Supporting university students in times of global health crisis and beyond: Findings from the UniCoVac study

What’s on offer?

The UniCoVac research team will give short 5 to 10-minute presentations of a) data from the main questionnaire and b) a selection of case studies from the interviews representing a broad spectrum of student experiences during the pandemic. The workshop will be highly interactive: following each presentation, participants will be allocated to breakout rooms for a 10-minute discussion about the implications for student welfare and support. The outcome of these discussions will be recorded on Padlet and will be shared with the university sector.

What’s it about?

UniCoVac is a comprehensive study of university students’ experiences during the COVID-19 pandemic, including their experiences of vaccination, media coverage, and university and local community support. The ESRC-funded study uses a mixed methodology, combining a survey of the attitudes of a wide spectrum of University of Leicester students with in-depth interviews of representative individuals. The findings are yielding key insights into the kind of support students require during the current global health crisis. The study also has implications for non-pandemic times, including for the design of successful campus-based immunisation programmes for infectious diseases other than COVID. Another key area of intervention is the delivery of effective anti-bullying and anti-harassment policies by universities.

Who’s leading the event?

Prof. Chris Bayliss, UniCoVac PI (Dept. Genetics and Genome Biology, University of Leicester); Dr. Lieve Gies, UniCoVac Co-PI (Dept. Media, Communications and Sociology, University of Leicester); Dr. Mayuri Gogoi, UniCoVac qualitative data analyst (University of Leicester)

Open to

The workshop is aimed at anyone working in student support services in UK universities. Student organisations (e.g. NUS) and representatives are also welcome to attend.

Of particular interest to

The workshop will be particularly relevant to: Healthcare workers who are specifically interested in student immunisation, University communication units, University student support services and University anti-bullying and anti-harassment coordinators