Public Lecture by Prof. Sarah O’Shea

Professor Sarah O’Shea is a nationally awarded educator and globally recognised expert in higher education equity, she has a particular passion for working with first-in-family students. As Distinguished Professor and Dean at Charles Sturt University, she brings over three decades of leadership in advancing equity, access, and student success across the tertiary sector. Professor O’Shea has secured over $4 million in research funding and managed $8 million in federal grants. Sarah also leads the Higher Education Equity Research Unit (HEERU) at Charles Sturt University with current research projects on trauma and inequity, student finances and the intersections of rurality and first-in-family status for university students.

Geographies of Possibility: Place, Family and Educational Futures

This talk maps the evolution of research from a focus on first-in-family university students toward a more spatial understanding of educational inequality. I explore how family educational history and rurality intersect to shape not only access to higher education, but also what young people imagine is possible for them. Drawing on Australian research with first-in-family students and rural young people, I consider the ways that place, biography and mobility may structure educational horizons and why disadvantage must be understood as relational rather than simply cumulative. I conclude by showing how these ideas are informing Equitable Futures, a collaborative project between Charles Sturt University and the University of Innsbruck examining rural, first-in-family educational pathways in both Australia and Austria funded by the University of Innsbruck’s Network of Areas.