Synopsis
This poster examines the critical link between mental health and ethical conduct for students, academics, and researchers alike. Drawing on the 2026 ENAI Wellbeing Series, it advocates a shift from punitive models to a "pedagogy of care," introducing a forthcoming Handbook that aligns academic excellence with the wellbeing of the entire higher education community.
Abstract
For several decades, research and policy on academic integrity have concentrated on detection, punitive measures, and technical aspects of misconduct. Recent evidence, however, indicates that breaches of integrity — including student plagiarism and questionable research practices among staff — often result from systemic pressures rather than solely from individual moral failings (Harper & Prentice, 2024). Large-scale empirical work supports this view: Bretag et al. (2019) found that students frequently cite excessive workload, poor assessment design, and inadequate support as drivers of contract cheating, pointing to institutional conditions rather than individual character as the primary risk factors.
To address this gap between integrity policy and its human context, the European Network for Academic Integrity (ENAI), in partnership with Studiosity, a student support provider, launched the Wellbeing & Integrity in Higher Education online series in early 2026. Protecting academic standards, the series argues, is only possible by supporting the wellbeing of the people who uphold them.
The series is structured around three questions: how academic pressure, stress, and burnout lead to lapses in integrity; whether high academic performance and staff and student wellbeing are structurally compatible; and what practical strategies institutions can adopt to support wellbeing without compromising standards. To address these, ENAI organised a five-part online series drawing on diverse perspectives from across the academic community. The opening keynote, delivered by Prof. Judyth Sachs (Chief Academic Officer, Studiosity), examined how pressure, stress, and burnout contribute to integrity lapses including plagiarism, cheating, and research misconduct — establishing the conceptual foundation for the sessions that follow. Subsequent sessions include a student-led panel on lived experiences of burnout and performance pressure; a structured debate on whether academic excellence and wellbeing are structurally compatible; a practitioner workshop on assessment design, feedback practices, and early identification of integrity and wellbeing risk factors; and a closing roundtable focused on co-creating institutional recommendations. This combination of formats ensures that outputs reflect the perspectives of students, educators, and researchers rather than any single stakeholder group.
The series will produce the Wellbeing & Academic Integrity Handbook as its primary legacy output. Aimed at students, lecturers, and researchers, the Handbook will consolidate practical resources including self-care and academic care checklists, assessment and feedback guidance for practitioners, infographics, short case studies and Voices from the Series, and selected content adapted into podcast-style recordings for accessible, on-the-go use. Conference delegates are invited to engage with the series and contribute to the ongoing dialogue on building higher education cultures where integrity and wellbeing reinforce rather than undermine each other.
Keywords
Academic Integrity, Student Wellbeing, Wellbeing in academia, Pedagogy of Care, ENAI, Research Ethics
Acknowledgements
The authors acknowledge the use of Grammarly, to support the editing and refinement of the language in this abstract.
References
Bretag, T., Harper, R., Burton, M., Ellis, C., Newton, P., Rozenberg, P., … van Haeringen, K. (2019). Contract cheating: a survey of Australian university students. Studies in Higher Education, 44(11), 1837–1856. https://doi.org/10.1080/03075079.2018.1462788
Harper, R. & Prentice, F. (2024). Responsible but powerless: staff qualitative perspectives on cheating in higher education. International Journal for Educational Integrity. https://doi.org/10.1007/s40979-024-00170-7
Studiosity. (2025). Student wellbeing report 2025: Evidence-based insights into student pressure and support. https://www.studiosity.com/research/wellbeing-report-2025