Louise Banahene Reflects on Access, Success, and Progression in Advance of UKCGE’s 2nd Conference on ED&I

Louise Banahene PFHEA MBE is the Director of Educational Engagement and Student Success at University of Leeds. Louise is an experienced higher education leader with a focus on equity, access, and inclusion in student journeys. Her experience led her to be awarded an MBE in 2018 for services to Higher Education. She was awarded the Principal Fellowship of the Higher Education Academy in 2021. 

Louise will be speaking as a keynote at the 2nd UKCGE Conference on Equity, Diversity and Inclusion in PG Research taking place 14 — 15 November 2024 in Brighton. 

Can you start by introducing yourself and your role at University of Leeds?

I’m Louise Banahene. I’m Director of Educational Engagement and Student Success at University of Leeds. So, I have responsibility for, really, the enrichment of the learning experience for all students. It spans access, student success, and progression. Within that, it’s also thinking about how do we diversify the pipeline into PhD study, as well as PGT, and how do we enhance that experience for our postgraduate students? I have the advantage of being able to, I suppose, have oversight of that from pre-HE entry right the way through. So that really helps with that oversight. 

What are your current equity and inclusion goals regarding post graduate education? What are the needs specific to PGE regarding ED&I at Leeds? 

LB: At the University of Leeds, it is underpinned by our access and student success strategy. That has an overarching vision, which is around our students feeling like they matter, and they belong and that they can thrive when they’re at the university. Then, there’s a set of priorities which are relevant to all levels of study. 

Then we also have some targets within that. And [they’re] really based on evidence, both quantitative and qualitative. So, at PGT level, it’s thinking about some of the outcomes for our postgraduate taught students and how we can enhance those, particularly thinking about that pipeline through to PhD study. 

At PhD level, it’s about increasing the diversity of our PhD students. It’s a good example, really, where the target, in both cases, heavily features ethnically minoritised students. Based on data, it’s where we see the greatest difference in terms of access and experience. But, there’s an absolute recognition that it’s a very different picture; it’s not a homogenous group. However, irrespective of which ethnically minoritised group you are in, you are underrepresented at the university. So, there’s more granular detail that sits within that. 

What resources have you been highlighting or providing at the University specifically for doctoral candidates that are experiencing marginalisation, for example ethnically minoritised groups?

LB: Specifically for our PhD or potential PhD students, one of the things that we’ve been doing is around addressing what we describe as the ​“hidden curriculum.” So, acknowledging that for a lot of PhD students, if you don’t have that experience or you don’t have anybody who’s been through that before, that can feel like a very difficult route to navigate. So, [we aim at] unpacking that and running events for staff to ensure we don’t perpetuate the same barriers. 

For some groups of PhD students, through our involvement in the Yorkshire Consortium for Equity in Doctoral Education (YCEDE), we’ve set up an advocacy scheme as well. So that allows a potential PhD candidate to be paired with somebody who’s relatively senior as supervisor or somebody who broadly knows the area that that PhD applicant wants to go into and can help them navigate and find a supervisor. It’s leveraging their networks and acting as a sponsor. 

It’s not about helping them to be a better PhD candidate, it’s helping them navigate that process and go through it. But, in all cases [with] what we’ve developed, I think we’ve really benefited from working with students with that lived experience to help us understand that and shape it. And, if PhD students generally talk about it being quite a lonely, isolating experience, if you’re already underrepresented, it’s an even more lonely and isolating experience. So that’s been a common theme that we’ve sought to address not just through the interaction with individual students but drawing on their experience to feedback on the change that’s required for future PhD candidates – particularly those form under-represented groups. 

How can supervisors and educators better enact ED&I practice into their work?

LB: I touched on [this] in a blog I wrote recently for HEPI. I think that often, whether you’re a supervisor, or just an educator in general, I think we often wait and we want to be steered by policy and practice. And, that’s really important. But often there’s a bit of a lag on that kind of work. I think we can underestimate the power of our own individual practice there. 

So, for me, what we can better do to enact that ED&I practice is a commitment to learning and understanding intersectionality, taking an anti-racist approach, working with each other, and creating those safe spaces for our students. I think there’s a huge amount that we can do just just in that space. Just acknowledging the power dynamics and the hierarchies and the way in which that can have a negative impact and seeking to try and address that and learning as we as we go along. 

[Also,] being kind to ourselves. I think often people sort of shy away from it, because you think, well, ​“God, I wouldn’t know where to start. That’s not a life experience I’ve had.” But you know, learning and recognising that if you go in with good intentions, most people will be value and appreciate this. 

What do you view as the major issues the sector is facing regarding ED&I?

LB: I think that, notwithstanding the wave of anti-woke culture. Beyond that, I think it’s that to be able to understand the scale of the issue and to be able to address it, we need to think about that whole pipeline. There’s real benefit in that depth that goes into looking at specific parts of it. 

So, I mean, I’m involved in work on the admissions process or parts within it, that’s really, really important. But equally, I think it’s understanding that whole pipeline from pre-entry right the way through and, as a consequence of that, drawing on very much an interdisciplinary set of expertise. I think the people that might be working on research culture are as important as the people who might be thinking about student success at undergraduate level. There’s a huge power in bringing people together in that way to think about it. 

But the issue is that, as a sector, we often are siloed. So it takes effort to go out beyond our silos to think, well, how do we bring all those disciplines together to think about this and to bring students into it as well to be able to address the ED&I issues that we see. 

Highlighting community dynamics is such an important part of understanding intersectionality and, it seems that in order to put intersectionality into practice, we need to bring communities together in institutions to solve the issues.

LB: Yeah, definitely. I think that part of what I’m going to talk about at the UKCGE Conference on ED&I keynote touches on that. At the moment, when we talk about ED&I issues within postgraduate study, it is often through the lens of gender or race. But that’s because really, we don’t have a clear understanding of that landscape. We’re looking at it through what we know. It’s likely to remain a significant dimension of the agenda but you can only go so far if your glasses only show you half the picture. You’ll get somewhere but you won’t be able to see everything else that’s going on. There will be parts of the sector that will be further ahead and will have to deal with [ED&I] in a different way. And, there’s a huge amount that we can learn from it to be able to, you know, address some of those ED&I issues. 

How do you feel that the sector can better increase diversity in access and recruitment to postgraduate study given your work with NEON?

LB: There’s obviously a benefit to having a policy or a regulatory expectation from all institutions. Then as a consequence of that, obviously, you would expect that money would flow and there would be governance. But I think that we could go a long way by acknowledging the importance of some of those enablers, so things like the cultural change and the benefits of good data. 

Within that culture change, if this was a conversation that we were having, and we were addressing the why as much as the how, then it would coalesce a greater number of people, create those safe spaces to learn, and would facilitate just more space for students to come and help us to be able to think that through. At the moment, it can sometimes feel in tension with other parts of an agenda around PhD or postgraduate study. So, ED&I can sometimes feel like it is an add on where, in actual fact, it’s something we should all be thinking about. 

If we took the employment sector, the sectors that think about ED&I as something that’s embedded, they are arguably often the most successful, because it’s not something that’s nice to have, it’s just very much recognised that they can’t operate if they don’t have a diverse staff base. So that changes the whole nature of the conversation. So, for me, it’s that focus on how can we work together on the culture change and the data and some of those powerful enablers. That will build our strategies so that they are stronger and better. The work that UKCGE does is just so powerful and beneficial, because it really has made and is making that demonstrable difference in terms of creating spaces for people to talk about ED&I, bringing people together, and working on really important issues. 

Join the UKCGE and Louise Banahene at the 2nd UKCGE Conference on Equity, Diversity and Inclusion in PG Research in Brighton from the 14th of November to the 15th. Secure your place through the event listing.