Relational change in higher education: How students and staff navigate diversity and agency

Abstract

[EN] Higher education has traditionally been characterized by slow institutional change and entrenched norms, yet recent developments point to growing collective agency among academic staff, administrative professionals, and students. This study examines how different university actors—students, academic staff, and administrative staff—perceive diversity and their own agency in fostering change within higher education institutions. Drawing on Giddens’ theory of structuration and Bourdieu’s theory of practice, it explores how individual and collective actions both reproduce and transform institutional structures. Based on nine focus groups (𝑁 = 56) across three European universities in Austria, Spain, and Lithuania, the research applies a shared coding framework and a mixed‐methods approach, combining qualitative content analysis with quantitative pattern detection. The findings show that perceptions of diversity and agency are shaped more by professional role than institutional context. Students emphasize lived experiences and grassroots activism but feel structurally underrepresented; academic staff frame diversity as a pedagogical responsibility that is constrained by workload and limited institutional support; while administrative staff interpret agency through procedural discretion and professionalism, yet face bureaucratic inertia. Across all roles, the participants reveal a sense of “diversity fatigue,” reflecting the emotional labor of unsupported efforts towards inclusion. The study concludes that meaningful institutional change arises less from formal policy than from relational alignment, mutual recognition, and collaboration among actors, which enables everyday transformations within existing structures