Athena SWAN

Aims

Some of our strategic aims and objectives are:

To establish a departmental promotions support group to strengthen and formalise advice and support mechanisms available to staff considering internal promotion (T&S and ART staff)
To increase the number of applications from male students by 10 per cent by March 2020
To have all key staff in the Department (senior management, programme directors, academic supervisors and programme administrators) participate in unconscious bias training, sexual violence disclosure training and mental health first aid training by 2020/21.

To identify the remaining barriers to women’s progression into senior roles (Grade 8 and above) To develop a more intersectional approach to equality and diversity issues, with particular reference to race and ethnicity, sexuality, and disability.

Our Equality and Diversity strategy is informed by our departmental culture surveys, is focused on clear and measurable aims.

Achievements

Improved gender balance and wider representation of staff involved in Equality and Diversity work in the Department
Development of Equality and Diversity web pages
Improvements to flexible working opportunities for professional and support staff
Allocation of a weekly ‘research day’ to academics in annual timetabling processes
Greater diversity of staff taking on key leadership roles (eg early career researchers and staff on teaching-only and part-time contracts)
Improved representation of women in senior management roles
Improvement of research leave policy to support staff returning from long-term leave eg caring leave or long-term sickness
Introduction of departmental mentoring scheme for academic staff
Appointment of departmental Mental Health champion