Literature

International scholarly conversations about the university precinct can be broadly divided into two largely distinct and multidisciplinary areas. One focuses on estates managers’ concerns with costs, planning, and efficiency, and keeping pace with universities’ ever-evolving provision (Coulson et al. 2015) alongside architects’ interests in aesthetics, design, and functional and  symbolic value (Boys 2014). This work is fascinating and insightful in knowing how the construction and maintenance operate, but it largely neglects the lived experience. This means that assertions about how those higher education spaces actually work remain largely speculative. The other literature incorporates more practice-oriented, evidence-based debates on whether universities are fit for fulfilling their multiple and expanding range of purposes (Harris-Huemmert 2019). This extends into the established recognition of how campuses can be in-/exclusionary for different groups (Solorzano et al. 2000) and how technology – and more recently the pandemic – have raised questions about the nature of higher education’s physical assets and even whether we need them at all (Spire 2023).

What is missing, and this is gap has been noted for some time, is research which connects the two discussions (Temple 2023). That which has been published – in English at least - is both disciplinarily as well as geographically dispersed, and as such this remains an underexplored and somewhat nascent topic. We do know, though, that campuses are not simply neutral canvasses on which activity happens, but that the physical and social aspects relate. This includes, for example, how campus buildings can both inspire or intimidate (Thompson et al. 2025). There is also some work which considers how students move around campuses, but this rarely extends beyond quantitative tracking (see Greene and Penn 1997) other than to consider where traditionally marginalised groups feel un-/safe (Flint 2021). This paper positions itself in relation to this work by exploring how a diverse group of students describes both their campus and how they feel about it, as well as well as what influences their movements around the university precinct.

On Space

Given the ostensibly interdisciplinary nature of how campuses can be conceptualised, a range of theorisations have been invoked, from Lacanian subjectivity to Bronfenbrenner’s ecology. The most commonly applied concept, though, is that of space, albeit in different ways and at different scales. This paper draws on the work of Doreen Massey (2008) in particular, who formulates spaces as interrelational areas where people and artefacts come together and are transformed in the process. In other words, rather than a place as simply a designated, somewhat static location that can be topographically described, spaces are continually in flux due to the ongoing processes of those repeated comings together. Massey is also at pains to point out that the relations within a space are often hierarchical and therefore understanding them requires capturing a diversity of perspectives. Thinking about universities in this way is helpful because it allows us to imagine and then investigate the rich and ever-changing panoply of people, ideas, and physical items that they consist of and the interactions and dynamics that this engenders. While being widely used in geography, Massey’s work has thus far only sparingly been applied in research on higher education (Samura 2018).

With this in mind, this paper seeks to address the following question:

How do students describe their campus socio-materially, and what mediates their movements around it?

For this study, which sought to address the question of how students experience and negotiate the university as a space, qualitative data was collected at ‘Russell University’, a large, high status, research-intensive university in England. Russell, in common with other universities of this type, was founded in the 19th Century and occupies a large plot of land in the middle of a major, formerly industrial city. Its estate numbers over 200 buildings, covering a miscellany of architectural styles from ivy-adorned Gothic to modern corporate, interspersed with a variety of parks and quadrangles, intersected by public and private paths, bridges, and roads. As with other similar institutions, it is well placed on national and international rankings and hosts tens of thousands of students annually, over a quarter of whom are from overseas. Participant recruitment was undertaken inviting participation in assorted classes, with a choice of engaging in an interview or focus group based on their preference and availability. While these can provide different kinds of data – largely due to the range and type of interactions – they are both appropriate for eliciting rich accounts of viewpoints and lived experiences (Wilson 2006; Dicicco-Bloom and Crabtree 2006). Lines of discussion focused on their movements within, and views of, the campus estate and their experiences in relation to them. Data analysis involved coding data extracts according their descriptions of the campus as a whole, as well as the specific buildings or spaces they visited or not (trajectories), as well as references to with whom they did and did not interact (interrelationality), noting where this took place. The sample consisted of 42 students in a purposive, intentionally diverse sample designed to explore a multiplicity of perspectives, rather than focusing on particular groups as other studies have done. The sample was split almost evenly between under- and postgraduate students but leaned more towards women (none identified as non-binary) and the social sciences. The disciplinary mix was in part dictated by classroom access permissions granted by staff, with underrepresented subject students largely attending focus groups with friends from the social sciences. Just over a third of the participants were domestic students (i.e. British citizens) but over two thirds of the group claimed all or partial heritage from the global majority.

Participants’ accounts contained regular observations about how huge and architecturally varied the campus was. Within this there was pervasive view that this diversity projected something of the university’s character as venerable, prestigious, and traditional, as well as future-oriented. However, this was also interlaced with a perception of the university leadership favouring the estates’ appearance over the working and learning conditions of staff and students respectively. This extended into a common observation of a divide between favoured disciplines, primarily in STEM, where money was being invested, and others which were correspondingly neglected. Students’ movements around the campus were shaped by a range of influences, particularly timetabling, and participants described quite different disciplinary ‘footprints’ – some quite condensed, others more wide-ranging – as well as discernible subject-based divides between those footprints. There were some favoured locations where paths intersected, notably the library and student union, but negative experiences could mean that those shared areas were not universally liked or revisited. Alongside this, students regularly reported getting lost when trying to find particular buildings, or even rooms within buildings. Notable, too, was evidence of reticence to enter areas they were unfamiliar with or perceived as daunting, and included regular mentions of most students being barred from entering one newly-built school in particular. In combination, these findings represent an important contribution. From a Masseyan perspective, it shows a clear interrelation between the campus and its inhabitants, infused with its organisational culture, social composition, and individual preferences. In this way we can see how university’s physical spaces can be seen to reflect a sense of the university’s priorities and hidden curriculum, which previously has been discussed but lacked evidence. Secondly, it shows how the physical, in conjunction with other elements, mediates how they move around and feel about – and within – their institution.

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