At the T&L Conference 2019, the morning keynote on the theme of Student-Staff relationships as the foundation for partnership, engagement and belonging was delivered by Dr Catherine Bovill from the University of Edinburgh. The morning session explored examples of relationship building and student-staff partnership from different countries, universities and disciplines, and involving different numbers of students. These examples help to illustrate possible ways of increasing student engagement and belonging, supporting partnership, as well as enhancing learning and teaching more generally.

Student-staff partnership is strongly influenced by the quality of the relationships that form the heart of partnership processes. Indeed, good quality student-staff relationships have been linked to the development of many positive learning outcomes at university (Lamport, 1993; Zepke & Leach, 2010).