To help you get the most from the programme, we have organised conference sessions into five thematic tracks: Global, Insight, Transformation, Foundation and Junction.
The tracks reflect the breadth of topics explored across the conference and provide a simple way to identify sessions aligned with your interests, role and professional priorities. Look out for the track listed alongside each session as you plan your conference experience.
The Global Line Widening perspectives beyond UK higher education
The Insight Line Data, analysis and telling stories
The Transformation Line Strategy delivery and organisational change
The Foundation Line Governance and quality, underlying structures that support success
The Junction Line For topics of interest across and beyond the HESPA membership
Thematic tracks: Insight and global
Speaker: Anna Artemyeva, Google for Education Higher Education Lead EMEA & APAC
Session Synopsis:
We are living through an unprecedented shift in how we learn, work, and solve global challenges. At Google, we design and build AI to address humanity's biggest questions - whether that’s mapping the building blocks of life with AlphaFold, curing diseases, or monitoring global climate and flood risks. But how do these massive scientific breakthroughs translate to the lecture hall, the research lab, and the campus ecosystem?
In this session, Anna Artemyeva (Google for Education - Higher Education EMEA & APAC Lead) explores the intersection of frontier AI models and the future of higher education. From automating heavy administrative burdens for faculty to supercharging academic research and offering students personalized, secure learning partners like Gemini and Gemini Notebook, AI is fundamentally redefining the university experience. Crucially, as the landscape of work evolves rapidly, universities hold the key to cultivating true AI fluency. Discover how Google ensures that human-centered, responsible AI tools prepare the next generation of graduates, HE faculty and researchers to thrive in an AI-driven workforce.
Thematic tracks - Junction and Transformation
Speaker: Kevin Donovan, Workplace Health and Wellbeing Manager, University of Strathclyde
Session Synopsis:
In times of continued pressure and change, wellbeing cannot sit at the edge of organisational life as a collection of supportive initiatives. It needs to be part of how we lead, listen, make decisions and improve the experience of work.
This workshop shares the University of Strathclyde’s developing approach to creating a Culture of Care, built around belonging, psychological safety and kindness. Kevin will introduce the Five Drivers of Flourish: Safety, Belonging, Purpose, Voice and Growth, and explore how these can give institutions a clear, shared language for workplace wellbeing.
Drawing on Strathclyde’s Wellbeing Reviews and emerging Wellbeing Standards Framework, the session will consider how staff insight can be translated into meaningful local action, accountability and evidence of progress. Participants will reflect on how to move from activity-led wellbeing to a more strategic, preventative and sustainable approach during change.
Thematic track - Foundation
Speakers: Dr Liz Rogers, Head of Risk and Resilience, University of Strathclyde, Chair of HEBCoN; and Ben Toogood, Head of Risk and Resilience, King's College, London, Vice-chair of HEBCoN
Session Synopsis:
This workshop will explore approaches to assessing and treating the risk of disruption in UK universities. The speakers will consider the value of Business Impact Analysis (BIA) processes in HE settings, by challenging conventional thinking and by presenting practical steps to developing resilient business continuity plans.
Thematic track - Transformation
Speakers: Charlotte Armstrong, Student Education Operations Manager, Student Curriculum and Operations; Helen Beecroft, Senior Project Manager, Transformation Office; Sarah Turner, Deputy Enterprise Architect, all of University of Leeds
Session Synopsis:
Universities are increasingly working to deliver ambitious digital and educational strategies while operating within complex organisational structures with competing priorities. This session explores how the University of Leeds responded to a need to enhance the Online Learning student experience by creating services that meet the unique needs of these learners. The challenge was to work at pace designing and implementing operational solutions that are flexible, sustainable and underpin institutional education and digital strategies. Colleagues from student administration, strategic planning and change, and IT will share learning from their Online Learning project undertaken as part of the institution's Digital Education ambitions. Working with an external partner, experts from across professional services operated outside traditional organisational constraints to meet a rapid delivery timeframe. The project delivered significant technological change, but its greatest value emerged from the transformation of human ways of working across teams. Traditional processes, roles and project approaches became redundant. Trust and devolved decision making enabled new forms of collaboration and allowed work to be centred on the realities of student experiences. We will share: How strategic vision can transform into a real student experience; How engaging cross-functional areas enabled genuine collaboration; How learning from the project is being used to influence future transformation projects; Our reflections on balancing strategic ambitions with practical implementation. Audience Takeaways: Creating genuine cross-functional collaboration and reducing silo working; Transforming how we work to generate change capacity; Capturing learning to support wider organisational strategy delivery; Connecting strategic priorities to real human experiences.
Speakers: Ufuoma Elegbede, Analyst-Strategy and Insights, University of Nottingham; Ursula McTaggart, Senior Lecturer, Ulster University; Carolyn Moir, Head of Performance and Insight, University of Worcester; Kirsty Scanlan, Director of Strategic Planning, Performance & Projects, Heriot-Watt University; and Chris Slack, Leader of Solutions Engineering, Explorance
Session Synopsis:
Qualitative feedback offers higher education institutions a deeper understanding of student experiences, but turning thousands of comments into meaningful strategic insights can be challenging.
This plenary session will explore how qualitative data analysis can strengthen strategic planning, inform institutional decision-making, and help universities respond to evolving student needs. The panel will discuss how Explorance MLY supports the ethical analysis of student feedback through automated sensitive data handling and bias mitigation, helping institutions uncover meaningful themes at scale. The discussion will also highlight the MLY NSS custom model, which rapidly processes and categorizes large volumes of student comments according to National Student Survey (NSS) themes.
Discover how institutions can move beyond collecting feedback to identify emerging priorities, make more informed decisions, and translate student voices into meaningful institutional impact.
Thematic track - Transformation
Speaker: Dan Wood, Chief People Officer, University of the West of England
Session Synopsis:
Turning strategy into reality is one of the hardest challenges universities face. This session offers a practical, experience-based reflection on leading a major transformation programme in a UK university, focusing on what makes change succeed - or stall - in complex, values-driven institutions.
Drawing on personal experience, the session explores lessons about starting well, designing change from the outside in, building effective governance and guiding coalitions, and making disciplined choices under financial and operational pressure. Participants will be invited to reflect on their own contexts through a short interactive exercise, with an emphasis on judgement, trade-offs and what change looks like in day-to-day practice.
The session will be particularly relevant for those leading or supporting strategic change across professional services and cross-institutional programmes.
Thematic track - Insight
Speaker: Dan Isaac, Data Literacy & Training Lead, University of Exeter
Session Synopsis:
Everyone is talking about AI, but people aren’t talking about the humans that use AI and the data that fuels it. In this talk, I aim to correct that by discussing:
The role of humans in evaluating AI
AI’s data problem
Why humans need data literacy
Thematic track - Insight
Speaker: John Britton & Anna Verhamm, both Lead Consultants, AHEP Consulting
Session Synopsis:
This session presents the findings of The Invisible Majority (HEPI Report 205), which summarises the views of over 450 people around the role and experiences of HE professional services staff. The authors will share some of the things they learned about how to work well, in the current challenging sector circumstances, that apply to managers and to teams. They will share techniques to organise and work effectively, encourage discussion of ‘what works’, and let you know about additional help available.
Thematic tracks - Foundation and Junction
Speaker: Smita Jamdar, Partner & Head of Education, Shakespeare Martineau LLP
Session synopsis:
Higher education strategy is being made in an increasingly difficult environment: financial pressure, volatile recruitment, changing regulation, greater political scrutiny and rising expectations of universities from students, government and wider society. Across the UK, the regulatory and policy frameworks differ, but many of the strategic challenges, and the governance questions they raise, are unsurprisingly similar.
Drawing principally on developments in England and Wales, while reflecting on emerging themes in Scotland and Northern Ireland and globally, this session will consider what governing bodies need to do strategy well in this environment.
It will explore how boards can look beyond assurance and compliance to make a meaningful contribution to institutional strategy: understanding external change, challenging assumptions, navigating risk and uncertainty, making difficult choices, and maintaining a clear sense of institutional purpose. Above all, the session will ask what strategic governance looks like when the future is becoming harder to predict.
Thematic tracks - Global, Transformation and Junction
Speakers: Scott Davidson, Deputy Director of Social Responsibility and Sustainability, and Head of Sustainability, University of Edinburgh; Riina Koivuranta, Head of Responsibility & Wellbeing, University of Helsinki
Session Synopsis:
In this session, we propose to explore the critical components necessary for effective integration of sustainability into university operations/decision making. This reflection is marked by the current financial and political context at Universities, and explores a move from “soft” to “hard” sustainability. It will focus on what effective versions of sustainability strategy, Strategic KPI’s, Strategic Risk Assessment, Governance and Strategic Financial Planning look like, using case studies from both the University of Edinburgh and the University of Helsinki.
Thematic track - Foundation
Speaker: Matthew Abley, Access and Participation Plan Programme Manager, University of Westminster
Session Synopsis:
This session will focus on the establishment of a programme structure to support the delivery of University of Westminster's APP, exploring how the institution has moved from a diffuse model to a defined and robust governance structure, cross-institutional participation and collaboration, and more effective deployment of resource to integrate the APP's delivery into business as usual. The session will explore how the APP has been further incorporated into, and recognised by, broader institutional strategy.
Thematic track - Foundation
Speaker: Ruth Burchell, Quality and Standards Specialist, QAA; Rebecca Robinson, Data Analyst, QAA
Session Synopsis:
This session will explore the key elements of the advice and guidance that underpins Principle 4 – Using data to inform and evaluate quality. The session will then draw on some of the scenarios and reflective questions within that guidance to generate discussion and sharing of challenges and good practice.
Thematic tracks - Transformation and Junction
Speakers: Louise Jones, Head of Strategic Projects Portfolio and Delivery; and Andreea Lupu, Strategic Projects Communications and Information Officer, both of Manchester Metropolitan University
Session Synopsis:
A strategy only delivers value when it is translated into action. In this session, we will discuss how we have worked with Executive PVCs to move beyond traditional strategy documents and create operational plans that actively drive delivery across professional services and academic communities.
We will share the practical steps we have taken to make strategic plans living documents. Participants will leave with actionable ideas, lessons learned from our experience, and opportunities to reflect on how institutions across the HE sector can collectively strengthen the link between strategy and delivery.
Key takeaways:
Thematic tracks - Insight and Transformation
Speakers: Clare Foyle, Director of Strategic Planning, UCL; Mark Jeynes, Partner, Education Practice; Patric Kirchner, Partner & Global Head of Pricing; and Vincenzo Raimo, International Higher Education Consultant
Session Synopsis:
This session will explore how to set fees for international students and postgraduate programmes effectively in the current student recruitment climate. In the knowledge that there is increased competition, market volatility and uncertainty, what strategies can be taken to set fees and how can tuition fee income risks be managed? Strategy and international student recruitment consultants will share their findings from working across the sector, and the breadth of opportunities and threats that they’ve encountered. We’ll also share tuition fee setting approaches adopted by UCL, a large Russell Group university based in London.
We will also explore different pricing strategies that have been applied in other sectors and share what can be learnt by higher education institutions when considering their own fee policies and approaches.
Attendees to the workshop will leave with an awareness of the challenges and opportunities that should be considered when setting tuition fees and some practical ideas to take away that could be applied at their own institution.
Thematic track - Insight
Speakers: Jacqueline Freeland, Statutory Returns Analyst; Julie Gifford, Statutory Returns Manager, both of University of Edinburgh; Dr Estelle King, Head of Planning and Returns, Nottingham Trent University; Katya Samoylova, Cambridge; Adam Van Coevorden, Jisc/HESA; and Adam Van Coevorden, Head of Collection Operations (HESA), Jisc
Session Synopsis:
In this session our panellists will showcase aspects of institutional data returns process which work particularly well and have had a positive impact to their ways of working. With colleagues representing HESA on the panel, discussion will address the implementation of In-year Returns and how targeting process improvements at this stage might increase the capability to respond to the upcoming changes.
Thematic tracks - Global, Transformation and Junction
Speakers: Tim Bedford, Associate Principal Research and Innovation, University of Strathclyde, UK; and Per Michael Johansen, Rector, Aalborg University
Session Synopsis:
The discussion will explore how universities can respond positively to an era of unprecedented change. Drawing on leadership experience in the UK and in Denmark, the speakers will examine how institutions can adapt to evolving funding models, increasing financial pressures, and a rapidly changing global environment while remaining true to their core missions of education, research, and knowledge exchange.
It will explore strategies for building resilience through innovation, collaboration, diversification of income, and the effective use of technology. Attendees will gain insights into how higher education institutions can embrace change as a catalyst for future growth, sustainability, and long-term success in an increasingly complex and interconnected world.
Thematic tracks - Global, Insight and Junction
Speaker: Sadie Lynch, Principal Analyst and Futures Lead, College of Policing
Session Synopsis:
Policing faces an increasingly complex and fast-changing future shaped by technological innovation, evolving crime threats, demographic change, and global events. This session introduces futures and foresight, exploring how these approaches can help policing anticipate change, navigate uncertainty, and make better strategic decisions.
Drawing on the work of the College of Policing, the presentation will explore how horizon scanning identifies emerging trends, risks, and opportunities, and how futures thinking supports long-term planning and preparedness. Participants will also be introduced to foresight techniques, including scenario planning and the futures wheel, which can be used to explore alternative futures, understand the implications of change, and strengthen organisational resilience.
Offering an engaging and accessible introduction to futures thinking, the session will provide practical insights into how organisations can anticipate change, explore uncertainty, and prepare for emerging challenges and opportunities to inform strategy and build long-term resilience.
Thematic tracks - Insight and Foundation
Speakers: Roger Adams, Head of Planning and Policy; and Dr Melanie Rimmer, Data Analysis & Reporting Manager, both of Cardiff University
Session Synopsis:
We will cover how Cardiff University created and implemented an internal student-staff ratio measure as part of discussions around the academic future of the university. We will describe the process of defining and agreeing the measure, how we engaged with academic Schools, and the reporting created to support ongoing discussions. The new measure has been embedded in monthly reporting and future scenario projections and has found wide acceptance among stakeholders, forming an integral part of Planning & Budgeting discussions around the future size and shape of the university.
Thematic tracks - Insight and Transformation
Speaker: Jessica Sims, Head of Strategic Planning Partnering; and Robert Strick, Head of Data Engineering and AI, both of UCL
Session Synopsis:
This session explores how a fragmented, error-prone data environment (built on countless spreadsheets) was transformed into a robust, reliable data infrastructure to support strategic student number planning and recruitment decision-making.
We will walk through the journey from the initial challenges to the creation of structured data pipelines and Tableau dashboards, improving both data reliability and accessibility. The session will also highlight how new governance frameworks have enabled more consistent and coordinated planning across the institution.
Alongside the technical build, we will address how a business partnering approach was essential in securing stakeholder trust, embedding new ways of working, and driving adoption of an improved student number planning process. Through collaboration and shared ownership, teams across the institution have shifted from reactive decision-making to more proactive strategic planning.
Participants will gain practical insights into effective governance, securing buy-in, continuous improvement, cross-team alignment, and the importance of user engagement in sustaining a single version of the truth.
Thematic track - Transformation
Speaker: Ruby Adams, Strategy and Programme Manager; and Henry Blackman, Director of IT, both of Harper Adams University
Session Synopsis:
Many organisations have ambitious strategies, but delivering them consistently across complex institutions remains a significant challenge. This session will explore how Harper Adams University created the Harper Transform programme to bridge the gap between strategic ambition and operational delivery. The session will share how a university-wide transformation programme was established to support growth, improve efficiency and effectiveness, and develop a culture where continuous improvement becomes part of everyday business. Rather than focusing solely on individual projects, Harper Transform combines business process improvement, digital enablement, and staff engagement to create the conditions for lasting organisational change.
Drawing on practical examples, we will discuss how colleagues were engaged in identifying improvement opportunities, how process improvement was linked directly to strategic priorities, and how the programme sought to deliver change with people rather than to them. Participants will gain insights into the challenges, lessons learned, and benefits of creating a transformation approach that balances strategy delivery with cultural change.
Attendees will leave with: Practical approaches for translating strategic objectives into a coherent transformation programme. Lessons on creating the organisational engagement required for successful change. Techniques for identifying and prioritising business improvement opportunities that release capacity and support strategic goals. Insights into building a culture of continuous improvement and embedding change as part of "business as usual". Reflections on the realities, challenges and successes of delivering institution-wide transformation within a resource-constrained environment.
Speaker:
Session Synopsis:
Details to be announced.
Speakers: James Lence, International Market Insight Manager, University of Bristol; and Carrie Williams, Account Director for Higher Education, Lightcast
Session Synopsis:
Speaker: Dr Charles Knight, Higher Education Sector Engagement Lead, Strengthify
Session Synopsis:
Thematic tracks - Transformation and Junction
Speaker: Aya Ferguson, Director of Consulting, SUMS Consulting
Session Synopsis:
Change is a constant across higher education, but successful transformation depends on more than delivering a project, it requires engaging people, adapting ways of working and supporting colleagues throughout to embed new behaviours. Change Management as a specialism has grown massively in the last few decades, but how do we best apply it to our HE context?
In this workshop, Aya Ferguson will draw on over 15 years of experience leading complex change across the higher education sector. Using real-world examples, Aya will explore what makes change successful in a university environment. The session will consider the particular characteristics of HE and how we adapt best practice change management to work within our context. Change may be a constant and can be tough, but Change Management, fit for HE, can increase the likelihood of successful change implementation and delivering meaningful people-related return on investment.
Thematic tracks - Foundation and Insight
Speaker: Anna Tinkler, Registry Academic Data Governance Lead, University of Sunderland
Session Synopsis:
We will outline how a 6-month project led to securing executive support and strategic investment for the creation of the Registry Academic Data Governance Unit. Now existing to ensure the effective ownership, quality, and strategic utilisation of academic data across the service and university. Our remit spans the oversight, coordination, and enhancement of data processes and systems for the service, underpinning institutional decision-making and supporting the university’s academic mission, serving as a central point of expertise, guidance, and operational oversight, with a commitment to delivering measurable value and fostering a culture of data-driven excellence.
We will focus specifically on:
Thematic tracks - Junction and Global
Speakers: John Blake, Director, The Post-18 Project, and Professor of Social Innovation and Public Policy, University of Salford
Session Synopsis:
The new Prime Minister’s been clear he wants to see more decisions made locally, to build more prosperous communities across the country - but he has inherited a weak economy, growing international turmoil, and a very short window before the next election. Higher education institutions must have a role in these agendas - as drivers of research, teachers of students, and employers of local people - but they are trapped in a failing system which cannot self-correct. John Blake explores how and why we got to this point, and how we might get out of it.
