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If you have any issues with the online store, please contact Georgia Reeves at [email protected]

If you have any queries about the programme, please contact Dr Caitlin Knight at [email protected]

More Information

Student success has been a prominent theme in recent discussions of the future of Higher Education. Following the COVID-19 pandemic, and exacerbated by the current cost of living crisis, there is growing recognition that students are facing unprecedented challenges and universities must provide additional support in this context.

Recent studies have shown the consequence of this on students and their emotional experience of education, through the effect on their mental health and well-being.  A recent ONS (2022) report found that 36% of students said that their mental health and well-being was ‘slightly worse’ or ‘much worse now’ by March 2022 than when they started university in Autumn 2021.  In addition, 36% students reported that they felt lonely ‘often or always’ or ‘some of the time’ on campus.  The UPP Foundation (2022) Student Futures Commission recently put forward a manifesto emphasising the support needed for mental health and well-being for students to help deal with the challenges caused by the pandemic.  They argue that this should be part of a wider civic commitment between students, universities, and their communities.

This symposium proposes that we explore the journey of students through education by considering the different spaces that students inhabit as part of their experience of Higher Education and beyond.  Students are emotionally embedded in these spaces and this becomes part of the narrative of their educational experience, and how ‘successful’ they may deem this journey (and their future) to be.