The Business of Widening Participation

Colin McCaig is a Professor of Higher Education Policy at Sheffield Hallam University. He has written extensively on widening participation policy in the context of marketised HE systems. He has 20 years' experience evaluating government-funded education programmes. Key recent publications include: The marketisation of English Higher Education: a policy analysis of a risk-based system, Emerald Publishing 2018; Equality and Differentiation in Marketised Higher Education: A New Level Playing Field? (Co-edited with Bowl and Hughes, Palgrave 2018); Who are we Widening Participation for? BERA Research Intelligence No.143 2020; 'Higher Education, Widening Access and Market Failure: Towards a Dual Pricing Mechanism in England' Soc. Sci. 2019 (with Nic Lightfoot)

Jon Rainford is an Associate Lecturer and Honorary Associate in Access, Open and Cross-curricular Innovation at The Open University and as an independent widening participation consultant. He has over 12 years experience of working with marginalised groups in education and completed his PhD at Staffordshire University in 2019 which focused on widening participation policy and practice. He has written numerous publications on widening access and has a particular interest in the way technology can be embedded in a post-pandemic world.

Ruth Squire is a researcher and former widening participation practitioner, with 15 years' experience in delivering and evaluating widening participation activity in higher education and the third sector. She has published articles on practioner-led research, working-class student representation and on evaluation practices and she has a particular interest in practitioner-led evaluation and policy enactment. Her current research focuses on the role of the third sector in widening participation policy and on networks and expertise in policymaking.