Where place, lived experience and disciplinary knowledge converge: engaging students through knowledge exchange

Transforming and Activating Places (TAP) was a knowledge exchange (KE) programme at the University of Sheffield that was run exclusively for widening participation students in the fields of the arts and humanities and social sciences. Between 2020 and 2023, the programme facilitated 200 short-term paid internships in which students completed intensive preparatory activities and then partnered with nearly 80 external partners for projects and activities related to place and placemaking. After situating the research within the current literature on experiential learning, student KE and KE more broadly, we present and analyse in this article the data collected from a series of student surveys completed in the programme’s first and second year. With a particular emphasis on the voices, experiences and reported benefits for TAP student participants, we identify three interconnected domains of student KE that have evolved through the project: 1) applying disciplinary knowledge, 2) identifying lived experience, 3) realising expertise. We conclude that, where all three domains are activated within student KE - that is, where it involves students' identification and application of disciplinary knowledge and lived experience, as well as a conscious synthesising and framing of that knowledge as valuable expertise - then it is at its most transformative and productive.