Minoritised students’ accounts connect belonging, mattering and trust

Updated Sep 07, 2026

Claire Hamshire, Ryan Gerald Wilkinson, Rachel Forsyth and Awo Abdi explore mattering and trust in accounts from 15 minoritised ethnic students at one English university. The paper appeared online on 27 November 2025, ahead of its 2026 journal issue. Paper and DOI.

Evidence available for this briefing: publisher excerpts covering the abstract, methods, results and discussion were accessible. This is a limited review, not a complete paper verification.

The study’s setting and argument

Five online listening events took place in 2021 with students employed in two cohorts of a peer-mentoring scheme at a post-92 institution. Thirteen participants were women. The events began as an evaluation of the scheme, but students discussed broader experiences of racial exclusion.

The authors developed themes of mattering/not mattering and trust/trust building. Participants described a gap between institutional belonging ambitions and feeling recognised and valued. Their accounts connected trust with everyday relationships and encounters.

The paper offers a situated critique and conceptual interpretation. It does not demonstrate that all belonging strategies fail, estimate the prevalence of these experiences, or test an intervention for improving trust. Publisher methods and findings.

Questions for a local evidence review

Our practical suggestion is to ask what made respondents feel taken seriously and what affected confidence in raising a concern. Keep their explanations alongside any broad belonging rating.

Do not assume that a single institution or participating group represents all minoritised students. Invite a range of perspectives and retain disagreement where it matters to the question being considered.

Before comparing comments by demographic group, consider whether the reporting is useful and whether individuals could become identifiable. Do not infer ethnicity or personal experience from a comment when that information was not appropriately collected.

The governance checklist can support a bounded comment review. Themes may inform further discussion; they do not prove the causes of an awarding gap or that a proposed response will improve trust.

Review note, 7 September 2026: replaced the universal failure claim in the headline, added the employed peer-mentor sampling context and separated participants’ accounts from causal and product claims.

Reference

Claire Hamshire, Ryan Gerald Wilkinson, Rachel Forsyth and Awo Abdi (2025 online; 2026 issue). From belonging to mattering to trust: the experiences of minoritised ethnic students in UK higher education. Higher Education Research & Development, 45(3), 572–585. DOI: 10.1080/07294360.2025.2552319.