The Equality, Diversity and Inclusion (EDI) Hub+ will act as a focal point of activity and knowledge of good EDI practice across the UK.
Drawing on expertise and insight from people and organisations from within and beyond the sector, the hub will provide leadership to pinpoint diversity challenges unique to EPMS.
These challenges will be tackled by scaling-up EDI interventions, which will be integrated and adopted within the community.
The hub involves seven university partners and is led by:
- Vania Dimitrova, Professor of Human-Centred Artificial intelligence at the University of Leeds
- Louise Jennings, Professor of Medical Engineering at the University of Leeds
It is supported by the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC) through a £2.5 million investment.
Addressing the persistent challenges
EPSRC Executive Chair Professor Charlotte Deane said:
The diversity challenges we face deprive individuals of opportunity, with the result that the research and innovation system, and society more widely, cannot benefit from their contributions and perspectives.
The EDI Hub+ aims to address the persistent challenges we see across the engineering, physical and mathematical sciences community by harnessing our collective accumulated knowledge.
It will consolidate the work of existing initiatives and lead new programmes of work, ensuring that the best solutions can be brought to bear on challenges specific to the engineering, physical sciences and mathematics communities.
The EDI Hub+ is one of the activities in EPSRC’s three-year EDI action plan.
Three themes
It will focus on three themes.
Career pathways
This includes:
- removing barriers to doctoral study for underrepresented groups
- providing inclusive support at key career transitions
- growing diverse leadership
Research funding and processes
This includes:
- trialing and evaluating alternative approaches to funding opportunities and peer review
- reducing the burden on specific groups
Organisational culture
This includes:
- making workplaces more inclusive and accessible
- fostering inclusive leadership
- adopting equitable work-life balance approaches
Bringing together the EPMS community
It will deliver:
- an interactive online resource of EDI interventions, with robust evidence as to what works and, crucially, what doesn’t work
- EDI maturity indices and supporting material that help us to get the right intervention to the right organisation at the right time
- piloted interventions embedded in EPMS research and innovation contexts
- scaled-up and fully evaluated interventions that have the potential for widespread adoption
- EDI national-level guidelines, pledges, policies and programmes
- co-created interventions that will be backed by a Flexible Fund to enable piloting of co-created interventions, scaling-up of successful pilot projects and evaluating the effectiveness of interventions
- a coordinated and collaborative network across the four nations
A coordinated and collaborative network will bring together the full breadth of the EPMS research and innovation community (universities, businesses and funders) to:
- facilitate knowledge exchange
- share good practice
- identify unmet needs
- co-create interventions that seek to address those needs
Empowering individuals
Professor Vania Dimitrova and Professor Louise Jennings will lead initiatives to empower individuals throughout the EPMS community by working with:
- universities
- learned societies
- industry partners
- professional bodies
- international collaborators
Embed inclusive processes in everyday practice
Joint project lead Professor Louise Jennings, of the School of Mechanical Engineering at the University of Leeds:
We’re passionate about this project as we feel the time is ripe to focus on evidence based sustained transformation across the Engineering, Physical and Mathematical Sciences research and innovation community.
Our goal is to see equitable and inclusive processes become embedded and normalised in everyday practice.
The level of interest we have received already from institutions wanting to get involved and partners keen to work with us on this, demonstrates that there is appetite for change and organisations are already engaging with the process.
A fairer future
Joint project lead Professor Vania Dimitrova, of the School of Computer Science at the University of Leeds, said:
We are delighted to have brought together such a strong interdisciplinary team of EDI champions with complementary expertise and track record in addressing EDI challenges to deliver change.
Through the EDI Hub+, we will identify, nurture and co-create EDI interventions, and progress them towards sustainable implementation and widespread adoption.
We believe that these interventions will lead to a fairer future, ensuring everyone, including those who are under-represented, is listened to, understood, and enabled to pursue their goals and succeed.
The hub will build on the work of existing initiatives, including the EPSRC Inclusion Matters projects. They will also collaborate with other programmes supported by UK Research and Innovation such as the EDI Caucus.
The EDI Caucus provides high-quality research evidence on EDI that informs policy and practice in the research and innovation system. The EDI Caucus and EDI Hub+ will collaborate on themes that are aligned.
Further information
Partner universities
EDI Sharing Hub+ partner universities:
- University of Leeds
- Aberystwyth University
- Durham University
- Heriot-Watt University
- University of Bradford
- University of Bristol
- University of East Anglia
- University of York
Flexible fund
The EDI Hub+ will use a flexible fund to support and empower the EPMS community to:
- pilot co-created interventions that meet validated unmet EDI needs and challenges
- scale-up the most effective interventions to support implementation across multiple settings
- evaluate the effectiveness of interventions of pilot projects and projects implemented at scale
Funding opportunities will be advertised on the EDI Hub+ website, which is in development.
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