Institute EDI activities

children and staff in a park during outreach

Our EDI committee participates in a number of activties to promote inclusion within the Grantham Institute.  Visit the Grantham Blog for recent comments from our students and staff.

EDI Seed Fund

The Grantham Institute’s Equality, Diversity and Inclusion committee recently won an Imperial Seed Fund Award. The project ‘Understanding routes to improving engagement with climate change and environmental issues by diverse groups of people’ aimed to help us to get a better understanding of how diverse groups of people, both in the general public and amongst our key stakeholder audiences, engage with climate change and environmental issues. The project was be undertaken by student workers, under the management of Alyssa Gilbert, Simon Levey and Dr Morena Mills (Centre for Environmental Policy) in July 2021.

Current and Future Actvities

Recruitment and Reporting

  • EDI activities are included in our biannual reporting to our funders and in internal and external newsletters for the DTP and Grantham Affiliates.
  • Members of the EDI committee have discussed benchmarking and reporting on EDI objectives with the Diverse Sustainability Initiative.
  • Job adverts are placed on BBSTEM Jobs and Opportunities Board to reach a diverse talent pool, in line with Imperial College guidance.
  • Job descriptions and adverts are written using Textio to ensure gender- and age- neutral language.
  • Whenever possible, job applications are anonymised.
  • Recruitment panels are selected to ensure diversity.
  • In some instances, sessions are held to meet with and offer advice to prospective applicants about the application process.

 

Training and Education

 

  • The Grantham Institute is sponsoring undergraduate research experience placements for students from disadvantaged economic backgrounds. This is aligned with the NERC Research Experience Placement (REP) scheme, which addresses the shortage of individuals with quantitative skills coming into environmental science and the demographic and diversity-related challenges in the environmental sciences. The REPs focus on these quantitative skills gaps and underrepresentation by allowing undergraduate students to carry out research projects within the scope of the environmental sciences with a paid summer placement.
  • A training session on the social and cultural history of climate change is being designed
  • New PhD students to the Grantham Institute partake in unconscious bias training during their induction week, and PhD supervisors are encouraged to undertake unconscious bias and EDI training
  • A series of “A Day in the Life of…” vlogs is being planned. These vlogs will show the typical life of a PhD student at Imperial, to break down some barriers and challenge perceptions of what it is to be a research student.
  • The PhD application process is being reviewed to find areas for improvement, including gathering feedback from current and potential students.
  • The diversity of speakers for the Changing Planet Seminar Series is being monitored.