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This special issue shares findings from research supported by a ½¿É«µ¼º½ Brian Simon fellowship fund grant to do historical educational research to explore the impact of higher education (HE) on first-in-family students, some of whom self-identified as ‘disadvantaged’. The key objectives of the Far away from the ivory tower research project addressed the equity for educational opportunity that Brian Simon advocated. First, we explored the story of university education for ‘the poor’ and ‘disadvantaged’ within Plymouth Marjon University’s archives. Subsequently, we invited staff, students and alumni to participate in discussion groups to interrogate history, comparing contemporary educational practice with historical practices, highlighting links between social justice and practices in access to and participation in HE, all refracted through the lens of their own experience.

Each blog post draws on literature from national and international contexts to explore findings from the Brian Simon fellowship fund project, which was a localised research study. All the posts consider a diverse range of perspectives to explore the experiences of people who were the first-in-family to go to university, including non-traditional students.

The contributions to this issue explore: 

• kindness as an aspect of pedagogy and practice, drawing on two examples shared by participants in the Brian Simon fellowship fund project
• feminist perspectives of inclusion, exploring expectations, aspirations and perceived limitations through reference to the impact of patriarchy
• how coming from a low-income family might impact experiences, and how attending university might be particularly challenging for students from working-class backgrounds
• a lifelong-learning lens, to explore the impact of HE as a catalyst for lifelong learning
• how universities can provide spaces and places of safety, exploring how university spaces can become places – physically, emotionally, cognitively – that offer a sense of belonging, family and transformation
• archival perspectives to highlight that small-scale studies offer rich possibilities for family-history research in the archive, which can bear witness to the transformative potential of higher education within social mobility and – most importantly – that disadvantage does not determine destiny.