We are committed to improving the diversity of the speakers we invite as part of our Departmental seminar programmes. When hosting or organising events, we suggest our department follows the university’s recommendations for promoting EDI at conferences. We run a full seminar programme organised around our seven research themes. Each theme has a representative and this forms our Department seminar committee. Consideration is given when selecting speakers to encourage inclusion of underrepresented groups and early career researchers. Each external speaker is accompanied by an internal PhD student or Postdoctoral speaker from the department. We are committed to matching our postgraduate student gender ratios with our speaker choices so as to aim for 50% female speakers.
In addition, there are also events in our Department and across the university that have relevance to Equality, Diversity and Inclusion. Members of the EDI Committee and others in the Department organise events each year, which are summarised in the termly EDI Newsletters [internal users only]. We also have an informal grouping of PhD Students and Postdoctoral Research Associates that organises events with an EDI relevance.
We have a range of annual EDI events, starting with a Black History Month event in October, which features talks, discussion sessions and music, accompanied by free food and drinks. This is followed by an International Women's Day event in March with a half-day of talks by leading external speakers, such as the President of the Royal Society of Chemistry. In June, we hold our LGBTQ+ Pride Month event, which includes a panel discussion and a cake following the presentations.
Every year in February the Department runs a World Food Day event with a wide range of dishes from many different countries, prepared by the students and staff in the Department. Unsurprisingly, this is very popular and attracts a large gathering of staff and students in the MSRH Café! Not only does this allow everyone to taste delicious food, but it also celebrates our diverse community and allows members of the Department to share their culture with those present.
Many other events are organised around various themes each year. For example, to help support our female employees to thrive in their roles and their career progression we have held seminars on menopause and endometriosis. We have also organised deaf awareness training with presentations on the use of British Sign Language (BSL), while a sight loss awareness workshop was delivered by a sight impaired trainer with lived experience from the Macular Society. In previous years we have also had a focus on aspects affecting transgender people.
We have been involved in many other events with a relevance to EDI, such as the Day of Doubt, which was the first conference organised by The Good Science Project on the theme of research culture and the values needed for good science.
