Fairer

We have signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) with the UCS College group, comprising of Bridgwater College, Cannington College, Strode College, Taunton College and University Centre Somerset, with the intention of strengthening regional education, research and skills development across the South West.

The partnership reflects our ambitions to enhance regional opportunities, through joint initiatives focused on education outcomes, social mobility, healthcare innovation, and employer-led training. It also provides a framework for collaborative projects in sectors such as defence, manufacturing, and engineering, alongside improving access to higher education through dedicated scholarships.

Through our agreement, we will strengthen our joint work to increase social mobility and address skill gaps across the county.

Learn about our work with further education colleges.

We are proud that our University has been named ‘University of the Year’ at the UK Social Mobility Awards, recognising our work across national and regional projects dedicated to championing equal opportunities and improve life outcomes for young people. The award highlights our Success for All programme as well as our leadership of the South West Social Mobility Commission and engagement through the Centre for Social Mobility.

Reflecting our commitment to creating real change through education, skills, and genuine opportunities, we have supported thousands of learners through initiatives such as Exeter Scholars, the Mature Access Pathway and Exeter Cares, ensuring that talent, not background, shapes a student’s future.

Read our Success for All Strategy.

The Belonging Game: changing the way students connect has been shortlisted for the Access, Diversity & Inclusion Award at the QS Reimagine Education Awards. 

Developed collaboratively by student interns and colleagues at the University, The Belonging Game is an interactive boardgame designed to help students integrate, form friendships and build belonging through meaningful conversation. Supported by the Education Incubator Grant and created with the help of student interns, the game features inclusive, reflective questions that spark empathy, laughter and genuine connection. 

With over 1,600 submissions across 18 categories and assessment by more than 800 international judges, this achievement celebrates our innovative approach to leading the progress towards creating a fair, socially just and inclusive society. 

On 13 March 2025, we opened the Sarah Turvill Multifaith Centre, located on our Streatham Campus. Our Multifaith Centre is designed to promote inclusion and respect for diverse faiths and beliefs, foster a sense of community, encourage interfaith connections and collaboration, and provide a space for quiet reflection, prayer, and contemplation for all.

As part of a global community, the Multifaith Centre continues our ambition to ensure a thriving community that celebrates diversity and inclusion and supports the health and wellbeing of everybody at the University.

Learn about the Sarah Turvill Multifaith Centre on our website.

To mark the courage and sacrifices of those serving in the military and their families, In May 2025 we re-pledged our commitment to the Armed Forces Covenant. To mark the pledge, Vice-Chancellor and President Professor Lisa Roberts was joined by serving members of the Armed Forces, representatives of the Ministry of Defence, and University veterans, reservists and service families and regional partners during a special event.

The Armed Forces Covenant is a promise to ensure those who serve or who have served in the HM armed forces, and their families, are treated with fairness and respect in the communities, economy and society they serve with their lives.  Our re-commitment reflects our longstanding association with the Armed Forces and recognises the immense value that serving personnel, reservists, veterans, military families and the cadets bring to our community and to society. 

Get support or become involved in the University of Exeter’s Armed Forces Covenant work by contacting armedforcescovenant@exeter.ac.uk

We are the first university to affiliate with the Black Leadership Group, through a partnership with its Student Access, Recruitment and Admissions service. The partnership will include new training for student access, recruitment and admissions staff, and our affiliation will support work across both organisations to help people access further and higher education and succeed in their studies.

The Black Leadership Group was established to challenge systemic racism for the benefit of all Black communities and the wider UK society and aims to be an authoritative voice of anti-racism across higher education. Through our partnership, we will grow our knowledge and collaborate to better support racially minoritised learners, giving our students the best possible experience as they make decisions about their future.

Read our Access and Participation Plan.

Our degree apprenticeship programmes have won a Diversity and Inclusion Award in recognition of their focus on social mobility, widening access to Higher Education and ensuring success for all – particularly those from underrepresented backgrounds. 

Guided by our principles of fair address, inclusivity, collaboration and partnership,  we are working to address skill gaps in Higher Education and build more diverse workforces. 

Alongside winning at the 2025 Apprenticeships and Training Awards, we also saw our efforts to integrate sustainability practices into the delivery of degree apprenticeship programmes be recognised as Highly Commended in the Sustainability in Training and Apprenticeships category.

Take a look at our Degree Apprenticeships.

We have been recognised for our ongoing commitment to increasing gender equality with the renewal of the Athena Swan Silver Award. This recognition highlights our efforts to create a fair, inclusive, and welcoming community across our University. 

Recent work commended by the review panel includes safeguarding equality in promotions during the pandemic, delivering Bystander Intervention training, and launching the ‘Speak Out’ tool for informal reporting. Holding this Silver Award since 2018, we remain focused on advancing gender equality across all disciplines and building an environment where everyone can thrive.  

Learn more about our gender equality action plan. 

We are committed to supporting care experienced students in higher education and making our University a more accessible place for young people who have been in care. To support this, we have collaborated with Devon County Council and Devon care leavers to improve access to higher education and the support we provide. 

Through our work with Devon care leavers, we have gained a stronger understanding of the challenges care-experienced individuals face, allowing us to identify barriers and develop resources focused on trauma-informed tutoring, financial support, and student guidance. This collaboration demonstrates our dedication to making higher education accessible and ensuring that young people who have been in care feel welcomed and supported throughout their university journey.

Find out how we’re supporting care leavers and care experienced students

We have been awarded the prestigious Gold Award in the Armed Forces Covenant Employer Recognition Scheme. This accolade recognises our dedication to supporting the Armed Forces community and fostering inclusivity for service personnel, veterans, and their families.

Our Armed Forces Covenant Advocacy Group and Community Network lead efforts to welcome service people to our University community, and are extending this commitment across the South West.

Learn more about the Armed Forces Covenant

We are extremely proud to have won University of the Year 2024 at the Multicultural Apprenticeship Awards in recognition of our efforts to drive social mobility through degree apprenticeships. We aim to change the world through our commitment to diversity and inclusion, ensuring that we break down the barriers to success for all. We were recognised for our work on social mobility and widening access to Higher Education, working alongside employer partners to provide degree programmes that combine academic excellence with real-world work experience. We support almost 3,000 apprentices on our degree programmes and have the largest portfolio of apprenticeships of any Russell Group learning provider.

Find out more about the award here.

In 2023 we won recognition for our commitment to achieving success for our students and leading initiatives to boost social mobility. The UK Social Mobility Awards recognise and celebrate UK organisations that are making strides and creating initiatives, to advance social mobility within their own workforce and beyond. We received silver awards for ‘Leadership’ and ‘University of the Year’, which celebrates the priority given to widening access to higher education and enabling pupils across the region to realise their potential, regardless of background. The awards also recognised our role in shining a light on inequalities within the South West and leading the South West Social Mobility Commission.  

Find out more about our Social Mobility work

We believe in a fairer and more inclusive society, with access to education for all, which is why we now offer the Mature Access Pathway in partnership with Truro and Penwith College. The project aims to break down barriers to learning and participation in higher education, enabling students to experience university life through workshops, talks and on-campus activities that enhance their study skills. Our mature students have access to academic staff, mentors, and other students to help them get the right information, advice, and guidance they need to make an informed decision about their future.

Find out more about the Mature Access Pathway.

We’re continuing our fight for a fairer and more inclusive society by supporting a second cohort of academics onto the 100 Black Women Professors Now programme. Following the hugely successful pilot, the Women’s Higher Education Network (WHEN) has expanded the programme, with the aim of retaining and propelling the careers of Black women, including career academics, early to mid-level career academics and PhD Students. This isn’t only about supporting Black academic women to navigate and manage their careers; it’s about challenging institutional assumptions and bias, recognising the need to address fundamental societal inequities, and acting to achieve systemic change for a fairer world.

Find out more here.

Out of more than 23,000 professors at UK universities, only 61 are Black women. Our drive is to promote equity of opportunity within the academic world, and we begin that journey with 100 Black women academics, pioneering the path of change. We’re taking part in 100 Black Women Professors NOW; a 12-month accelerator and change programme for UK higher education institutions developed and delivered by the Women’s Higher Education Network (WHEN). The programme aims to propel equity of opportunity for Black women academics, researchers and PhD students. Programme participants take part in and benefit from mentorship, career coaching, action learning and peer group coaching, networking, master classes, campaign and profile-raising opportunities.

Find out more here.

We have established the Exeter Centre for Environmental Law (ExCEL) to stimulate interdisciplinary internal partnerships with centres across the University. The purpose of ExCEL is to provide an intellectual environment to create a Worldwide Environmental Law and Policy Research Network with international academic partners, such Duke University, QUEX, and CUHK. With a focus on promoting the study and development of environmental, climate and marine law and policy, the centre supports its members with achieving impact through workshops, training, PR and marketing.

Find out more about ExCEL

While we work towards a fair, inclusive and socially just society for future generations, we also understand that our past holds many important communities that have previously been overlooked. The work of thousands of women who helped to shape the evolution of theatre during the 19th century is now the focus of a new international research programme. WOMENTHEATRENET will challenge current histories that have ignored or dismissed the impact of women on popular forms of theatre and performance. Funded by a five-year European Research Council Advanced Grant, the project will focus on the interlinked theatrical cultures of Britain, Ireland, Australia and India.

Find out more about WOMENTHEATRENET

Preventing future injustices – the Post Office scandal

We seek to create a fair and socially just society, and we’re participating in a landmark studyinto the legal failings associated with the Post Office scandal. The three-year project, in partnership with University College London (UCL) and funded by the Economic and Social Research Council, is identifying ways of protecting against similar injustice in the future, including facilitating an ethical standard for lawyers. Work by the research team has already led to the Post Office Inquiry being widened and aims to support improvements in culture and professional and ethical practice. To date, over 80 defendants have had their wrongful convictions quashed on appeal. [AR1] 

Find out more about the project.

Committed to supporting female entrepreneurs

We are making progress towards creating a fair, socially just, and inclusive society and have recently become the first university and 200th organisation, to sign the Investing in Women Code, demonstrating our commitment to supporting female entrepreneurial activity. The code was established in 2019 following the findings of the initial Alison Rose Review of Female Entrepreneurship, which demonstrated that up to £250 billion of new economic value could be added to the UK economy if women started and scaled new businesses at the same rate as men. We are already leading the way in supporting female entrepreneurs by running a thriving student startup programme and an Entrepreneurial Researcher Programme; available to researchers and colleagues looking to turn their passion into a business.

Find out more about our support here.

We have a long-standing partnership with Jadavpur University in Kolkata built on collaborations in the Humanities and Social Sciences, which has delivered a series of successful projects based on food security and social justice. Building on work begun in 2021 with the creation of a digital learning resource, funding has been secured for further collaboration on the decolonisation of society and higher education. This partnership is just one of the ways we will continue to help build a better future by fostering understanding, equity, justice and dignity for all.

Find out more about this collaboration.

We are committed to creating a fair and inclusive society, and engage with external assessment and accreditations to ensure impactful action towards fostering inclusion. One such accreditation is the Stonewall Workplace Equality Index (WEI). Stonewall is a charity that promotes equality for LGBTQ+ people and the index provides a benchmark tool to help us create an inclusive working environment.  In 2022 we achieved the Stonewall Gold Award for our commitment to being an LGBTQ+ inclusive employer and ranked 148 out of the 403 organisations that took part. We continue to aspire to make meaningful, cultural change so that staff and students alike can thrive.

Find out more about our participation in the Stonewall Workplace Equality Index.

We are building a new Multi-Faith Centre on Streatham Campus to create an innovative space which promotes respect, community and inclusion across the University. The centre will include a 50 person Muslim prayer space, as well as areas for quiet reflection, services and multi-faith activities. Sustainability and reducing carbon emissions are fundamental to the design of the centre. We are committed to reducing regulated carbon emissions, through a combination of sustainability initiatives throughout the design, construction and maintenance phases of the new building. This will include the use of highly efficient porotherm blocks, air source heat pumps and solar photovoltaic panels on the roof of the building.

Find out more about our new Multi-Faith Centre.

Our undergraduates will be trained to help year 8 pupils in local schools with their reading and writing. This new tutoring scheme will help to boost literacy in the South-West for hundreds of children. The project is funded by the UPP Foundation, the registered charity founded by student accommodation and infrastructure business, UPP, which has invested over £160,000 in grant funding for this scheme and seven other innovative pilot projects with charities and universities. Researchers will look at different models of tutoring and develop a discrete tutoring course in foundational literacy for year 8 pupils. They will then train up to 100 undergraduates to deliver small group tutoring to 300 pupils in local area.

Read more about the scheme.

The South West Social Mobility Commission is being established following the publication of the report, Social Mobility in the South West, which showed Devon, Cornwall and Somerset to have the lowest rates of educational attainment by disadvantaged pupils of any English region. Sir Michael Barber, Chancellor at the University and a world-renowned expert on government delivery, will chair the newly created South West Social Mobility Commission. The Commission’s work, supported by the University, will aim to transform life prospects for disadvantaged young people across the peninsula and help to influence decision-making by schools, local authorities and other organisations to improve social mobility.

Read more about our work to improve life prospects across the South West.

Our ambition to increase social mobility and break down barriers to higher education runs through everything we do. Our innovative programs help prospective students realise their potential, by providing access to a range of financial, practical and academic assistance. We are proud to have been recognised for our work in 2022, with a Silver Award for the ‘University of the Year’ at the sixth annual UK Social Mobility Awards. This award program is organised by leading societal change charity, Making The Leap, and was set up to recognise organisations that are prioritising social mobility through recruitment and progression processes, outreach within the local community, or by developing innovative ways to create change.

Find out more about the UK Social Mobility Awards 2022.