Modern Slavery Governance in Universities: Beyond Compliance

This study examines how universities address modern slavery within their governance structures and practices, with reference to the UK Modern Slavery Act 2015. The study develops and applies the Modern Slavery Reflexive Assessment Scale, a sixty-item instrument grounded in the Pluralistic Framework for the Study of Economic Exploitation. Data were collected in 2025 from eighteen UK universities through structured assessments completed by institutional officers. The findings indicate that longer-standing institutional engagement and stronger sustainability performance are consistently associated with higher levels of reflexive practice, suggesting that continuity and embedded governance cultures support movement beyond symbolic compliance. Progress is most evident in policy development, governance arrangements, and sustainability integration. Engagement with intersectional and decolonial perspectives is limited, while survivor-centred practices, participatory monitoring, iterative learning, and systematic impact evaluation remain underdeveloped. The findings also provide the basis for developing the Reflexive Anti-Slavery Governance Model for Higher Education.