Athena SWAN Bronze Award

The Athena SWAN charter, launched in 2005, recognises the advancement of gender equality: representation, progression and success for all.

In January 2016, the Department of History created an Athena Swan Self-Assessment Committee to prepare and submit an application for Athena Swan recognition in 2017. In creating the committee, all staff and student representatives in the Department were invited to express an interest and the resulting committee comprises people with a range of experiences and viewpoints from across the department, including academic staff, administrative staff, and students.

To ensure that the committee considered a wide variety of views it encouraged other members of staff and students to contribute to its discussions when appropriate. In preparing the application for Athena Swan recognition, the committee had two key aims:

• To develop an understanding of gender and other equality matters both within the committee but also across the department, ensuring that we explore and address stereotyping and unconscious bias.
• To review practices across the Department for all activities to ensure there is equality of opportunity throughout for all staff and students - and where necessary to create and implement new systems and arrangements to enhance this.

Shaul Mitelpunkt and Sarah Rees Jones, Co-chairs of the Athena Swan Committee, commented on recieving the award: "It was nice to see that the department's submission was successful, since so many colleagues invested a great amount of time and energy in order to get this effort going. But the more meaningful work starts now. We will need to work hard as a department to make sure that our collective commitment to equality is reflected in policies and action plans going forward." 

Read more information about the Athena Swan Charter.