This project aims to understand the experience of Muslim students in the UK education system since the Equality Act 2010 was introduced to see if/how religion as a protected characteristic is understood, enacted, and protected by analysing lived experiences for social justice. It asks: How do Muslim students perceive their religious identity throughout their education experience in the UK? How do they experience the intersection of their religious identity with other protected characteristics such as gender, socio-economic status, and ethnicity? How do these experiences impact their accessibility to HE and shape their attitudes and ways of being in HE?

This project takes a decolonising methodologies (Smith 2018) approach using wooden treasures as a creative research methods (Nemouchi, Oliveira and Gill 2024) for participatory analysis involving the participants’ own voices.