In 2012 Central School of Speech & Drama received funding from the Higher Education Academy (HEA) to carry out research into the experiences of their Black and Minority Ethnic (BME) Students. The research included a review of pre-existing reports of the experiences of BME students in Higher Education as well as qualitative interviews with fifteen third year students and five staff members at the university. Of the students interviewed all categorised themselves as BME whereas the staff were mostly some variant of White British.
This research project has enabled direct engagement with BME students and facilitated hearing in depth their experiences of work and study at the institution. The first section of the report outlines the project's aims rationale and methodology as well as well discussing how ethnicity and race are defined in the context of this research. The second section provides an account of the findings from the interviews together with an analysis of the findings which draws upon the data from the transcripts.
