Reimagining higher education equity for better social outcomes

Professor Penny Jane Burke is leading the way in building equity in higher education. By understanding the experiences of marginalised groups and addressing ingrained inequalities she’s progressing policy and practice, both locally and globally.

Penny’s sociological research, spanning three decades, is designed to respond to the experiences of students and communities who have been marginalised from the development of higher education policy and practice.

It examines and seeks to inform the structures and relations of inequality that perpetuate educational exclusion and disadvantage.

Over the past decade, Penny has led the development of the Centre of Excellence for Equity in Higher Education. And, in 2023, as a result of the Centre becoming internationally recognised, she became the UNESCO Chair in Equity, Social Justice and Higher Education.

Penny provides expert analysis and advice in this national-level context and was an expert member of the Federal Government Equity in Higher Education Panel (2018-2022).

Tackling deep-rooted inequalities

Penny’s interest in this area of research stems from her own experience of accessing higher education against the odds. She’s developed a strong belief in the transformative power it has at the personal and societal levels.

“Equity in higher education is about more than fair access and removing barriers”, explains Penny.

“It's about addressing deep-rooted historical exclusions and subtle processes in which the knowledge, experiences and cultures of some communities across the world have been neglected and ignored while others have been privileged.”

Tackling equity requires acknowledging and addressing these long-standing inequalities.

By creating praxis-based, non-hierarchical and collaborative methodologies, Penny aims to do this by creating new social justice frameworks to build equity capacity and reimagine higher education for transformative equity and social justice through a whole-of-institution approach.

CEEHE: Engaging students and communities

The Centre of Excellence for Equity in Higher Education (CEEHE) that Penny continues to head is a unique, sector-leading hub in Australia that brings critical reflection and action together to create the conditions for equity and inclusion.

The Centre focuses on the social, cultural and representational inequities that reproduce disadvantage in higher education. Its research and practice engage directly with students and communities in our region.

Its state-of-the-art student support reframing, the Relational Navigator, has developed a suite of new programs. These programs enable those with experiences of profound inequity to access, participate in, and thrive through and beyond higher education.

“Relational navigators walk alongside students facing educational disadvantage, those from refugee and asylum-seeking communities, and those with experiences of out-of-home-care and gender-based violence”, explains Penny.

As part of this program, the Centre coordinates a pathway into the Joint Medical Program at the University of Newcastle for those who have experienced intersecting, multidimensional inequities and injustices.

From seminars to large-scale reports

The Centre’s development of cutting-edge social justice frameworks that they’ve translated into programs and practices has led to invitations to numerous seminars, workshops and keynotes.

Recent invitations have been from the NSW Department of Education, the Australian Centre for Student Equity and Success (ACSES), the Queensland Widening Participation Consortium, and the ACU Equity Symposium Online.

The CEEHE has also delivered large-scale reports to the Federal Department of Education, including the International Literature Review of Equity in Higher Education, and the NSW Department through contributions to the Culturally Responsive Evaluation Framework.

A gender-based violence agenda

Penny's new research agenda, which tackles the massive problem of gender-based violence, has generated new knowledge about the impact of gender-based violence on higher education access and participation.

The research is also producing innovative strategies to mobilise higher education for gender equity and in the fight against gender-based violence and its devastating social effects.

“Essentially, it’s generating a space for the insights of student victim-survivors to participate in the process of developing policy and practice recommendations to help end gender-based violence.”

“It’s also ensuring that victim-survivors thrive in and beyond higher education and are part of the project of embedding gender equity in it and in the professions that as graduates and future leaders they’ll be part of.”

Together with a team of researcher-practitioners, students and community agencies, the Centre is building a Gender Justice Hub to mobilise higher education for gender equity and to realise the crucial contribution of higher education in Australia’s whole-of-society plan to end GBV.

Driving global transformation through UNESCO

Central to Penny’s role as the UNESCO Chair in Equity, Social Justice and Higher Education is the generation of new social justice methodologies to drive transformation in higher education policy, practice and pedagogy at a global level.

It includes a number of partnerships and networks. One is the Ghanaian-Australian Feminist Collective, which consists of the Ghanaian peer mentoring program. Another is the Bath, Egypt and Australia Advancing Equity in STEM project.

As Chair, Penny has spoken at many high-profile events, including the Global Higher Education Forum in Malaysia, the Global Sustainable Development Congress Bangkok and the Universities Australia Solutions Summit, Canberra and will speak at the forthcoming Open Education Global 2024, Brisbane.

The UNESCO Chair hosts three PhD Scholars who are working to develop important new knowledge for Australia, Ghana and Peru.

In 2024, she’s one of 20 UNESCO Chairs to develop strategies for mobilising the broader network for peace through higher education. She’s also one of two Chairs to facilitate and co-design the high-level UNITAR/UNESCO Leadership Dialogue in New York.

Collaboration as ‘constellations of impact’

Partnerships and collaborations have been crucial to Penny’s work. She describes them as having ‘constellations of impact’ because of their cascading effect.

“Working with one group of participants leads to other forms of impact beyond that which I’ve personally developed,” she shares.

Partnerships with colleagues at the University of Bath led to her appointment as in 2020 Global Chair of Social Innovation, which has informed the stream of work currently being undertaken as part of the UNESCO Chair collaboration to advance equity in STEM. This work has led to constellations of impact in work with staff and students in Australia, the UK and Egypt to engage deeply with questions of equity and generating the means for change and transformation.

Meanwhile, the institutional programs of CEEHE have led to the development of several bodies of work, including Name, Narrate, Navigate, led by A/Prof Tamara Blakemore (CEEHE seed funding 2015-2016) and Yearning to Yarn, led by Simon Munro (ETEHE program, 2018).

In addition to the partnerships of CEEHE and UNESCO, other examples of partnerships throughout Penny’s career include forming the Access and Widening Participation network for the Society for Research into Higher Education. This network collaborated with the Office of Fair Access in the UK and led to the Australian Writing Program for Equity Practitioners and the co-development of Access: Critical Explorations of Equity in Higher Education.

She also developed the Paulo Freire Institute at Roehampton University, which led to collaborations with community and arts agencies, such as the Serpentine Gallery in London.

Her work has involved trans-disciplinary collaboration to generate educational programs for social justice, as well as partnerships with other universities, including UCLA, Beijing Normal University, and the University of Trento.

Pushing equity for peaceful societies

Penny is proud of developing new methodologies for progressing equity and of developing publications that make a real work difference to people involved in progressing equity policy and practice in higher education.

“Building equitable higher education is imperative to all of our futures”, says Penny.

“Growing inequalities pose a threat to all of us on multiple levels and higher education has a key role to play in ensuring more socially just and thus peaceful and stable societies into the future.”

“The power of higher education is immeasurable and profound.”

Check out Penny’s new publication, Equity in Higher Education: Time for Social Justice Praxis (Penny Jane Burke and Matt Lumb (2024), Routledge), launched in October 2024.