Drs Rita Hordósy and Farhana Ghaffar represented our school at this year's which took place in Oxford on 23 and 24 April 2026. The theme for this year's event was navigating the equity crisis in global higher education: affordability, access and sustainability.
Ahead of the conference, Dr Hordósy and Dr Ghaffar contributed to a full-day workshop run by the CGHE International Student Funding Network, providing updates on student funding policies and changes in the contexts they are embedded in. The group also explored potential research ideas across a range of topics, exploring how to bring the network’s work into the wider academic and policy conversation.
At the conference Dr Ghaffar contributed to a panel discussion titled "When Student Loans Work and When They Don’t: Global Comparisons of Student Loan Policies". Other panel members were:
- Ariane de Gayardon (University of Twente)
- Nick Hillmann (University of Wisconsin-Madison)
- Christopher Grillo (Irnerius and Boston College)
- Andreas Fidjeland (University of Stavanger and NIFU)
Dr Ghaffar's paper drew on her Leverhulme Trust funded project and assessed the nuances of the unfolding impacts of elevated debt levels on English graduates from the early £9,000 tuition fee cohorts. In her talk she explored how student loans shape individual and collective decision-making around employment, housing, further study, and impacts graduates’ views on social mobility and higher education’s value over time.
Dr Hordósy convened a panel titled "Whose academic freedom? Threats in different contexts and against different stakeholders". Fellow panel members were:
- Daniela Craciun (University of Twente)
- Marcelo Marques (University of Luxembourg)
- Gergely Kováts (Corvinus University Budapest)
- Brendan Cantwell (Michigan State University)
The panel examined recent developments in the global dynamics of academic freedom from a comparative perspective, with Dr Hordósy presenting her paper on academic freedom infringements in Hungarian universities within the discipline of sociology.
Conference panel members
Dr Hordósy (left) with fellow panel members
Posted on Tuesday 5th May 2026