Social Sciences
Safeguarding BAME students
1 December 2017 - 31 December 2018
PI/s in Exeter: Nick Givens
Sponsor(s): Office for Students and University of Exeter
About the research
‘Safeguarding BAME Students’ is a research project, jointly funded by The Office for Students ‘CATALYST’ fund, and the University of Exeter. It is part of a national programme of Projects to tackle hate crime and online harassment. The project is running from December 2017 to December 2018: during this period the project team is reporting regularly to the University Race Equality Group (which includes representatives from the Guild and FXU). A formal report will be produced in December 2018.
The national programme was established in response to the recommendations made by the Universities UK’s taskforce report ‘Changing the culture: Report of the Universities UK Taskforce examining violence against women, harassment and hate crime* affecting university students’.
The Exeter project’s key aim is to develop a training strategy applicable to student and / or staff groups at the University of Exeter. To create an evidence base for this (and for wider policy and practice aimed at reducing racial harassment), we are conducting a survey of racial harassment of BAME students as experienced by and / or witnessed by students; this will be open throughout May 2018; all registered students will be invited by email to participate in the survey, which will be followed by some (voluntary) in-depth interviews with students.
- conduct a systematic literature review, so that we can learn from existing policy and peer-reviewed research about strategies to reduce racial harassment and hate crime in educational settings. We are particularly interested in strategies that have been rigorously evaluated
- seek to establish a data-sharing protocol between the various internal university and student union services to which incidents of racial harassment may be informally reported, to supplement what the university can learn through formal reporting. We will also explore data-sharing with the Devon & Cornwall Police ‘Diverse Communities Team’ and the City of Exeter BME Forum. Within and beyond the university, students’ anonymity must be the top priority, so any protocol will have to meet very high data protection standards.
If you have questions about the project please contact us at: