Inclusion Matters

In 2018, the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC) funded 11 Inclusion Matters projects. The projects focused on new approaches to accelerating culture change to enhance equality, diversity and inclusion (EDI) in the engineering, physical and mathematical sciences.

Valuable insights

Since 2018, the projects have developed many valuable insights.

As a portfolio they have produced a range of publication materials, created toolkits and trialled alternative methods and approaches all of which have focused on addressing barriers that people encounter in our research and innovation community.

They have developed resources for fair recruitment, reverse or reciprocal mentoring, and how to better support researchers with disabilities.

They have also developed approaches to addressing challenges encountered by reactions to gender initiatives and to the barriers women encounter when founding spinout companies.

Initiatives have also been developed to improve equality and diversity for women, lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender (LGBT) staff and initiatives to support progression of women and ethnic minority academics.

Outputs and outcomes of the EPSRC Inclusion Matters portfolio

In 2022, EPSRC commissioned Advance HE to gather and demonstrate the contribution that our investment in the Inclusion Matters portfolio has made to the development of new knowledge and the implementation of new approaches, aimed at increasing diversity and tackling inclusion challenges in the engineering, physical and mathematical sciences research and innovation environment.

The study established the breadth of impact the portfolio has made to date.

The report contains the outputs, outcomes and other intelligence from the projects to date.

We are sharing this report as a useful resource that can be used alongside our EDI expectations to help support and empower our engineering, physical and mathematical sciences community to identify, address and embed EDI good practice in their own workplace environments.

The findings of the report demonstrate the power of researchers working together to share EDI learning and good practice that can be embedded across our portfolio, with our investments being beacons of good inclusion practice.

Through embedding good EDI practice in our portfolio and the wider research community, we will enable wider access and participation in engineering, physical and mathematical sciences research careers and even stronger research and innovation outcomes for the UK.

The approaches taken by each project varied but, broadly, the projects focused on three aims:

• to undertake new research to understand more about specific challenges and issues and what actions might be taken. Learning from others, engaging nationally and internationally and engaging a broad spectrum of relevant stakeholders
• to try new or different approaches, based on available evidence
• to broaden activities already in progress, across either the institution or the sector

To ensure impact beyond the immediate institutions involved, the portfolio of grants:

• collaborated beyond their local department and institution, and reached out to work together and share information with other organisations
• communicated, captured, exchanged, disseminated and embedded good practice across individual institutions, between institutions and more broadly across the sector, sharing best practice, advocacy, consultation and celebration
• took the lead in promoting new approaches and, in doing so, raised awareness of EDI issues across the sector, acting as ambassadors
• evaluated, building on the existing evidence base, drawing relevant learning from other sectors, and ensuring that the impact of funded activities on EDI was appropriately assessed and benchmarked

These shared commitments focused on the best way to achieve culture change and dissemination of the projects.

These highly collaborative projects include universities working across the UK and a range of project partners including business and learned societies.

Inclusion Matters projects

1 Advanced strategic platform for inclusive research environments

Grant reference

EP/S012001/1

Contact

Belinda Colston

Institution

University of Lincoln

Grant summary

Programme Director Professor Belinda J Colston: “The research sector has been striving for fully inclusive environments in science- and engineering-related disciplines for over 30 years. Despite substantial investment, however, broad underrepresentation and inequalities are still widespread. Reasons for this are complex and often system-wide but ultimately reflect deep-rooted cultures and attitudes in the workplace. To build a more inclusive research environment, we need a step change in our approach to EDI. Our focus needs to shift towards long-term behavioural and culture change, and away from blunt staff statistics (such as numbers of female professors) and performance metrics.”

“ASPIRE offers an innovative, evidence-based approach to deepen our efforts in improving EDI. It will provide a web-based toolkit to harness best practice across the sector, enable measurement and monitoring of the implementation of inclusion initiatives across institutions, link implementation with markers of culture change and provide recommendations for scaling across the sector. It will develop a new and more comprehensive impact framework to extend simple metrics-based evaluation and measure genuine and meaningful changes in EDI attitude and behaviour. Through extensive partnership, working and drawing on experiences across both the research and non-research communities, ASPIRE will accelerate sector-wide implementation of effective EDI practice.”

Project partners

Aston University, Coventry University, Emerald Publishing Ltd, Oxford Brookes University, The Lisbon Council, Towards Vision, University of Sheffield, University of Kent, University of Trento, Vitae

Visit the project website.

2 Challenging different forms of bias in EPS research

Grant reference

EP/S011927/1

Contact

Jon Rowe

Institution

University of Birmingham

Grant summary

Programme Director Professor Jon Rowe: “The University of Birmingham is committed to increasing our representation of academics from ethnic minority backgrounds and female academics.”

“It is not yet fully understood why academics from these groups struggle to progress in their careers. We are delighted to participate in this important collaboration and investigate the underlying causes.”

“We are mindful that previous attempts at addressing such imbalances have not been successful, so we are investigating new ways of understanding how to support progression of our female and ethnic minority colleagues.”

“Activities will include looking at how the quality and value of academics’ work is assessed in promotion processes and in the Research Excellence Framework (REF), to understand where the sources of bias arise.”

“Questions such as ‘Is there a bias when the gender of the academic is known?’; ‘Is it the result of the group dynamic of a panel of assessors?’; and ‘Are women encouraged to work in particular research areas, perhaps those outside of STEM subjects?’ will also be addressed.”

“At the University of Birmingham, we will trial some innovative interventions such as ‘reverse mentoring’, where a junior BAME woman coaches a senior male, white professor, and empowering academics to challenge senior-level decisions, with appropriate backing and support.”

“We will share best practice between our partner organisations, and particularly look forward to working with the NHS Trust, which has faced similar challenges with career progression.”

“We will roll out the lessons learned via our national networks, develop training programmes, and feed into the equality and diversity agenda for the upcoming REF.”

Project partners

Aberystwyth University, University Hospitals Birmingham, Vitae.

3 DISC – Disability Inclusive Science Careers

Grant reference

EP/S012117

Contact

Kate Sang

Institution

Heriot-Watt University

Grant summary

Programme Director Professor Kate Sang: “Disabled researchers are leaving scientific careers due to social and physical barriers. Disabled employees face a range of obstacles when in employment, including inaccessible laboratories, social barriers and a lack of managerial understanding of disability inclusion. Disability Inclusive Science Careers (DISC) focuses on early career entry to the science sector.”

“The aim of DISC is to improve the recruitment, retention and progression of postdoctoral disabled scientists through an online training portal designed to support employers with disability inclusion. Disabled researchers, managers and employers are co-designing the DISC web tools alongside a Heriot-Watt led research team. Training includes immersive virtual reality games for line managers and research leaders, giving an insight into the lived experiences of disabled researchers.”

“In addition, DISC will provide training for disabled researchers to support their career development. The training will be rolled out across participating organisations. DISC is rooted in the social model of disability, which focuses on making employment more accessible to disabled researchers. At the end of the two-year project, DISC will be freely available for any science research employer to tailor to their own organisational needs.”

Project partners

University of Edinburgh, University and Colleges Union Scotland, National Association of Disabled Staff

See the project’s Twitter account.

Visit the project website.

4 eBase – Evidence-Base; Growing the Big Grant Club

Grant reference

EP/S012087/1

Contact

Karen Halliday, Katie Nicoll Baines

Institution

University of Edinburgh

Grant summary

Co-Programme Director Dr Sara Shinton: “We’re all familiar with the various reports describing the glacial progress towards equality in science and engineering. For many years, various initiatives and approaches have tried to address the imbalance, but no substantial progress has been made. Before more resources and effort are poured in, eBase will conduct cutting-edge, empirical research to unpick the complexity which undermines equality and expose the key constraints that restrict progress. We are starting with Big Grant leadership for two reasons – the particularly poor diversity in leadership and the strategic importance of these opportunities for the UK economy.”

“The project is a partnership between science and social science. We will execute an ethnographic study to understand the culture that supports the current ‘exclusive’ Big Grant Club and from this develop a more intuitive ‘system level’ understanding of our institutional culture and practices in order to bring about more effective change. With our new culture map in place, we will trial interventions to tackle the ‘pinch-points’ which contribute to poor diversity. These will be implemented locally and then more broadly through partnerships with learned societies and key networks, covering the academic and industrial sectors. The University of Edinburgh has extended our project by a full year to focus on embedding change more widely.”

Project partners

University of Nottingham, Royal Society of Chemistry Publishing, Institute of Physics, SRP in Engineering, Knowledge Transfer Network Ltd.

See the project’s Twitter account.

5 Inclusion really does matter: improving reactions to gender equality initiatives amongst academics

Grant reference

EP/S011919/1

Contact

Ioana Latu

Institution

Queen’s University of Belfast

Grant summary

Programme Director Dr Ioana Latu: “Although gender equality initiatives (GEIs) exist in EPS schools across the UK, progress is painfully slow. Our vision is that in order to change EPS diversity and inclusion culture sustainably and rapidly, we need to understand academics’ potentially negative or indifferent attitudes towards GEIs.”

“To address this challenge, we will first conduct research to understand how attitudes towards GEIs can be improved. In a second phase, based on this evidence-based knowledge, we will build and test training tools aimed at improving the reception of GEIs. These tools will be designed both for the general EPS academic population (virtual reality toolkits, multimedia tools, apps) and for Athena SWAN committees. We will ensure broad impact by sharing our empirical findings and training tools nationally, across EPS departments, and internationally with the scientific community.”

“We are an interdisciplinary research team with expertise in the psychology of gender stereotypes (Dr Latu), university GEIs (Professor McCormack), interventions (Professor Turner), and computer science (Dr Rafferty). Together with support from the institutional leadership through Professors Taylor and Price and an international advisory board, we are committed to accelerating EPS diversity culture change, by addressing how GEIs are received on the ground, by the people who create this culture.”

Project partners

University of Glasgow, University of Warwick.

See the project’s Twitter account.

Visit the project’s website.

6 Northern power: making engineering and physical sciences research a domain for all in the north

Grant reference

EP/S012206/1

Contact

Colin Bain

Institution

Durham University

Grant summary

Programme Director Professor Emma Flynn: “Engineering and physical sciences contribute hundreds of billions of pounds to the UK economy each year. Yet women, disabled people, LGBT+, and people from Black and minority ethnic backgrounds are poorly represented across the sector. Research reveals that women engineers and physical scientists are underrepresented in all grades, but especially in senior academic posts.”

“Unequal opportunities, paucity of role models from underrepresented groups, and a lack of understanding among senior leaders as to the barriers these groups face are among a number of factors that cause, compound, and sustain this problem. With the generous support of the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council, Durham University, along with eight other universities and six industrial organisations, are embarking on a new and exciting research project to tackle this issue in the north of England.”

“The two-year project includes six activities – undertaken across the 15 organisations – that are designed to help address the problem of entrenched underrepresentation. These include shared characteristic mentoring (matching junior staff members from underrepresented backgrounds with more senior colleagues who share characteristics, identities, and experiences), reverse mentoring (in which staff from underrepresented groups in engineering and physical sciences mentor senior staff about the challenges they face and, in return, are coached on their career development), and collaborating with industry, including conducting research workshops and outreach activities.”

“The motivation behind the project – part of a bigger, £5.5 million national initiative – is to create a more inclusive culture in the sector, which will lead to a more diverse talent pool and, ultimately, better science and engineering to address complex and pressing global challenges.”

Project partners

Durham University, Lancaster University, Leeds Beckett University, Newcastle University, Northumbria University, Teesside University, University of Huddersfield, University of Hull, Leeds University, Atom Bank, Stanley Black and Decker, IBM, GTN Ltd, Northumbrian Water Ltd, Sage (UK) Ltd.

Visit the project’s website.

7 Promoting EDI in university spinout companies

Grant reference

EP/S010734/1

Contact

Simonetta Manfredi

Institution

Oxford Brookes University

Grant summary

Programme Director Professor Simonetta Manfredi: “Too few women researchers are leading spinout companies. There has not been enough attention focused on the progression of women researchers at all career stages on the entrepreneurial pathway from research to spinout leadership. While challenges relating to women’s research career progression are well understood, the STEM community and the higher education sector as a whole are not as well informed about women entrepreneurial career progression pathways to spinout. Research shows that founders and co-founders of university spinout companies are predominantly men. Encouraging and understanding women’s engagement in spinout companies is of strategic importance to the UK’s new industrial strategy which aims to increase investment in science, research and innovation and to support new businesses and growth. Oxford Brookes University in collaboration with the University of Oxford have been funded by EPSRC under its Inclusion Matters call to undertake a project to identify barriers as well as enabling factors that exist for women scientists, engineers and mathematicians in key stages of the spinout process and entrepreneurial activities to commercialise research and innovation. This project vision is to achieve a step change in institutional capabilities to increase the participation of women researchers in STEM disciplines in university spinouts and to mainstream gender in the ecosystem which drives innovation.”

Project partners

University of Oxford, The Royal Society of London, Elsevier UK, PertinaxPharma.

See the project’s Twitter account.

Visit the project’s website.

8 Reimagining recruitment

Grant reference

EP/S012168/1

Contact

Tim Rogers

Institution

University of Bath

Grant summary

Programme Director Dr Tim Rogers: “Ask a typical eight-year-old to describe a scientist and they will likely repeat the stereotype of the lone genius: a middle-aged white man in a lab coat. We now know that, in fact, the best research is produced by collaborative teams of diverse membership who each contribute different skills and perspectives. Nonetheless, the stereotypes remembered from childhood are sadly persistent, and research shows they can negatively influence the recruitment process.”

“The vision of our proposal is to begin a process of culture change by giving scientists the opportunity to undo damaging stereotypes and learn the benefits of working as part of a more diverse team. To achieve this, we will run a programme of innovative ‘incubator’ events – academic research workshops in which senior academics work alongside early-career scientists in an accessible and inclusive environment to tackle cutting-edge research problems.”

“At the same time, we will conduct an interlinked programme of psychology research into the experiences of early-career researchers in STEM subjects and the efficacy of alternative recruitment strategies in academia. This will enable the development and communication of evidence-based policy to drive cultural change in science and technology higher education and more widely.”

Visit the project’s website.

9 STEM equals

Grant reference

EP/S012133/1

Contact

Rebecca Lunn

Institution

University of Strathclyde

Grant summary

Programme Director Professor Rebecca J Lunn: “There is a growing body of evidence demonstrating that women are discriminated against in universities, and that the problem is particularly persistent across engineering and the sciences. For example, in 2012, a study was published where applications that had been randomly assigned a male or female name were rated for a physics laboratory manager position. Recruitment panels rated the male applicant as significantly more competent and hireable than the (identical) female applicant. The experiences of LGBT+ staff in science and engineering are less well-studied, but it is widely recognised that the numbers of ‘out’ senior academic staff are vanishingly small. Of the very few studies conducted most are on students, one UK study found that LGB engineering students viewed engineering departments as hostile and that most students coped by ‘passing’ as heterosexual.

“The STEM Equals project at the University of Strathclyde aims to develop initiatives that will improve equality and diversity for female and lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender (LGBT) staff across science and engineering. Project activities include the introduction of free flexible crèche facilities for staff to attend key research meetings while on leave, the delivery of workshops with key industry partners to disseminate successful activities and share best practice, and the setting up of public and private social media platforms for women and for LGBT staff within the university.

“The STEM Equals project also aims to deliver a fresh approach to university management. Decades-old practice within UK universities has led to a severe lack of senior women. Current promotion criteria are modelled on full-time male academics who have taken no periods of carer or family leave. This lack of senior diversity is not in the UK’s best interest; universities should be promoting the top strategic thinkers and the most talented and innovative researchers, regardless of their career path.

“Research on the STEM Equals project will ‘peel-back’ over time the CVs of volunteer senior female academics from across the UK, to define excellence at each stage in their career, and hence to develop alternative promotion criteria, more appropriate to academics that have had periods of leave or part-time working.”

Project partners

BAM Nuttall Ltd, Scottish Research Partnership in Engineering.

See the project’s Twitter account.

Visit the project’s website.

10 STEMM change – uncovering barriers to inclusivity & transforming institutional culture

Grant reference

EP/S011897/1

Contact

Sam Kingman

Institution

University of Nottingham

Grant summary

Programme Director Professor Sam Kingman: “Our vision is for EDI to become business as usual for all. We believe that mutual understanding will change culture and our innovative and multifaceted project reflects this. Our strategy comprises a number of interventions that enable building of mutual understanding to drive transformational change both at Nottingham and beyond. A fundamental thread of our project is our ‘team science’ approach. We recognise that research endeavours are a collaborative effort and require us to work across our whole community for real success.”

“Our research initiatives include linguistic analysis to challenge the language of exclusion, the creation of an open access, national ‘EDI library’ enabling easy access to EDI policies, data, literature and research, a radical evidence based approach to recruitment, retention and recognition and a number of programmes designed to build and embed cultural understanding including large scale reverse mentoring and a ‘changemaker’ placement scheme for technical colleagues.”

“Our learnings will be integrated to build an ‘Embedding Inclusion Matters: lessons and tools portfolio.’ This is a living resource that will provide a roadmap for organisations wanting to effect transformational change, featuring commentary and guidance on our methodologies and experiences evidenced by the outputs that will stem from our research.”

Project partners

University of Bradford, University of Kent, University of Liverpool, Newcastle University, Nottingham Trent University, University of Warwick, The Science Council, Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University, Royal Academy of Engineering, Royal Society of Chemistry Publishing, Kohler Mira Ltd, Institute of Physics, Diversity by Design.

See the project’s Twitter account.

Visit the project’s website.

11 VisNET

Virtual in situ networking to reinvent the rules of international collaborations and reduce gender differences in academic careers

Grant reference

EP/S012079/1

Contact

Caroline Gaucotte-Lindsay, Helen Mulvana

Institution

University of Glasgow

Grant summary

Programme Co-Directors, Dr Caroline Gauchotte-Lindsay and Dr Helen Mulvana: “VisNET (virtual in situ networking), led by the University of Glasgow, aims to understand and fundamentally transform the mechanisms of networking and collaboration in academia. Focusing on the dominant leak in the academic pipeline, the postdoctoral researcher to lecturer transition, we seek to remove the disadvantage women experience in building their international reputation, an important measure of academic esteem. Ultimately, our outcomes will help to redress the underrepresentation of women in STEM academia by establishing equality of opportunity when competing for research funding and academic promotion.”

“Barriers for women to participate equally in the international scientific conversation are multifold. Among these, gender bias means that women are less likely to be invited to speak at conferences or take part in opinion panels – both critical networking opportunities. They are also more likely to have primary caring responsibilities, restricting their freedom to travel.”

“The growth in technologies enabling remote working offers us an exciting opportunity to redefine networking practices by making them less reliant on frequent travel. Working with the universities of Edinburgh and Strathclyde and multinational companies including Microsoft, Nokia and Thales, we will develop, integrate and advocate for new strategies that remove gender bias and allow women to influence the new ‘rules’, thus challenging the persistence of male networks.”

Project partners

University of Edinburgh, University of Strathclyde, NXP Semiconductors Ltd, Nokia UK Ltd, CGI IT UK Ltd, Atkins Ltd, Scottish Research Partnership in Engineering, Thales UK Ltd.

See the project’s Twitter account.

Visit the project’s website.

Last updated: 18 January 2024