OU received £560k UKRI funding for bold project on democratising higher education

The Open University has been awarded £560,000 by UK Research and Innovation (UKRI) to lead a pioneering research project that interrogates the future of university governance in a neoliberalised higher education landscape. Titled ‘Universities Fit for the Future? Democratising Governance in Neoliberalised Higher Education’, the project is led by Professor Kristina Hultgren under a prestigious UKRI Future Leaders Fellowship.

The three-year project examines how universities, increasingly influenced by market pressures and metrics-based governance, can uphold their democratic purpose, support academic freedom, and ensure equitable treatment for all members of their communities.

“This project is about reclaiming the university as a space for critical inquiry, democratic participation, and social justice,” said Professor Hultgren. “Universities are not just sites of knowledge production, they are, or should be, pillars of democratic societies. When they silence voices or selectively apply principles of equity and inclusion, they undermine their own legitimacy.”

The project will address two intertwined challenges. The first relates to European universities, where governance reforms have intensified reliance on English as the language of academia, creating barriers to educational and epistemic justice. The second, and more urgent, focuses on UK universities’ responses to the humanitarian crisis in Gaza and the broader issue of Palestine. The research explores how legal commitments to Equality, Diversity and Inclusion (EDI), the Equality Act 2010, and the Higher Education (Freedom of Speech) Act 2023 are being navigated or possibly in some cases, compromised, in response to political pressure and reputational concerns.

“Where most institutions swiftly took a stance on the Russia/Ukraine war, there has been widespread silence or repression around the issue of Palestine,” Hultgren explained. “This exposes a double standard in how universities operationalise EDI and raises serious questions about their role in supporting justice, freedom of speech, and moral responsibility.”

The project emerged from Hultgren’s long-standing research into the corporatisation of European higher education and the role of English in shaping academic hierarchies. Building on that, the new funding enables her to collaborate with The Open University Palestine Solidarity Group and external partners to investigate how pro-Palestinian speech is being suppressed or censored across UK higher education institutions.

Working across faculties including the Faculties of Science, Tehcnology, Engineering and Mathematics (STEM), Arts and Social Sciences (FASS), and Wellbeing, Education and Language Studies (WELS), the team will collect and analyse evidence of self-censorship and institutional responses to political expression. The goal is to produce evidence-based guidance for UK universities on balancing their legal obligations while fostering inclusive, globally aware, and critically engaged communities.

Success for the project, Hultgren says, is multifaceted: “It’s about staff and students feeling empowered and safe to speak out against injustice. It’s about embedding a structural understanding of inequality into institutional policy. And ultimately, it’s about contributing to global movements for freedom, dignity and self-determination — in Palestine and beyond.”

This project also connects with the OU’s Open Societal Challenge on Tackling Inequalities through Transdisciplinary Decolonial Research: The ‘Palestine Exception’, reinforcing the University’s commitment to research that challenges injustice and fosters inclusive change.