About the session

This two-day symposium aims to bring together a wide gamut of actors and stakeholders to discuss the current and emergent landscape of student support towards and within higher education. We look forward to learning from grounded models of academic and co-academic support across diverse institutional and extra-mural contexts. Our emphasis is on spaces and practices that are inclusive by default attentive to linguistic diversity, disability and neurodiversity, and socioeconomic realities so that the democratic gains of expanded access to higher education translate into durable forms of academic, intellectual, and professional flourishing.

Why attend?

There is an urgent need to better understand the evolving landscape of academic support and skilling across social-sector organisations and for-profit actors — that enables socially and educationally disadvantaged students to access higher education. Beyond entry, higher educational institutions must also grapple with the challenge of realising genuinely inclusive classrooms and campuses. This raises key questions about the institutional frameworks and support infrastructures required to prevent universities from becoming new sites of exclusion.

It is increasingly evident that the democratisation of access, while necessary, is insufficient on its own. Sustained academic and co-academic support across the student life cycle is equally critical, particularly for students from diverse backgrounds and social realities. Systematic investment in foundational academic capacities, communicative abilities, digital competencies, and multimodal literacies within and beyond the classroom is essential not only for meaningful curricular engagement, but also for securing dignified livelihoods and enabling holistic intellectual and professional flourishing.

Who should attend?

We cordially invite practitioners, writing instructors, data educators, administrators of support spaces in higher educational institutions; representatives of pre-university preparatory centres, NGOs, EdTech companies, transferrable skills-development organisations working with high-school and college

Students, members of student-led support initiatives in Indian colleges and universities and researchers/​educators working in relevant fields to submit their work in grounded practices, case studies, and reflective insights on working with students from diverse backgrounds to contribute towards inclusive education in its truest sense.

We are particularly interested in experiential knowledge, case studies from practice, and reflective practitioner accounts.

Please register and submit your concept note here by 12 Feb 2026. 

Selected presenters will deliver a 15 — 20-minute presentation as part of a three-member panel with a discussant.

Food, travel, and accommodation

Food and accommodation are covered for the duration of the symposium. Travel bursaries will be made available to all participants.

Have questions?

Please write to us arc-​symposium@​apu.​edu.​in 

Know more about the Academic Resource Centre at Azim Premji University here: