CGHE Annual Conference

CGHE Annual Conference 2021: Remaking higher education for a more equal world

Date: Tuesday, 11 May 2021 12:00 pm to Wednesday, 12 May 2021 2:00 pm

Location: Online virtual conference

Speaker(s):

Thumbnail finalfinalconference

The CGHE annual conference returns for its sixth edition in 2021, taking place online as a virtual conference.

The conference sessions will take place over two half-days, starting on the afternoon of Tuesday 11 May 2021 from 12pm until 6pm, then on Wednesday 12 May 2021 from 9am to 1.50pm. The conference will open on the morning of Tuesday 11 May to allow for networking opportunities ahead of the formal sessions starting.

Read the CGHE project-related publications.

Day One Agenda: Tuesday 11 May 2021

Opening remarks

WATCH THIS SESSION

12.00pm (UK time)
Simon Marginson, CGHE Director & University of Oxford

Remaking higher education

12.15pm-1.10pm
Chair: Simon Marginson, CGHE Director & University of Oxford
Speakers: Paul Ashwin, Lancaster University
David Mills, University of Oxford
Rachel Brooks, University of Surrey
Maia Chankseliani, University of Oxford
Golo Henseke, UCL Institute of Education
Janja Komljenovic, Lancaster University
Diana Laurillard, UCL Institute of Education
Tristan McCowan, UCL Institute of Education
James Robson, University of Oxford

Tertiary and higher education now engages 40 per cent of the school leaver age group on a worldwide basis. But the sector faces many challenges in societies becoming more unequal, not only because of the pandemic but because of an unjust and racialised political economy. How can we remake higher education for the post-pandemic future? Join our CGHE speakers for this session, when each has four minutes to propose her/his best idea for transforming the sector and its contribution to students, to more equal societies and to a better world. Give us your own best ideas in the Q&A and in the session Chat!

KEYNOTE – 2021 Burton R. Clark Lecture

Tertiary education systems and diversification: Adapting the wisdom of Burton Clark in promoting effective and inclusive reforms around the world

WATCH THIS SESSION

VIEW THE PRESENTATION SLIDES

1.20pm-2.25pm
Chair: Ellen Hazelkorn, Technological University Dublin
Speaker: Roberta Malee Bassett, Global Lead for Tertiary Education and Senior Education Specialist at the World Bank

“With each passing decade a modern or modernizing system of higher education is expected and inspired to do more for other portions of society, organized and unorganized, from strengthening the economy and invigorating government, to developing individual talents and personalities and aiding the pursuit of happiness. We also ask that this sector of society do more in its own behalf in fulfilling such grand and expanding missions as conserving the cultural heritage and producing knowledge. This steady accretion of realistic expectations cannot be stopped, let alone reversed.” (B. Clark, 1987).

This talk will focus on tertiary education systems, the holistic whole that encompasses all formal post-secondary education, and it is in large measure because of Burton Clark and his peers that we have the foundations upon which to build tertiary education systems that can serve the evolving and fickle expectations of society. Rarely does global research (or even global conferences) on higher education focus on whole tertiary systems and the breadth of institutions and stakeholders and missions that are captured in a well-developed system. Research universities generally dominate the discourse on higher education: world-class universities, ranked universities, prestigious universities. But, globally, research-intensive universities are the exception and not the norm in their educational ecosystems. Most universities outside the wealthiest countries do not conduct extensive research and are not staffed by research-focused academics, and most students globally attend teaching-focused institutions. The well-developed tertiary education system is a symbiotic and organic network of diverse institutions, with complementary but distinct missions, populations, and expected outcomes. This lecture will focus on the importance and benefits of expanding the discourse on global higher education to focus more attention and intention on supporting diversified and well-articulated systems of higher education to promote improved access, equity, outcomes, and resilience.

As a policy advisor, I come at this discourse from a macro-perspective – outside of institutions and governments – and that perspective will frame my lecture, which is centered on the theme of this conference – Remaking higher education for a more equal world. It will consist of four parts, all of which, in varying degrees, utilize the wisdom of Burton Clark as conceptual frameworks. In the first, I will contextualize the impact of higher education on the individual by briefly describing my own experience, in which higher education has been the most transformative and consistently present element of my life to date. Part 2 will move the discussion from the individual to tertiary education systems and feature elements of the upcoming World Bank position paper on tertiary education, which seeks to offer policy practitioners a framework for steering their tertiary education sectors through a time of uncertainty. Part 3 will illustrate the application of the World Bank’s framework to global higher education today, as a result of COVID-19 and the changes brought by rapid adaptation to nearly catastrophic disruption and in spite of these COVID-19 impacts; and Part 4 will close with ideas on the signal – what we need to know and understand to impact what higher education is and should be – and the noise – all the rhetoric and historical baggage and political posturing, etc. – regarding what’s coming for global higher education.

KEYNOTE – Fair access to English universities in the 21st century: a story in five parts

WATCH THIS SESSION

VIEW THE PRESENTATION SLIDES

2.30pm-3.20pm
Chair: Alis Oancea, University of Oxford
Speaker: Chris Millward, Director for Fair Access and Participation, Office for Students

During the 21st century to date, governments in England have positioned access to higher education centrally within meritocratic policies aiming to improve equality of opportunity. This has been pursued by: increasing the number of university places and sharing the cost of this with students once they have graduated; providing funding to universities to conduct outreach with schools, create pathways through further education colleges and support students on course; and requiring universities to provide financial support to the poorest students and set targets for improving access through regulated plans.

This session will consider how these interventions have influenced patterns of access to higher education in England and it will anticipate further changes to policy during the coming years. In doing so, it will tell a story in five parts, covering: the period until 2006 when widening participation was funded by government grant; the introduction of up to £3k fees and the establishment of an access regulator from 2006; the increase of tuition fees to £9k from 2012 and the aim to position students at the heart of the system; the establishment of the Office for Students as the regulator of higher education, including access and participation, from 2018; and the prospects for the period until 2025 as higher education in England recovers from the coronavirus pandemic.

Can we remake higher education to address socio-economic, ethnic and gender inequality?

WATCH THIS SESSION

3.25pm-4.15pm
Chair: Jürgen Enders, University of Bath
Speakers: Ellen Hazelkorn, Technological University Dublin
Aniko Horvath, University of Oxford
Stephen Hunt, University of Oxford
Diana Laurillard, UCL Institute of Education
Michael Shattock, University of Oxford

Higher education is undergoing continuous transformation but is this fostering greater social equality or the reverse? This panel session will use recent CGHE research to interrogate key trends in the sector – the modernisation of forms of governance in five countries in Europe, which could be the starting point for greater equality (but is it?); the expansion of access through the subsidised private colleges in England, where drop out and low employability suggest that the old inequalities of access are being relocated inside the sector; and the role of online delivery and learning in fostering large scale professional development, where the equality story might be more positive.

Re-envisioning Research on Research for Higher Education

WATCH THIS SESSION

VIEW THE PRESENTATION SLIDES

4.20pm-5.00pm
Chair: Janja Komljenovic, Lancaster University
Speakers: Alis Oancea, University of Oxford
Gemma Derrick, Lancaster University
James Robson, University of Oxford
Xin Xu, University of Oxford

We will introduce the new CGHE Project on “The research function and mission of higher education” (2020-2023), and also locate it within the wider research on research conducted by our team. We invite the audience to contribute ideas, questions and experiences to the first phase of the project; to reflect on our wider initiatives; to learn about doctoral researchers we work with; and to connect with our work over the next two years. The project draws together multi-disciplinary scholarship and a strong comparative dimension, internationally and institutionally, in order to study the importance of the research function in understanding the dynamics of higher education. It will explore research assessment systems, organisational practices that shape the weight and value given to academic research, and individual perspectives on the importance and recognition of research in higher education in six countries/regions, using a combination of methods including qualitative interviews, bibliometrics, network mapping and comparative policy analysis.

Too many graduates? – Perpetuating or challenging inequalities

WATCH THIS SESSION

5.10pm-6.00pm
Chair: James Robson, University of Oxford
Speakers: Paul Ashwin, Lancaster University
Claire Callender, UCL Institute of Education and Birkbeck
Ariane de Gayardon, University of Twente
Golo Henseke, UCL Institute of Education

In public debates, questions are increasingly being raised about whether we now have too many graduates. In this panel session, we will draw on data from three CGHE projects to discuss whether the increasing number of graduates serves to perpetuate or challenge social inequalities.

Read the CGHE project publications.

———————————————————————————————————————————————————————-

Day Two Agenda: Wednesday 12 May 2021

Supranational spaces and the remaking of Higher Education

WATCH THIS SESSION

9.00am-9.40am
Chair: Xin Xu, University of Oxford
Speakers: Maia Chankseliani, University of Oxford
Tristan McCowan, UCL Institute of Education
Rachel Brooks, University of Surrey
David Mills, University of Oxford
Lee Rensimer, UCL Institute of Education
Natia Sopromadze, University of Oxford
Natasha Robinson, University of Oxford

This project panel introduces a new CGHE research stream exploring the role of supranational higher education collaborations and networks in remaking global higher education. A set of four empirical sub-projects are investigating these supranational spaces and assemblages, and the flows of finances, people, knowledge and policies they enable. Three of these have a regional focus – Europe, Africa, and Central and Western Asia – and the fourth focuses on global Higher Education aid and resource flows. The regional projects involve mapping relevant actors, both from within and outside the sector, and developing case studies. For example, the European sub-project is focusing on the new European University Initiative, the Africa project is exploring China-Africa university alliances, whilst the project on Central and Western Asia maps how multilateral, philanthropic and bilateral actors support the formation of a regional higher education space. The analysis of aid flows complements this by seeking to quantify and understand the changing nature of aid to HE, as well as the largest and most influential actors and their modalities of support. The four teams are working closely together, using empirical findings to help develop new conceptual understandings and insights. A key question for all the projects is the relative influence of ‘external’ policy and funding actors – such as regional blocs like the EU, multilateral organisations such as the World Bank, bilateral donors, or major philanthropies – as opposed to ‘internal’ university-led regional networks and collaborations. In bringing the four sub-projects together, this research stream will explore the limitations of conventional scalar theorisations of policy spaces (e.g. local, national, global) for understanding supranational dynamics. Can supranational networks result from local initiatives and agendas? Is there a shift from state and inter-state actors to non-state and private ones? Are supranational policy spaces, institutional collaborations and resource flows intertwined, and if so in what ways? After short speeches from the four research leaders the panel will propose questions for discussion.

KEYNOTE – Globalisation: The good, the bad and the ugly

WATCH THIS SESSION

VIEW THE PRESENTATION SLIDES

9.50am-10.40am
Chair: David Mills, University of Oxford
Speaker: Simon Marginson, CGHE Director & University of Oxford

Luhmann remarked that the decisive step towards world society was ‘the full discovery of the globe as a closed sphere of meaningful communication’, and knowledge and higher education are at the centre of world-spanning practices. Although higher education is entrenched in nation-states, no sector is more global (especially science) aside from communication itself. At best globalisation, which in neutral terms means worldwide integration and convergence, offers a pathway out of the national container that blocks our normative interdependence and global ecology. There science is the best hope. But globalisation is not neutral in practice, it is soaked in relations of power, with more than one project and claim upon it. In the last three decades the dominant form of globalisation has been Anglo-American in language and knowledge, neo-imperial in form, and high capitalist and white supremacist in culture. It has been no coincidence that in the last decade, when the slippage of Anglo-American power has become apparent, with the rise of China and global middle powers like India and Iran independent of Euro-America, that there has been an upsurge of activism pitched against the white supremacist culture embodied in the hitherto dominant Anglo-American forms. The shifts in global geo-politics pose immense challenges for higher education and science because the Western ‘World-Class University’ is implicated in the hegemonic project on and offshore, not just in terms of racism but in the imposition of knowledge hierarchies that exclude non Anglo-American content to a quite remarkable extent (though the same universities also enable anti-hegemony within spaces that in some countries are relatively free). Global science and social science are autonomous, which is really essential if they are to flourish, yet are largely closed to non-English language and indigenous knowledges. How to diversify and open up higher education and science, on the basis of a global unity-in-diversity, while fostering, protecting and advancing their autonomous agency, in the face of pressures from companies to commercialise and nation-states to seize control of science as an instrument of technological nationalism?

“There is a crack in everything, that’s how the light gets in”: higher education and mental health

WATCH THIS SESSION

10.50am-11.50pm
Chair: Ka Ho Mok, Lingnan University
Speakers: Padmore Adusei Amoah, Lingnan University
Jason Arday, Durham University
Gemma Lewis, University College London

This session focuses on mental health and higher education from different perspectives. Dr. Gemma Lewis, a psychiatric epidemiologist, will explore existing evidence on the mental health of HE students compared with the rest of the population, discuss mental health inequalities and risk factors within the HE population, and how we might intervene to address these. Dr. Jason Arday, a sociologist, will concentrate on Black and Minority Ethnic (BME) mental health within the Academy. Dr. Padmore Amoah, a social epidemiologist, will talk about the impact of Covid on the psychological wellbeing of international students and how they perceive the support systems available to them.

How can higher education outcomes build a more equal world?

WATCH THIS SESSION

12.00pm-12.50pm
Chair: Claire Callender, UCL Institute of Education and Birkbeck
Speakers: Vincent Carpentier, UCL Institute of Education
Ka Ho Mok, Lingnan University
Lili Yang, University of Oxford

Higher education makes an immense range of contributions to human societies. As well as the economic and social benefits secured by individual graduates (the outcomes which receive the main attention) it more broadly forms individuals as self-determining agents and generates a great range of collective goods, from community building, knowledge and social-political capability to tolerance and the international understanding that comes from educational mobility. Higher education has the potential to both stratify and equalise, to offer closure or open possibilities: the question is how to ensure that its contributions to the public and common good, including the global common good, are uppermost. The panel will sweep across the economic history of the higher education sector, the public good in contrasting countries and the mobility journey between Western Europe/UK and East Asia/China in exploring higher education’s potential contributions to a more equal world.

Read the CGHE project publications.

From the conference – contributions from participants on Remaking higher education for a more equal world, followed by conference close

WATCH THIS SESSION

1.00pm-1.50pm
Chair: Paul Ashwin, Lancaster University
Speakers: Conference participants

1.50pm-2.00pm
Chair: Simon Marginson, University of Oxford and CGHE Director

The final session will bring forward ideas for remaking higher education that have come out of the Q&A, session Chat and breakout groups during the conference. It will be followed by the short closing session.

Booking

You will need to register to attend the conference. Please register here.

Professor Simon Marginson

Simon Marginson is Professor of Higher Education at the University of Oxford, founding Director of the ESRC/RE Centre for Global Higher Education (CGHE), Joint Editor-in-Chief of Higher Education, and a Professorial Associate with the University of Melbourne. Simon’s research is focused primarily on global and international higher education, the global science system, higher education in East Asia, the contributions of higher education, and higher education and social inequality. Simon led CGHE’s project 8 which investigated the public good role of higher education in ten countries. The project found that while a broad notion of public good has been largely emptied out of policy in the English-speaking countries, where economic definitions of individualised pecuniary value are dominant, recognition of the broader individual and collective outcomes of higher education continues in different ways in other jurisdictions including France, Finland, South Korea and China. The study in England discovered however that despite the narrow economic framing used by Westminster policy makers, both higher education practitioners and policy professionals believe that higher education makes a large and multiple contribution to both national and global public goods.

Professor Paul Ashwin

Paul Ashwin is Professor of Higher Education, Lancaster University. He played a key role in creating CGHE, was a CGHE Deputy Director and led the Centre’s Graduate Experiences of Employability and Knowledge project.

Professor Rachel Brooks

Rachel Brooks was a CGHE Co-Investigator on Project 9, ‘Mapping supranational higher education space’.

Professor Claire Callender

Claire Callender is Professor of Higher Education Studies at IOE, UCL’s Faculty of Education and Society. She is a Deputy Director of CGHE. Claire led on CGHE Project 5, ‘Student loan debt and graduate decision-making’ which explored the impact of income-contingent student loan debt on English graduates’ lives using both quantitative and qualitative methods. It showed how loan debt can have negative effects on graduates’ lives.

Dr Vincent Carpentier

Vincent Carpentier is a Reader in History of Education at IOE, UCL’s Faculty of Education and Society. He was responsible for CGHE Project 7, ‘A historical lens on higher education staffing: UK and France’. Key outcomes from this project included papers such as Three Stories of Institutional Differentiation: Resource, Mission and Social Inequalities in Higher Education (Policy Reviews in Higher Education 2021) and Academic Workforce in France and the UK in Historical Perspectives (Comparative Education 2023- with Emmanuelle Picard), recently reported in the Conversation (2023) . He was also a Co-Investigator on Project 8, ‘Local and global public good of higher education: 10 nation study’ examining the French context presented in the paper Public Good in French Universities: Principles and practices of the “Republican” Model of Higher education (Compare 2022- with Aline Courtois).

Associate Professor Maia Chankseliani

Maia Chankseliani is Associate Professor of Comparative and International Education at the University of Oxford, UK. She works at the intersection of tertiary education and development. Her work as part of CGHE Project 9 included a seminal paper on international development higher education, as well as explorations of regional spaces in higher education and cross-border flows of funding for globally visible research in the Global South.

Dr Ariane de Gayardon

Ariane de Gayardon is Assistant Professor at the Center for Higher Education Policy Studies (CHEPS) at the University of Twente in the Netherlands. Her research focuses on the financing of higher education internationally and its interaction with equity, including topics such as free higher education and student debt.

Gemma Derrick

Gemma Derrick is Associate Professor (Research Policy & Culture) at The University of Bristol and a CGHE Co-Investigator on CGHE Project 3, ‘Research on Research: the research function and mission of higher education’.

Professor Jürgen Enders

Jürgen Enders is Professor at the School of Management, University of Bath, UK. His academic interest is focused on the study of institutional change in the field of universities, and their role in society and economy. He has written and (co)edited 15 books and published more than 150 articles in books and journals including Organization Studies, Public Management, Public Management Review, Studies in Higher Education, Higher Education and Scientometrics. He is member of the editorial board of the journals Higher Education and European Journal of Higher Education. Elsevier and University of Stanford released data has recently named him among the top 2% of most highly cited academics in the world in the social sciences. Jürgen is an affiliate of the Center for Global Higher Education, Fellow of the Academia Europaea and of the German Academe of Science and Engineering, and Honorary Fellow of the Society for Research in Higher Education.

Professor Ellen Hazelkorn

Professor Ellen Hazelkorn is Joint Managing Partner, BH Associates education consultants. She is Professor emeritus, Technological University Dublin (Ireland), and Joint Editor, Policy Reviews in Higher Education. She is a member of the CGHE Leadership Forum and Research Fellow, Centre for International Higher Education, Boston College. Ellen is, inter alia, a member of the Quality Board for Icelandic Higher Education, the EU Higher Education for Smart Specialisation (HESS) Advisory Group, and the Committee for Strategic Advice, EURASHE – the European Association of Institutions in Higher Education. She was a member of the Commission for the College of the Future (UK) and the Tertiary Education Future Initiative (Royal Society of Edinburgh & Young Academy of Scotland). She reviewed Post-Compulsory Education in Wales recommending the Commission for Tertiary Education and Research (CTER), now being established by the Welsh Government. Ellen Hazelkorn is a member of the CGHE Research Management Committee and a CGHE Co-Investigator on Project 6, ‘The impact of locality and region on university governance’.

Dr Golo Henseke

Golo Henseke, an Associate Professor at UCL’s Faculty of Education and Society (IOE), is an applied economist with a track record of publications in leading journals and leadership in diverse, externally funded research projects.

Dr Aniko Horvath

Aniko Horvath is a CGHE Co-Investigator on Project 6, ‘The impact of locality and region on university governance’.

Dr Stephen Hunt

Stephen Hunt was a CGHE Co-Investigator on the former Project 3.1, ‘Alternative, emerging and cross-border higher education provision and its relationship with mainstream provision’.

Dr Janja Komljenovic

Janja Komljenovic is a Senior Lecturer at Lancaster University, where her research focuses on the political economy of higher education; and the digitalisation, datafication and platformisation of universities.

Professor Diana Laurillard

Diana Laurillard leads CGHE Project 2, ‘Realising the potential of digital technology for scaling up higher education’. Diana is Professor of Learning with Digital Technologies, UCL Knowledge Lab. Formerly Head of the e-Learning Strategy Unit at Department for Education and Skills (2002-5); Pro-Vice Chancellor for learning technologies at the Open University (1995-2002). Recent book: Teaching as a Design Science, Routledge. Researching MOOCs, learning design, and digital games for dyscalculia.

Professor Tristan McCowan

Tristan McCowan is Professor of International Education at the Institute of Education, University College London. His work focuses on higher education in the international context, including issues of access, curriculum, alternative models and sustainability. His CGHE Project 9 explored the supranational space in higher education – the ways in which this space is formed and developed above or beyond nation-states, the actors that form this space, and the resource and knowledge flows within this space, and between the national, regional, and supranational spaces.

David Mills

David Mills is Director of the Centre for Global Higher Education. He is an Associate Professor at the Department of Education at the University of Oxford, and Vice-President of Kellogg College. He is also Treasurer of the European Association of Social Anthropologists (EASA), and a non-executive director of African Books Collective. His current research interests include the political economy of academic research and publishing in Africa. His most recent book is ‘Who Counts: Ghanaian Academic Publishing and Global Science’, co-written with colleagues from the University of Ghana and Oxford.

Professor Ka Ho Mok

Professor Joshua Mok Ka-ho is, until the end of May 2024, the Vice-President and concurrently Lam Man Tsan Chair Professor of Comparative Policy of Lingnan University. He is also a Deputy Director of CGHE. Before joining Lingnan, he was the Vice President (Research and Development) and Chair Professor of Comparative Policy of The Education University of Hong Kong, and the Associate Dean and Professor of Social Policy, Faculty of Social Sciences of The University of Hong Kong. Prior to this, Professor Mok was appointed as the Founding Chair Professor in East Asian Studies and established the Centre for East Asian Studies at the University of Bristol, United Kingdom. Ka Ho Mok led CGHE Project 10, ‘UK international graduates in mass media and public perceptions: A comparative study of the UK, Mainland China, Hong Kong and Taiwan’.

Professor Alis Oancea

Alis is Professor of Philosophy of Education and Research Policy at the University of Oxford and Project Lead (Research on Research) at the ESRC Centre for Global Higher Education, as well as Social Sciences Division Advocate for Impact (Responsible Engagement and Innovation). In recent years, she was Director of Research in the Oxford University Department of Education and REF2021 coordinator for the unit. Through scholarly and professional collaborations, she hopes to champion knowledge, justice, generosity and integrity in research practices and discourses, research policy and research leadership and cultures in different types of organisation. She has led and collaborated on research projects, change and development initiatives, and administrative processes on impact and knowledge exchange, and held advisory and leadership roles in education reform and research assessment. She has conducted research on research ecosystems, values in research, open knowledge, impact, ethics and integrity, epistemic diversity, research careers, understandings of quality and excellence, research assessment, research in teacher education, philosophy of research, and principled research practice. Alis is the joint editor of the Oxford Review of Education, chief editorial advisor on Routledge Open Research (Education), and co-editor of the forthcoming ‘Handbook of Meta-Research’ (Elgar). Alis Oancea led CGHE Project 3, ‘Research on Research: the research function and mission of higher education’.

Dr Lee Rensimer

Lee Rensimer is a Lecturer at IOE, UCL’s Faculty of Education and Society and was a CGHE Research Fellow on Project 9, ‘Mapping supranational higher education space’, where he collaborated on two research streams.

Dr James Robson

James Robson is Co-Director of Oxford University’s Centre for Skills, Knowledge, and Organisational Performance (SKOPE), Associate Professor of Tertiary Education Systems, and leads Oxford’s MSc in HE. He was a CGHE co-investigator on Project 3, ‘Research on Research: the research function and mission of higher education’.

Dr Natasha Robinson

Natasha Robinson is a Postdoctoral Research Officer on Project 9, ‘Mapping supranational higher education space’.

Professor Michael Shattock

Michael Shattock is a Visiting Professor at UCL Institute of Education and an Honorary Research Fellow in the Department of Education at Oxford. He was formerly Registrar of the University of Warwick. He holds Honorary Degrees from Aberdeen, Leicester, Reading and Warwick Universities and from the University of Education, Ghana and is an OBE. He led the Governance group within CGHE which has been responsible for the following books published by Bloomsbury: The Governance of British Higher Education—The impact of governmental, financial and market pressures (2019), The Governance of European Higher Education—Convergence or Divergence? (2023), and Universities and Regions—The impact of locality and region on university governance and strategies (2023).

Dr Natia Sopromadze

Natia Sopromadze is a Postdoctoral Research Officer on CGHE Project 9, ‘Mapping supranational higher education space’.

Dr Xin Xu

Xin Xu (许心) is a Departmental Lecturer in Higher/Tertiary Education at the University of Oxford. Her research concentrates on higher/tertiary education and research.

Lili Yang

Lili Yang is an assistant professor at Faculty of Education, the University of Hong Kong. Previously, she was a PhD researcher and then a postdoctoral researcher at CGHE. Her research interests include higher education, cross-cultural comparison of higher education, and higher education policy. Her forthcoming book is titled ‘Higher Education, State and Society: Comparing the Chinese and Anglo-American Approaches’ (Bloomsbury).

Roberta Malee Bassett

Roberta Malee Bassett, PhD, is Global Lead for Tertiary Education at the World Bank, where she leads reform efforts addressing issues such as equity/inclusion; finance, governance, and quality assurance; internationalization; research/innovation/competitiveness; skills and outcomes; and remote delivery/learning. Before joining the Bank, Dr Bassett worked for many years in both university administration and academia, having served in such roles as lecturer in higher education management and policy at University of Southampton (UK) and Assistant Dean for Continuing Studies and Summer Session at Stanford University (USA).

Chris Millward

Chris Millward is the first Director for Fair Access and Participation in the Office for Students (OfS). His role is to ensure that universities and colleges are doing all they can to support underrepresented groups to access and succeed in higher education. Chris is also an executive member of the OfS board.

Professor Padmore Adusei Amoah

Padmore Adusei Amoah is a Research Assistant Professor in the School of Graduate Studies, and Asia Pacific Institute of Ageing Studies of Lingnan University, Hong Kong. His research centres on social epidemiology and social policy issues on health-related wellbeing among children, youth, older persons, and migrants.

Dr Jason Arday

Dr Jason Arday is an Associate Professor in Sociology at Durham University in the Department of Sociology. He is a Visiting Research Fellow at The Ohio State University in the Office of Diversity and Inclusion, an Adjunct Professor at Nelson Mandela University in the Centre for Critical Studies in Higher Education Transformation and a Trustee of the Runnymede Trust, the UK’s leading Race Equality Thinktank. Jason is also a Trustee of the British Sociological Association (BSA) and a Fellow of the Royal Society of Arts (RSA). He sits on the Centre for Labour and Social Studies (CLASS) National Advisory Panel and is a School Governor at Shaftesbury Park Primary School in London.

Dr Gemma Lewis

Dr Lewis is a psychiatric epidemiologist whose research focuses on the causes, prevention and treatment of common mental health problems including depression and anxiety. Her research also includes self-harm and suicidality, which are strongly associated with depression and anxiety. She uses large population-based datasets and advanced methods of causal inference to inform prevention. She analyses data from large pragmatic clinical trials, to inform treatment. As depression and anxiety often begin during adolescence, much of her research focuses on young people.