Elevating student voice: how do we acknowledge the lived experience of global majority students in Higher Education?

The under-representation of Black Asian and Global Majority students in positions of power in Higer Education means that, despite claims to promote their recruitment, retention and achievement, their needs are often overlooked. Promising approaches in the field state that the provision of democratic spaces, where global majority students can engage in dialogue among themselves and other key players, will better enable HE institutions to listen and acknowledge, as well as reflect and re-think their strategies for equality, diversity, and inclusion. Using clips from the short film Re:Tension, Where is the Line and findings from a recent case study conducted within the school of Teacher Education, we explore how our own approaches to elevating student voice coalesced around the unequal treatment of global majority students and how we have focussed wider attention on building informed and knowledgeable democratic spaces. As well as recommendations, we also offer our participants the opportunity to consider how they acknowledge student voice, how they might investigate gaps in knowledge, and what would attract global majority students to share their experiences, identities and ways of living and working in order to create positive, and safe working environments.