Archaeology receives Athena Swan Silver Award

Athena Swan awards are granted to departments upholding the Advance HE Athena Swan Gender Equality Charter principles. This award demonstrates the progress and advancement in gender equality culture in the Department of Archaeology.

Our achievements so far

• We are now a department with a majority of women across students and staff, with an even distribution across all levels of roughly 60%. This is an outstanding achievement in a profession such as Archaeology with a notoriously “leaky pipeline” with diminishing numbers of women at higher levels of achievement.
• In 2018, we had one female professor, and now we have eight. No other Archaeology department in the country has such a large number, or proportion, of female Professors.
• We closed the achievement gap amongst our UG and PGT students, with male and female students receiving good degrees in proportion to the overall gender proportion of each cohort.
• We have appointed a Director of EDI and EDI Champions and embedded EDI into all our meetings and policy. 
• Female academic researchers receive a sabbatical year after maternity leave, and there are support groups for peri/menopause, LGBTQ+, carers and other intersectional communities in the department. 

Archaeology Head of Department, Nicky Milner, said, “I am so thrilled that the Department of Archaeology has received a Silver Athena Swan award. In Archaeology, we are passionate about gender equality and have worked really hard to make positive changes in our community and implement our action plan. This recognition reflects a great deal of hard work by my phenomenal colleagues! I would like to thank them all for their enthusiasm and dedication”

Dean of the Faculty of Arts and Humanities Duncan Petrie said, "Heartfelt congratulations are due to the departments of Archaeology and English and Related Literature for the fantastic efforts that have won each of them an Athena Swan Silver Award. These achievements are inspirational and a testament to how the principles of EDI increasingly underpin the culture and everyday operations within the Faculty of Arts and Humanities".   

We thank our Athena Swan lead, Colleen Morgan, co-lead Peter Schauer and the Athena Swan/EDI committee for their hard work in demonstrating our excellent progress and commitment toward equality, diversity and inclusion in Archaeology.