We are pleased to announce that in the 2024-25 round of our Visiting Scholarship Program, funding has been awarded to two applicants. We would like to extend our congratulations to Dr Franziska Lessky from the University of Innsbruck (Austria) and Dr Seán Bracken from the University of Worcester (UK).
Dr Franziska Lessky is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Psychological Intervention and Communications Studies at the University of Innsbruck. Her main area of focus is on educational pathways into, through, and out of university, as well as careers in the graduate labour market and academia.
Franziska’s project – Does combining work and study ‘pay off’? Critically investigating graduate outcomes of students from equity groups.- will include work examining the impact of equity students’ paid work experience on their graduate labour market outcomes, both in Australia and Austria. Further, she will work with Professor Mollie Dollinger at Curtin University to examine graduate outcomes surveys in Australia (GOS) and the UK (HESF) to assess and compare their methodological underpinnings, and Dr Nicole Crawford, to analyse existing qualitative interview data on equity students’ transition from university.
Dr Seán Bracken is a Principal Lecturer and Principal Fellow of the Higher Education Academy (HEA). He has worked internationally as a primary and secondary teacher, a teacher educator, a lecturer and an educational project manager in a diversity of countries. Seán is passionate about enhancing learning opportunities and outcomes for all students. He is especially interested in the attainment of ‘non-traditional’ learners. His research interests are concerned with the nature of curriculum design and enactment and the potentials inherent in Universal Design for Learning to strengthen students’ outcomes in Higher Education.
Seán’s project – The development of a leadership framework for enabling systemic inclusion in higher education. – will apply Universal Design (UD) and Universal Design for Learning (UDL) as a conceptual lens, with a focus on the development of a leadership framework for enabling systemic inclusion in Higher Education. The research initiative will explore how adoption of anticipatory inclusive design for all minoritised groups can be realised by engaging with senior HE leaders and by integrating stakeholder voice and agency. The framework will be developed as a research output resulting from mixed methods research undertaking that will incorporate a questionnaire to be issued to all HE senior leaders in Australia and the UK. Further, research methods will include semi-structured interviews with HE leaders in both jurisdictions regarding the barriers and enablers to bringing about systemic change for inclusion. In addition to seeking the views of senior leaders, the research focus will incorporate the views of relevant student representatives from constituent national and university-based groups, for example by liaising with the Disabled Students’ Commission in the UK, and by meeting disabled students’ networks within a cross section of HE students’ unions in both jurisdictions.
Congratulations to Franziska and Seán. We look forward to welcoming you to the ACSES offices in 2025.
