With investment from the Department of Health and Social Care and the Department for Education, the Office for Students (OfS) has awarded more than £3 million in funding to innovative and collaborative approaches to targeted support for student mental health.

18 projects were successful in their bid, including ‘UniVRse’, led by Dr Cassie Hazell at the University of Westminster in collaboration with NIHR MindTech Medtech Co-operative at the University of Nottingham, the University of Sussex and Empathetic Media.

UniVRse will use innovative virtual reality (VR) technology to deliver a cognitive-behaviour based intervention that aims to reduce social anxiety, increase social confidence and improve educational engagement in socially anxious ‘first-generation’ university students (FGS).

First-generation students are especially vulnerable to social anxiety in the university context and its negative effects due to imposter feelings and worse preparedness.

The content and design will be led by FGS co-designers with the principal investigator and collaborator Dr Aislinn Bergin from MindTech here at the University of Nottingham, a first-generation student herself.

This ground-breaking project will deliver and evaluate the UniVRse programme as a ready to use intervention within all universities.