Projects and initiatives

A student-staff partnership project, led by Professor Amanda Millmore, Sharon Sinclair-Graham and Dr Rachel Horton, ran during the height of the Covid-19 pandemic. It was a collaboration between students with disabilities and long-term conditions, academics in the School of Law and a Disability Advisor from the University of Reading's Disability Advisory Service.

Student partners ran a cohort-wide questionnaire and facilitated focus groups with disabled students. The goal was to discover what worked well during the 2020/21 academic year as we grappled more with blended learning and to find out where things could be improved.

The work provided a blueprint for those hoping to use blended learning to deliver accessible education for all and it led to real improvements in how we worked. For example, we created a weekly template for our virtual learning environment Blackboard, which is now being used across the University.

Find out more about our work on this project

As a way of helping new students to transition to university, our student-staff partnership (led by Professor Amanda Millmore and comprised of eight first-generation law students and two academics) co-created a Hidden Curriculum Glossary.

The glossary is shared at the start of the academic year with students in the School of Law and has been used as the basis of a guide for first-generation students at the University of Reading. It has also been adopted and adapted by universities across the sector, both in Law and other disciplines.

We are now in the process of co-creating a similar glossary to support our students with legal careers, working with our Colleagues in the University of Reading Careers' Centre.

The DI-Lawgues Project is a University of Reading’s School of Law initiative designed to address the undergraduate Black, Asian and minority ethnic (BAME) awarding gap.

Led by Shweta Band (Equality, Diversity and Inclusion co-lead), Phase 1 of this staff-student partnership project was implemented in 2020/21. The goal is to draw on the lived experiences and feedback of BAME students and staff to create a pilot, evidence-based response for addressing the ethnicity awarding gap at the School of Law.

Reciprocal DI-Lawgues represents the second phase of the BAME DI-lawgues ethnicity awarding gap project at the School of Law. Led by Shweta Band and Dr Nowrin Tamanna  (Equality, Diversity and Inclusion leads), this project is a part of the University Access and Participation Plan and is based on mutual, conversation-based, equal partnerships between Law School staff and our BAME students. The aim is to build a rich qualitative dataset on reducing the ethnicity awarding gap and creating a stronger sense of belonging by nurturing a safe, inclusive space for our BAME students.