News11 February 2026
We are delighted to announce that Professor Anna Mountford-Zimdars will join TASO for 18 months as a policy fellow, leading a new research initiative on contextualised admissions.
Anna was selected as part of the 2025 UK Research and Innovation (UKRI) policy fellowships scheme, and will spend the next 18 months working alongside TASO’s Research and Evaluation team.
The fellowship aims to explore how contextual admissions are used to widen access to higher education for disadvantaged students, how they are measured, and also to look at the public and policy debate on the topic.
While contextualised admissions are widely recognised as a tool for widening access to disadvantaged students, the sector currently faces a limited evidence base regarding their long-term effectiveness.
By strengthening both the principles behind contextualised admissions and the data used to evaluate them, we can support a more informed and publicly trusted conversation about widening access to higher education ”
– Professor Mountford-Zimdars
The key research questions include:
- How are contextualised admissions currently applied in higher education? What are the criteria, how are they applied, and how are they communicated?
- What is the current policy and public debate on contextualised admissions?
- How should we measure the effectiveness of contextualised admissions, and what data or other infrastructure is required to do so?
Professor Mountford-Zimdars said: “As contextualised admissions become more prominent across the sector, it’s essential that we combine empirical rigour with conceptual clarity.
“This fellowship will explore not only how these policies are implemented and measured, but also what they are designed to achieve and the assumptions that shape them. Strong evidence depends on being clear about what success looks like in the first place. By strengthening both the principles behind contextualised admissions and the data used to evaluate them, we can support a more informed and publicly trusted conversation about widening access to higher education.”
Omar Khan, TASO CEO, said: “This fellowship represents a significant opportunity to better understand how contextualised admissions are currently applied in higher education, to explore the current public debate and policy, and crucially, to research what is required to measure their efficacy in reducing equality gaps. We are delighted to be working with Professor Mountford-Zimdars, given her deep expertise on the topic and on addressing inequalities in higher education.”
About Anna Mountford-Zimdars
Anna is Professor of Social Justice at the University of Exeter.
Her research interests include opportunities to enhance equality across education; higher education access, progress, and success; inequality, social mobility; elective home education; teaching excellence; teaching for inclusion; access to professions (law, medicine, academia); policy research (what works).