HEIs as Places for People: Inclusive Infrastructures to Support Intersectionality in HEIs

Trinity College's Equality, Diversity and Inclusion Office leads a consortium of four Irish universities on the HEIs as Places for People project, which launched with a kick-off meeting in RCSI in July 2025. This project is funded under the Higher Education Authority competitive Equality, Diversity and Inclusion Enhancement Fund 2024. 

Project partners are Trinity College Dublin, University of Galway, TU Dublin and Royal College of Surgeons in Ireland.

The project aims to advance awareness and understanding of intersectionality and multi-dimensional approaches to equality, diversity and inclusion, by seeking to implement intersectionality in policy design and practice in planning for and shaping our built environment.

The project launch event on July 2nd 2025 featured six interdisciplinary presentations covering the intersections of Universal Design in architecture and university heritage buildings and campuses, Universal Design as an approach to meeting Public Sector Duty compliance, and expanding community accessibility to institutional heritage capital within HEIs. As part of the programme, the RCSI Estates staff also led a tour of their state-of-the-art learning facilities at 26 York Street. We were thrilled to welcome over 40 attendees from a wide breadth of organisations, who are all excited to follow this novel project through its next steps.