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

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. 

Project partners, led by Trinity, 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 design and practice in planning for and shaping our built environment.

The project launch event hosted by RCSI 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 welcomed over 40 attendees from a wide breadth of organisations, who were all excited to follow this novel project through its next steps.

A further two Mutual Learning Events took place in November 2025  at Technological University Dublin Grangegorman and in February 2026 at University of Galway. 

Mutual Learning Event (MLE) 2 The Art of the Possible at TU Dublin aimed to explore what is possible in heritage campus buildings when adopting a universal design approach to their renovation and upgrades and aiming for a “a campus for all”.

The third project MLE The Future is Universal Design at University of Galway aimed to centre stage the student experience, participation and share some projects and consultation undertaken in relation to inclusive and accessible campus design.

The final project symposium took place on 20 May at Trinity College Dublin. Partners shared key learnings from site visits and project work since summer 2025, highlighting practical approaches to universal design and intersectional inclusion in higher education spaces. Contributors from across the sector included Dublin City Council; Department of Housing, Local Government and Heritage; Vision Ireland and University of Edinburgh.

This project is funded under the Higher Education Authority competitive Equality, Diversity and Inclusion Enhancement Fund 2024.