The 2022 Student Voice Australia Symposium brought together staff and students from Australian higher education institutions to examine the positionality and role of students as essential partners in decision-making and governance now and into the future.
We were thrilled to be joined by international scholars to keynote this year’s Symposium: Dr Manja Klemenčič (Harvard University) and Lovisa Håkansson (Uppsala University). We were also joined by Dr Sharlene Leroy-Dyer (University Queensland) who facilitated a discussion with passionate students about the importance of student engagement around equity, diversity and inclusion, along with a range of inspirational showcase stories from the field in our presenter streams.
Across the two days, we also offered two SVA member exclusive workshops: the first with Dr Mollie Dollinger (Deakin) and Dr Aidan Cornelius-Bell (UniSA), and the second with Simon Varwell and Stef Black from sparqs.
Dr Manja Klemenčič, Harvard University, United States
Dr Manja Klemenčič researches, teaches, advises, and acts as a consultant in sociology and politics of higher education, European higher education, and comparative higher education. Her major research contribution is in the study of student governments and student representation in higher education which is part of a broader research agenda on student agency and the effects of students on higher education. Klemenčič has over 120 publications and over 80 keynotes and invited lectures on a broad array of higher education topics, including student-centred learning and teaching, quality assurance and institutional research, civic role of higher education, academic profession, internationalisation, and different aspects of higher education reforms.
Lovisa Håkansson, Uppsala University, Sweden
Lovisa Håkansson works with Active Student Participation at the Unit for Academic Teaching and Learning at Uppsala University, Sweden. She is a Masters student in education for sustainable development and her research interests include transformation of higher education pedagogy with respect to sustainability, democracy and student-faculty partnership. She is the mother of a soon to be 1 year old wonder named Ruben and loves taking long walks.
Dr Ulrike Schnaas, Uppsala University, Sweden
Dr Ulrike Schnaas works as an educational developer at Uppsala University, where she is responsible for courses and workshops for university teachers, who want to develop their teaching skills. Her research interests include active student participation within educational development and gender- and diversity awareness in PhD supervision. In 2014, she was responsible for a university-wide student-staff partnership project on ‘Active Student Participation at Uppsala University’, which she says was a truly inspiring and transformative experience. This work occurred in two long-standing initiatives at the University: the student-driven Centre for Environment and Development Studies (CEMUS) and Supplemental Instruction (SI), also called mentorship in some parts of the university.
