Amerjit Basi

I joined the University of Sheffield in June 2016 as the Head of Policy and Projects. Before this, I was a career civil servant working on a variety of policy areas in the Department for Business, Innovation and Skills and its predecessor departments, mainly on education issues.

Most of my career was in higher education policy (2003-2013) where I advised successive ministers on a broad range of areas such as teaching and learning, higher education quality and workforce, equal opportunities and a variety of other student experience policy areas.

I also worked on enterprise/small business policy, including business support and English devolution.

I’ve always been committed to equality and I’ve been lucky enough to play a role in supporting equal opportunities in my work, for instance promoting action to tackle the degree attainment gap in higher education when I was an official working for the government.

In the University, in essence, I’m a policy officer for the institution, helping colleagues to understand, and influence, big policy issues.

The range is wide: the degree attainment gap in the University through the Raising Awareness, Raising Aspiration project; the University’s response to Brexit, higher education legislation, the Teaching Excellence Framework and immigration changes – to name a few areas of work.

I firmly believe that individuals, institutions and society all take responsibility for supporting equality and equity – we all play a role in calling out behaviours which should be unacceptable. And those with more power do have a greater responsibility to help create change.

For me promoting fair life chances is core to our mission as a University.