Adobe

Elevating higher education through digital experiences.

Adobe empowers higher education students, faculty, and staff to imagine, create, be more productive, and bring any digital experience to life. By providing equitable access to Adobe’s industry-leading creative and AI solutions, institutions can drive student engagement and career readiness, help faculty accelerate and deepen their research, and free staff to focus on more strategic work.

Boundless Learning – sponsors of the delegate lounge

For more than 30 years, Boundless Learning has partnered with top-tier academic institutions around the world to design best in class learning experiences and online program management solutions. When it comes to online education, we keep learner success at the heart of everything we do and work hard to deliver positive learning experiences that empower graduate career outcomes.  And now, after launching more than 450 online programs we have helped some 17,000 learners begin their journeys and serve a student body located in more than 150 countries.  Partner with us, and we’ll advance the future of learning — together

Ellucian

Ellucian powers innovation for higher education, partnering with more than 2,900 customers across 50 countries, serving 20 million students. Ellucian’s AI-powered platform, trained on the richest dataset available in higher education, drives efficiency, personalised experiences, and strengthened engagement for students, faculty and staff. Fuelled by decades of experience with a singular focus on the unique needs of learning institutions, the Ellucian platform features best-in-class SaaS capabilities and delivers insights needed now and into the future. These solutions and services span the entire student lifecycle, including data-rich tools for student recruitment, enrolment, and retention to analytics and alumni engagement. Ellucian’s innovative solutions, vast ecosystem of partners and user community of more than 45,000 provides best practices leading to greater institutional success and achieving better student outcomes.

evasys

Proud sponsor of The Festival of HE, evasys empowers higher education institutions to ignite transformational learning and teaching. As the leading provider of student evaluation and insight solutions, we help institutions unlock the full potential of the student voice.

Our holistic, integrated, end-to-end survey process goes beyond simple data collection, delivering actionable insights critical for informed decision-making across HE. What truly sets us apart is our innovative partnership with Student Voice AI. Designed for the UK and Irish HE sector and trained on relevant data (NSS, PTES, PRES), Student Voice AI transforms free-text comments into detailed, nuanced insights. Seamlessly integrated with evasys, it provides a powerful, complete view of student feedback – combining qualitative and quantitative data – to arm institutions with the strategic intelligence needed to enhance teaching, refine curricula, and foster truly transformational learning experiences.

With over 60 UK and Ireland partners and more than 1,000 worldwide, our dedicated team brings over 60 years’ collective experience working within universities, ensuring expert support. evasys also integrates widely with other education technology systems, providing instant feedback for course leaders and comprehensive strategic insights for academic managers, enabling data-driven decisions at every level.

Discover how our central, digital system can enhance student engagement and retention, improve module and course leader engagement, and provide the strategic clarity essential for leading educational change.

IDP Education

As part of IDP Education – the global leader in connecting prospective students with institutions for over 50 years – we provide universities with a comprehensive suite of services, including student recruitment, digital marketing, data insights and research. We are also proud co-owners of IELTS, the world’s most trusted and globally accepted English test.

We’re proudly student-first, committed to helping both international and domestic students find the right higher education opportunities to match their goals, passions, and potential.

Invest in UK University R&D – Midlands Campaigns

Led by Midlands Innovation and Midlands Enterprise Universities, along with local economic growth partners (Midlands Engine, West Midlands Growth Company, LEPs), and national government, we have collectively developed the Invest in UK University R&D Midlands Campaign.

Launched at UKREiiF in 2024, this £3 million campaign builds on the success of the Universities as Drivers of Trade and Investment’ Pilot, which highlighted the significant role universities can play in driving overseas trade and investment into UK regional R&D.

jobs.ac.uk – sponsor of delegate bags

For 25 years, jobs.ac.uk has been a market leader in the education sector. We help colleges, universities and HE providers attract the best talent for their institution.

We advertise vacancies from academic, research and professional positions at institutions across the world and engage with a large audience of highly qualified candidates.

We are drawing and growing an impressive audience with over 31.5 million views annually, providing jobseekers with access to careers support and to search for their next opportunity.

We are committed to advancing the education sector and delivering high quality candidates for our clients.

Kortext

Kortext is a global leader in digital learning and student engagement solutions. Our vision is to enable and enrich the higher education of tomorrow, to help all students fulfil their potential.

We support institutions across the world in their mission to boost student engagement and drive outcomes with our AI-powered, cutting-edge content discovery and study platforms, market-leading learner analytics, and streamlined workflows for higher education staff.

Kortext is a trusted university partner, providing services to over 5,000 institutions and two million students worldwide. We are present in more than 200 countries and territories, offering digital solutions across programmes, whole institutions and entire countries.

Our smart study platform provides a personalised, VLE-embedded, digital learning space for students to access course content, while offering institutions a gateway to five million eBooks, open educational resources and digital materials from 8,000 publishers.

As a certified Microsoft Gold education partner, we are working collaboratively to enable higher education institutions to leverage the capabilities of generative AI at scale – safely. Our innovative new developments apply the power of AI to content, data, teaching and learning, offering universities a unified solution to accelerate their digital transformation.

KPMG

Universities face multiple questions in a rapidly transforming world. At KPMG, we have deep understanding of the sector built up over many years. We worked with 130+ Universities last year and ranked in the top education consultancy firms by consultancy.uk. Our unique insight means we bring both challenge and understanding – bridging the gap between strategy and execution. We offer incisive insights and fresh thinking. We draw on sector specialists and technical expertise to bring multi-disciplinary solutions. Through trusted relationships, we help institutions achieve transformative success.

Mills & Reeve

Mills & Reeve is a major UK law firm and a top tier provider of legal services to the education sector in England and Wales. The firm has one of the largest teams of specialist education lawyers in the country with legal expertise in all areas in which universities need support. This means they can resource work at the most cost effective level. The firm provides clients with expert lawyers who know the sector back to front and give practical, context-aware advice that they know works.

Public First

Public First is a policy, research, public opinion and strategy consultancy. We work with universities, charities, global companies, governments, and start ups around the world to tackle major public policy and strategic challenges.

Saxton Bampfylde – sponsors of the delegate breakfast

Saxton Bampfylde is a globally recognised leadership advisory firm known for its values-driven, research-intensive approach to executive search. Its dedicated Higher Education Practice, with almost 40 years of experience, has advised on numerous senior appointments, including more than 190 vice-chancellors, as well as working extensively across the higher education and research and innovation ecosystems. Our Higher Education Practice’s expertise is enhanced by its experience in appointing leaders in related sectors, including Government and the private sector, and benefits from the firm’s access to a global network of over 130 consulting partners in 40 offices around the world. As the first employee-owned executive search company, Saxton Bampfylde is dedicated to supporting the success of its clients through bespoke leadership services.

Studiosity

Studiosity is personal study help, anytime, anywhere. Proven to grow student success metrics in institutions. Working together with their higher education partners around the world to grow student success via AI for learning, including academic feedback and study help, and delivering powerful peer connection at scale.

The Venn

The Venn: University Leaders Forum has been developed by Favier Ltd and Assemble Events in collaboration with our friends and partners across UK higher education. The forum is open to senior university staff with an external-facing role working across the spectrum of professional services, as well as engaged academic leadership. Uniting the many tribes of university professional services – be this marketing and recruitment, research and innovation, global engagement, communications and stakeholder engagement, strategy and operations, business engagement and employability to advancement – is a shared responsibility for the stewardship of university reputation.

UCAS

UCAS, the Universities and Colleges Admissions Service, is an independent charity, and the UK’s shared admissions service for higher education. Our services support young people making post-18 choices, as well as mature learners, by providing information, advice, and guidance to inspire and facilitate educational progression to university, college, or a degree apprenticeship.

UNIwise

UNIwise is an established European edtech company that provides a dedicated digital assessment platform for higher education. Assessment is a crucial element of education, and they lead and support higher-education institutions on their journey of the transformation of their assessment practices. UNIwise envisions a world where technology is used to deliver better, fairer and more authentic assessments that prepare students for what comes next. Their mission is to support educational institutions to enhance teaching and learning through transforming digital assessment practice.

AppsAnywhere

Software delivery built for Higher Ed’s unique needs, AppsAnywhere takes a different approach to virtualizing applications. With a single click, students and faculty staff can access a suite of applications tailored to their educational needs and launch on any device, anywhere, anytime. Their centralized platform brings all your software applications and deployment methods in ensuring a cost effective, seamless and flexible experience for students and IT services. This scalable solution makes it possible to support the complex and diverse end user computing scenarios education institutions face, which are critical to delivering an equitable student experience in this evolving hybrid and BYOD experience.