Surviving and thriving the Covid-19 Crisis: How University Teachers and Students supported one another through Feminist Co-Mentoring and Dialogue

The junction of the various crises and opportunities precipitated by COVID-19 pandemic is where this paper is situated. In responding to the call to action in Pedagogies of the Pandemos, we, as teachers and students within Higher Education, recognise the need to co-create spaces for dialogue, collaboration and change. In our article, five women of different ages, racialisations, ethnicities and cultures, who hold different positions within a UK Public Health academic department, reflect on these inequalities in their lives and in relation to higher education. Over the course of academic year 2020-21, our group – two undergraduate students, one PhD candidate and two senior lecturers – met online to talk, listen to, support and mentor one another for the different work we do. We have then each reflected as a result of our dialogues, thinking specifically about our experiences of learning and teaching since the pandemic took hold in the UK in March 2020. Our process has been simple as a practical exercise, yet it has revealed both hidden challenges and hidden opportunities afforded by the pandemic for understanding inequality in UK Higher Education. In this paper, we present and contextualise our experiences through the lens of feminist co-mentoring and dialogue.