A Catalyst for Change: Transforming Responses to Harassment in Higher Education

Recent years have seen sustained growth in student numbers at higher education institutions (HEIs) across England. However, the increasing diversification of higher education (HE) presents urgent challenges in relation to the volume of harassment directed towards domestic and international students on the basis of their identity characteristics or perceived 'difference'. As microcosms of wider society, HEIs are by no means immune to the escalating levels of hate evident throughout the world, with hostility towards the 'other' feeding off increased economic instability, political scaremongering and media demonisation to reinforce cultures of prejudice. However, the ways in which prejudices play out within HE are typically overlooked, with existing responses hamstrung by an absence of evidence to shape a trauma-informed understanding of harassment and its impacts. As such, the contexts in which students feel unsafe and unsupported remain unknown at a time when multiple points of crises have exposed student communities to a significantly heightened risk of harassment.

This mixed method study breaks new ground by conceptualising harassment in a way that acknowledges the full range of unacceptable behaviours and hostilities that students are exposed to. It examines students' experiences of harassment across a range of English HEIs and engages with the full diversity of student bodies within institutional settings characterised by a variety of geographical and demographic profiles. The study will capture data on the nature and impacts of different forms of harassment encountered by students, including sexual, racist, disablist, homophobic, transphobic, anti-Semitic and Islamophobic prejudice, and on the ways in which experiences are shaped by intersectionality and the proximity of perpetrators within 'closed' institutional environments. It will examine the more extreme acts of interpersonal violence and online victimisation as well as the cumulative harms of...