy, feminist theory and social inclusion. She will also be the new Co-Director of CHEER, covering some of Professor Morley’s duties while the latter is on secondment at the University of Gothenburg, Sweden.
September 2016
CHEER Research Fellow, Tanja Jovanovic, presented details of CHEER's research project 'Higher Education, Internationalisation and Mobility' and a short film at the 'Roma and Traveller Identity Now Conference 2016' in London on Saturday 17 September. Hosted by the Advisory Council for the Education of Romany and other Travellers (ACERT), other presenters included members of the Romany Traveller Family History, members of Friends Family and Travellers, and individual Travellers talking about their experiences.