Tuesday 14-04-2026 - 14:56

 "Do research when you're angry": Abby Lewis and Abi Taylor on the Belonging Fund, the Belonging Report, and Challenging Durham's Enduring Prejudices.  

With the first round of applications for the Belonging Fund recently closed, and the second round currently open, we at the SU are buzzing with excitement about the projects students have pitched so far and the brilliant new visions still to come.

Right now, we’re taking the time to reflect on why the Belonging Fund was set up, and the changes we’re hoping it’ll set in motion. Student Content Creator, Sarah Crooks, sat down with Abby Lewis, Anthropology graduate and SU Student Voice Co-ordinator and Abi Taylor, your SU President, to talk about the process behind setting up the Belonging Fund, and what belonging to Durham University has meant to them.
 

The beginnings of the Belonging Report 

Abby first came to Durham to study Anthropology in 2020, as a mature student and a first-generation scholar. Initially, she found it difficult to adjust to life in Durham; hostility and microaggressions from peers, along with a lack of familiarity with university life, fostered a sense of exclusion she couldn’t shake off. “As a mature student, I already felt like I stuck out, and the assumed knowledge around Durham culture and traditions made the gap between me and my peers feel even wider”.

On paper, she entered her second year as a model Durham student, achieving brilliant academic results. Yet she continued to feel isolated, as though she didn’t belong. “I never felt like the Durham type”, Abby reflected, “The grades didn’t matter; that was only a small part of what it meant to be a Durham student, and it just wasn’t enough to reassure me I was in the right place”.

As she began speaking with other mature students, first-generation scholars, and students from low-income backgrounds, she quickly realised her experience hadn’t been unique.

I asked her how she’d transformed these initial conversations into a force for real change. “Don’t let emotions stay emotions. Do research when you're angry; turn the anger into something productive”, Abby replied, “it wasn’t just about me: I knew I wanted to make sure other students, especially those living away from home for the first time, didn't go through the same thing I did”.

Led by Abby and the two co-chairs of the First-Generation Scholars Group, Andrea Lambell and Catherine Marley, arranged a meeting with Professor Kate Hamshire of the Anthropology department. As the conversation grew, becoming emotionally charged with the lived experiences of the participants, Abby realised it couldn’t end with them; "We had to find out if this was just six people talking together in a room, or a genuinely systemic issue".

The result was a university-wide research project, culminating in the Belonging Report , which launched in November of 2024.
 

Taking learnings from the Belonging Report 

Abby’s findings were shocking, but perhaps not surprising. She recalled being horrified by the responses but finding clear resonances with her own experiences at Durham. Reflecting on the survey, she commented that “the most infuriating thing to me is that it’s so often local students, students from the North-East, who are being made to feel out of place in their own county”.

Accent bias and classism, both overt and subtle, were an all too common feature of many students’ time at Durham. Many students from the North-east echoed Abby’s concerns, “feeling like an outcast in [their] own region”. The disconnect between Durham students and Durham locals compounded the discrimination. “Durham is full of students making fun of Durham locals, calling them stupid and dirty” one local student commented, reflecting on how Durham’s industrial history was looked down on by some students.

The issues were clearly systemic; even university staff had been involved in perpetuating the exclusion. Students discussed the impact of staff biases on their academic participation, with one student recalling that “Teachers have laughed at the way I speak when I've spoken up in class”. 

A common sentiment across the board was that students had come to Durham with genuine excitement and a desire to form new friendships and engage in university life, but had been disillusioned by continuous slights, rebuffs and roadblocks, often centred on their identity, background or economic status. One student surmised, “It was my first choice after all, and I’m damn proud I made it, but now I can’t even say I feel anything towards it”.

Despite this, the report also uncovered more positive trends. One student commented on the orientation events their academic advisor had arranged; “I really felt like part of the department; wanted, included, invited”. Many others found community in societies, often those focused on a shared identity; “The trans and non-binary picnic run by the LGBT+ society made me feel like there was a space in which I could belong”.

It became clear that when spaces were created for students to form connections, and people were actively included, rather than passively excluded, a powerful sense of belonging could be fostered.  “Several students described the relief of finding “people like them”, Abby observed, “Having an outlet to discuss shared experiences and support one another seemed to really make a difference”.

With the publishing of the Belonging Report in June 2025, Abby knew changes had to be made. "We knew the problems were there before, but now it's written down - it’s got stats attached to it. We need to take accountability to fix this - we need to have open conversations in which these issues are taken seriously.”

This planted the seeds for what would become the Belonging Fund.

From the beginning, Abby tells me, it was important to her that the project was student-led. She created the document as a student, for students. "This isn't just a tool for the university - it's a document that has power to it. It’s a document students *should* look at and should get angry about".

Reflecting on her time on the project, and her wider time in Durham, Abby concludes, "This piece of work is the thing that I am most proud of - it was a chance to apply my academic knowledge to something that I really cared about". She adds that she couldn’t have done it without support from across the university and beyond. “This was in [my] third year, so [I] had to work on [my] degree alongside everything else. We had a lot of support in getting the research done – our Sociology and Anthropology professors, Vikki Boliver and Kate Hampshire, could go into spaces where we undergrads couldn't, and have conversations with senior staff”.

The establishment of the Belonging Fund

Much of the groundwork for setting up the fund began right here at the SU, with Abi, our President, who is also joining us for the interview. “Right when I first started the job, it was mentioned to me that the belonging fund existed, and I immediately knew it was something I wanted to work on”, Abi recalls. "One of the things that I ran on [during her Presidential campaign] was that I was a fully grant-funded state school student - Durham struggles to shake off its elitism - it’s come a long way, but you still feel it". Aside from the parallels with her own experience, she was drawn to the project for its student-driven origins. “I loved that it wasn't top down like many uni projects often are – it felt really grounded in the students’ lived experience”.

Since then, Abi quips, “I’ve been acting as half general cheerleader and half strategist”. Taking the lead on comms and marketing, Abby and the rest of the SU team were able to gain support and funding from within the university; “Because I interact with a lot of student leaders focused on issues around inclusivity, I was able to introduce the Belonging Fund as a potential solution”.

With Abi’s support, Abby has been in the driving seat at the Students’ Union, working with Emily, our Communications Coordinator, Fran, the Community Officer and Christy, our Business Faculty Student Voice Coordinator, raising awareness and making the process as smooth and approachable as possible for students to get their projects on the ground. At all stages, the project has been a collaborative effort between the SU and the University. In particular, Louise Ranking-Carr, the Assistant Manager in the School Outreach and Widening Participation Team (SOWP), has been instrumental in setting up and supporting the Fund.

I asked Abi what she felt was the most important step in making the project accessible. She told me that ensuring that students were paid to work on it had been one of her biggest focuses.

“We had to make sure we didn’t exclude the students that the fund was actually for”. “The last thing we wanted”, Abby interjects, “was for the economic barriers students had faced to be recreated here”.   

I asked Abby what she wanted to see happen as a result of students’ projects. "We don't know what's going to come through this first year, and it's quite exciting", Abby answered, “Right now, we’re working with a very open criteria – If you have ideas, we want them!”. “Still”, she added, “It would be amazing if the projects didn’t stop at belonging within the university, but aimed to help students feel like they belong in the local community as well. I really want to get people thinking about a sense of place when they're living in Durham. We don't want Durham to be a shorthand for Durham University - You are in a city, you are in a county, you are in a deeply historically important region".

We ended with some messages for any students interested in getting involved. “We want ideas from any students willing to share them. Our job isn’t to assess or reject your projects, it’s to support them and help you transform them into something real”. Abi injects - “We have plenty of funding – what we want is to give it all away!”. “At the end of the day, belonging to Durham University is going to mean different things to different people”, Abby concludes, “Whatever comes to mind when you think about belonging, we want to hear about it!”.

To read more about the Belonging Fund and how to apply, visit our webpage.

You can find the Belonging Report itself in full here.