The European Commission’s Education, Audiovisual and Cultural Executive Agency (EACEA) has commissioned a partnership of experts that includes the Tavistock Institute of Human Relations (TIHR).

The project entitled, ‘Identifying Effective Approaches to Enhancing the Social Dimension of Higher Education’ (IDEAS for short) builds on work that started in 2009 through EQUNET to address equity in access in Higher Education.

There is a growing challenge across European Institutions of Higher Education to ensure that those with a range of cultural and socio-economic backgrounds gain access to education. IDEAS is trawling Europe for examples of best practice interventions by institutions to attract, support and retain talent that is usually under-represented. The TIHR team for the IDEAS project is led by Dr Sadie King, with Giorgia Iacopini, Coreene Archer and Dr Leslie Brissett.

As well as identifying best practice from UK case studies, we have located international cases and are contributing to the dissemination of the work through a programme of presentations, lectures and visits. The first of these dissemination events is a lunchtime talk taking place at TIHR on 10th December 2014.

The work is ongoing and will be regularly reported on our website, beginning with a case study and some information about the planned dissemination across Europe and beyond, which will be published soon.

For additional views of the progress of this work, please visit the project dedicated website at: http://equityideas.eu/