The Equity in European Higher Education debate in the twenty- first century: preliminary findings from an investigation of staff experiences of current equality policies in UK higher education institutions'Rosemary Deem, Anwar Tlili: Graduate School of Education, University of Bristol, UK; Louise Morley: Centre for Higher Education Studies, London University Institute of Education, UK There is a long tradition of social research on inequalities. However, much of this research focuses on particular structures and categories of inequality rather than finding intersections between these. Although many individual studies of inequality have been conducted in educational organisations (Rai 2000), not all have progressed beyond the 'add women and stir' approach. Alternatively researchers have sometimes tried to create a hierarchy of different forms of oppression. This is not to say that no progress has been made; rather there are still many unanswered questions, both conceptual and empirical. Whilst inequality can be studied in many contexts, higher educational organisations are particularly significant because of the expectation that both staff and students will be involved in communities of practice which foster learning (Wenger, McDermott et al. 2002). Whilst some European HE institutions have succeeded in helping highlight structures of social inequalities and their ethical and policy implications, and helped inform public debates around various forms of discrimination, most have done little to scrutinise their own practices through research, or examined if and how HE reproduces, reinforces, undermines and/or challenges existing social inequalities and forms of discrimination amongst staff as well as students. The European policy arena is a very significant context, since it is largely the European Commission framework for equal treatment in employment directive of 2000 that has not only defined the terms of reference for the European public sphere on these issues [European Commission, 2004 #5127], but also changed and strengthened equality policies in organisations across the EU (Marsh and Sahin-Dikmen 2003). The paper draws on research involving six case studies of higher education institutions across England, Scotland and Wales. The project is examining equal opportunities policies (and related Human Resource strategies) in each institution and exploring the perceptions and experiences of those policies from the perspectives of a diverse group of staff from different occupational backgrounds. The research is funded by the Higher Education Funding Councils for England, Scotland and Wales and is part of a Research Programme on Equal Opportunities in UK Higher Education, at a point when a number of new pieces of UK equality legislation affecting employees have come into force or are about to do so (for example on disability, 'race', sexual orientation and age). The research uses qualitative methods from critical discourse analysis of equality policies to focus groups and interviews with staff. Here we concentrate on preliminary findings from the focus group data. The main intention is to find out how well staff, from professors to porters, think that equality policies in their institution are working. In the fieldwork care has been taken to make sure that both positive and negative experiences and examples are gathered, to avoid the charge that studies of inequality in organisations are often only concerned with collecting 'misery stories' (Alvesson and Due Billing 1997). Although the research focuses on higher education organisations in the UK, it has many implications for what may be happening to staff across European higher education and for EU-wide anti-discrimination initiatives and equitable employment policies.