Kristina Medlock, a doctoral candidate in the Higher Education Program, has been selected to present at the Emerging Researchers’ Conference, ERC, at ECER 2026 in Tampere, Finland. She is very excited to mark this as her first conference presentation, and to discuss accessibility in higher education, a topic closely related to her dissertation research. Her poster “Beyond Access, Identity, and Preparedness: Urbanormativity in Higher Education Scholarship on Rural Students” investigates urban bias in higher education research. Her project has been recognized for its strong conceptual framing, clear rationale, and global relevance. Kristina is looking forward to increasing awareness to rural higher education scholarship and the current challenges in the literature with her international colleagues.