The MaRBLe experience of: Caden Puah and Lennart Salek

The experience of doing a MaRBLe project is undoubtedly one of the more rewarding experiences at Maastricht University (UM)!

The project gave us the time and space to really dive into our research on education inequality at UM. On top of that, UM gave us the support and opportunity to explore wider discussions in the field of education. We had the privilege of receiving a scholarship from EDLAB to attend a conference in University College London (UCL).

UCL’s Institute of education is one of the world’s leading organizations in the field of education research. The Centre for Education and International Development (CEID) is a branch in their organization and held a conference on higher education on the 19th of June. The conference hosted professors and researchers from around the world, many of which flew in just to attend. There were researchers from Algeria, Brazil, Australia, Ghana, and many more.

A variety of themes were presented such as ‘models of aid to higher education’ and ‘questions of curriculum and pedagogy’. We attended sessions on ‘horizontality of access to higher education’ and another one on ‘issues of accessibility’, which I felt was relevant to the research we were doing here in UM.

Lennart also attended a session on ‘equality of experience and outcome in South Africa’. It was rewarding for the both of us to see the wider discourse that is happening within the field of research in higher education. On top of that, we were able to speak to a few of them about each other’s research. After the end of the conference, we had some time to see the lovely city and have a nice dinner. As it was Caden’s first time in the UK, she enjoyed seeing the famous landmarks and got a nice impression from the city.

Overall, the conference and trip to London were very satisfying and gratifying. We are both very grateful to UM and EDLAB for providing us with such an enriching experience. We also encourage all future students who undertake MaRBLe to make full use of the project experience and carry out meaningful research!