EHEI · Ecosystems for Higher Education Inclusion: connecting underserved communities with higher education through participatory engagement and research methodologies (EHEI)

The EHEI project is aimed at creating a sustainable network of ecosystems that bring together CSOs and Latin American and European academic institutions to better understand how persons from underserved communities envision their transitions to and from higher education, as well as their inclusion within higher education and how universities and educational and social services could be improved to better facilitate these transitions. The project will contribute to both knowledge production and social innovation through: (1) Enhancing the understanding of transitions to and from higher education as individual and collective processes from the perspective of underserved groups in an intersectional and global perspective, (2) creating reflective teaching and guidance practices to enhance inclusivity and effectiveness of pre-university and university services for underserved groups enhanced by a whole university approach to inclusive transformation, (3) crafting reflective spaces for underserved groups in relation to higher education inclusion and (4) refining interdisciplinary and intersectionally inclusive research methodologies to better study educational transition and inclusion processes. These will lead up to the emergence of a sustainable ecosystemic network that will work beyond the project to facilitate processes of higher education inclusion. Intersectoral, interdisciplinary and extra-European Staff exchanges are at the core of the project as they facilitate the creation of a European-Latin American ecosystemic network that will enhance intersectoral, interdisciplinary and international innovation and translate this innovation directly into social and educational impact through on the spot activities. Staff exchanges will allow partners to transfer immersive knowledge from the civil society to the academic sector, while research methodologies from the academic sector will enhance and catalyse research and innovation activities of civil society actors.