Your PGR Liaison Group needs you!

The PGR Liaison Group is made up of student reps who meet monthly with GS staff including our Director Lindsay O'Dell. Please see a list of current staff and PGR attendees here: PGR-GS liaison group | Graduate School Network (open.ac.uk). The group raises items of concern for the PGR community and puts them on the agenda for the OU, e.g., the cost-of-living support prioritised for full-time PGRs in 2023.

We'd like to expand the group so we can make sure it represents the views of as many students as possible, and so we are looking to recruit PGRs from underrepresented groups of students; this might include (but is not limited to):

• black or minority ethnic students (either UK or non-UK born)
• students with disabilities
• LGBTQIA+ (lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, queer, questioning, intersex or asexual +) students
• neurodiverse students
• first-generation students (those who are the first in their family to go on to higher education)
• international students (those with a Student Route visa)
• student carers
• student parents.

​This isn't an exhaustive list – if there's a student category that isn't mentioned here that you feel should be represented, please let us know. We do realise that many PGRs will identify with more than one of these categories – the idea is to have a named contact-point so that students can feel confident that they are approaching someone who has lived experience of the issues they want to raise. We'd particularly encourage male students to volunteer for these roles, as males are currently under-represented in the liaison group. We'd also like to recruit reps from currently unrepresented Faculties and Schools (particularly part-time students in WELS, and full-time students in FASS), and from the Professional Doctorate programmes and our Affiliated Research Centres. 

If you're interested in getting involved, please contact [email protected] in the first instance.