The contemporary university stands at a crossroads. As higher education becomes increasingly diverse, complex, and marketised, questions of power, voice, and collaboration have never been more pressing. This one-day conference invites scholars, practitioners, and students to interrogate how partnership practices—particularly Students as Partners (SaP) models—reshape the political landscape of higher education.
Partnership working in education has been described as ‘a collaborative, reciprocal process through which all participants have the opportunity to contribute equally, although not necessarily in the same ways, to curricular or pedagogical conceptualisation, decision making, implementation, investigation, or analysis’ (Cook-Sather, Bovill & Felten, 2014). Yet beneath this seemingly egalitarian model lies a set of powerful political questions: Who holds authority in the university? How is expertise defined? What does it mean to democratise learning in an era dominated by the logic of the market?
As higher education diversifies (Mercer-Mapstone & Bovill, 2020), universities struggle to evolve at the same pace as their student populations. This mismatch can reinforce structural inequalities—social, cultural, and epistemic. Partnership working thus emerges as both a pedagogical strategy and a political act. By challenging the neoliberal framing of students as consumers (Gravett, Kinchin & Winstone, 2020), SaP initiatives reposition students as co-creators of knowledge, potentially shifting the balance of power in university governance and curriculum design.
However, partnership is not politically neutral. Diaz et al. (2016) caution that co-creation can be appropriated as a marketing tool—a means of improving ‘service satisfaction’ rather than transforming learning relationships. This tension between empowerment and instrumentalisation sits at the heart of our conference theme. We will explore how the language and practice of partnership can either resist or reproduce market logics, and how institutions might safeguard its transformative potential.
The empirical and theoretical literature offers compelling evidence of the benefits of partnership work. Bell (2016) synthesises findings demonstrating that SaP initiatives enhance curriculum renewal (Delpish et al., 2009), deepen student engagement (Werder et al., 2009), and foster employability skills such as leadership, confidence, and reflective practice (Welikala & Atkin, 2014; Cook-Sather, 2014). Students involved in partnership projects report heightened motivation, self-direction, and academic performance (Brooman, Darwent & Pimor, 2015), while staff often rediscover inspiration in their teaching and develop greater awareness of student perspectives (Cook-Sather, 2014).
Crucially, where student and staff benefits converge, institutional transformation follows. As partnership frameworks move beyond isolated “projects” toward embedded institutional practice, they reshape the culture of the university itself. Holen et al. (2021) note a growing expansion of partnership from the realm of academic development into governance and community life—signalling a wider reimagining of institutional citizenship.
