The project: 

The De Montfort University, Muslim-Friendly Universities audit focuses upon the student experience of British Muslim, first-year undergraduate students. It situates this experience against those students’ conceptions of their faith, and also in relation to ethnicity, gender and disability.

The primary intention is to understand how these students experience their Muslimness in HE. A secondary intention is that this research will materially impact the ways in which universities can recognise intersectional and faith-based complexities in the undergraduate student experience. We intend to understand these experiences, in order to define a co-created action plan to ensure that HE is as inclusive for British Muslim students as their non-Muslim/religious peers. Our starting point for this is through partnerships with students, facilitated with support, advice and guidance from The Aziz Foundation.

A primary gain will be for universities to consider how to enhance their engagement with the richness of British Muslim student identities, in order to support students' sense of belonging and positively impacting attainment, retention, and engagement. A secondary gain will be for universities to put in place structures, cultures and practices that anchor their relationships with these groups of students, such that they are able to rebuild the bridge between undergraduate and postgraduate taught provision.