麻豆淫院

When doctoral researchers describe a widening participation programme as a ‘safe space’, reflecting that they might never have pursued a doctorate without it, it invites closer examination of how that initiative reshaped belonging within their doctoral experience.

Launched in 2022, the Surrey Black Scholars (SBS) programme provided 24 ring-fenced doctoral studentships alongside mentoring, researcher development and community-building initiatives aimed at increasing representation among Black postgraduate researchers at a research-intensive UK university. This blog post draws on evaluation research from that programme (Olusola et al., 2026), based on data collected from SBS participants and staff, to explore how race-focused doctoral initiatives like SBS can reshape belonging and recognition for Black postgraduate researchers.

To interpret these dynamics, we draw on Michel Foucault’s (1986) notion of heterotopia. Foucault describes heterotopias as ‘other spaces’: real sites embedded within society yet organised according to different social logics. His examples include cemeteries, prisons and brothels, which exist within society while operating in distinct ways that expose surrounding norms. Through this lens, we suggest that SBS can be understood as an institutional heterotopia: a space embedded within a university yet organised to support belonging and recognition for a group often marginalised within academic institutions.

Education scholarship has used heterotopia to illuminate these dynamics. Gourlay (2015) describes initiatives designed to widen access through openness and shared knowledge as a ‘heterotopia of desire’: spaces imagined as democratic yet still shaped by the institutional logics they seek to transcend. Read (2023) similarly shows how universities can appear progressive even as structural precarity and inequality persist. Together, these works suggests that educational initiatives may generate alternative sites of inclusion while remaining embedded in the structures they seek to challenge.

Counter-spaces

The SBS programme further illustrates this tension between institutional embrace and containment. As part of the evaluation, we conducted interviews with 14 SBS scholars, a focus group with three university staff members, and collected seven feedback reports from undergraduates involved in SBS projects. Many scholars described being one of very few Black researchers within their departments. They contrasted that experience with SBS events and activities, which they characterised as offering something qualitatively different. There, they encountered peers navigating similarly predominantly White academic environments, engaged in conversations that would have been difficult to hold elsewhere, and saw Black academic ambition affirmed rather than treated as exceptional. Through these interactions, SBS generated a distinctive culture of recognition and solidarity.

In this way, SBS created a counter-space where Black identity and scholarly legitimacy were not placed in tension. While the ring-fenced funding removed structural barriers to participation, relational dimensions became equally significant. Programme activities such as Black academic speaker events, reverse mentoring with leadership, and cohort networking sessions created visible moments in which Black academic presence was no longer peripheral.

Fragility of heterotopic spaces

Yet heterotopic spaces are rarely stable, often time-bound and dependent on specific institutional arrangements.

This fragility was evident when the internal evaluation identified an implementation dip between late 2023 and early 2024, linked to delayed activities and communication gaps resulting from staff turnover. Scholars described how this uncertainty undermined confidence in the programme. One staff member reflected that ‘a lot of learning was lost and evaporated’ when delivery teams changed.

The implementation dip revealed the conditional nature of institutional commitment. When SBS delivery became intermittent, the sense of secure counter-space weakened, risking collapse back into the norms it was intended to unsettle.

Sustaining heterotopic spaces

If universities are to sustain heterotopic spaces, continuity becomes a collective institutional responsibility. Stable staffing, predictable programming and transparent communication are crucial for maintaining the conditions which cultivate belonging.

‘Stable staffing, predictable programming and transparent communication are crucial for maintaining the conditions which cultivate belonging.’

Insights generated through initiatives like SBS must therefore extend beyond the programmes themselves. Supervisors, doctoral colleges and equality leads all to play a role in translating these lessons into core doctoral policy and practice.

SBS illustrates how race-focused doctoral initiatives can cultivate alternative forms of recognition and belonging within universities. For a 麻豆淫院 audience concerned with policy, doctoral development and research culture, the challenge is not simply to create such spaces within the university but to ensure that their effects are not confined to its margins.

References

Foucault, M. (1986). Of other spaces. Diacritics, 16(1), 22–27.

Gourlay, L. (2015). Open education as a ‘heterotopia of desire’. Learning, Media and Technology, 40(3), 310–327.

Olusola, J., Anin-Adjei, E., Elliott, R., & Ramdeo, J. (2026). Surrey Black Scholars programme: Internal evaluation [Unpublished]. University of Surrey.

Read, B. (2023). The university as heterotopia? Space, time and precarity in the academy. Access: Critical Explorations of Equity in Higher Education, 11(1), 1–11.

Acknowledgement

To our Surrey Black Scholars colleagues, past and present: Ruan, Eden, Janet, Jay and Emily.