The EPSRC Equality, Diversity and Inclusion (EDI) Hub+ will act as a focal point of activity and knowledge of good EDI practice across the UK.
The EDI Hub+ is a Network Plus award funded by EPSRC. 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 the engineering, physical and mathematical sciences research communities.
These challenges will be tackled by scaling up EDI interventions which will be integrated and adopted within the community.
What the hub will deliver
The EDI Hub+ will focus on three themes:
- career pathways: including removing barriers to doctoral study for underrepresented groups and growing diverse leadership
- research funding and processes: including trialling and evaluating alternative approaches to funding opportunities and peer review, and reducing the burden on specific groups
- organisational culture: including making workplaces more inclusive and accessible, fostering inclusive leadership and adopting equitable work-life balance approaches
It will deliver:
- a coordinated and collaborative network across the four nations of the UK, bringing together the full breadth of the engineering, physical and mathematical sciences (EPMS) research and innovation community (universities, businesses, funders) to facilitate knowledge exchange, share good practice, identify unmet needs, and co-create interventions that seek to address those needs
- 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 which will be backed by a flexible fund, offering opportunities for the community
Flexible leadership model
To make the funding opportunity more inclusive, EPSRC piloted a flexible leadership model that allowed for one or more project leads to lead the project. As a result, the hub will be led by two project leads:
- Professor Vania Dimitrova, Human-Centred Artificial intelligence at the University of Leeds
- Professor Louise Jennings, Medical Engineering at the University of Leeds
In addition to the EPSRC standard eligibility rules, we accepted wider eligibility for the roles of project leads and project co-lead applicants for this funding opportunity to support different career paths within the research and innovation community.
Leadership, action and working with the community
The EDI Hub+ plans to engage widely across the four nations of the UK to identify and share good EDI practice, determine unmet EDI needs, and evaluate what does and does not work. As well as the leadership team, the hub will have five engagement champions that will ensure the project has a wide geographical reach.
The hub plans to build a network of partners from across the EPMS community that will engage in the hub’s activities. An interactive online EPMS resource centre that is structured around the hubs three themes will be created, and the resource centre will be co-designed through workshops with members of the EPMS community.
The EDI Hub+ plans to create real change by embedding good EDI practices in the EPMS research and innovation community.
Throughout the lifetime of the hub, EPSRC will engage and work together with the leadership team to continue to learn and adapt our processes and increase diversity and inclusion in the engineering, mathematical and physical sciences research and innovation community.
Hub partners
The project partners involved in the EDI Hub+ provide a diverse representation across the breadth of the research and innovation community, with more than 20 partners from industry, professional bodies, learned societies, public sector research establishments and non-profit organisations.
Working with professional bodies covering a diverse range of sectors, as well as bodies representing higher education personnel, the project partners will support EDI knowledge exchange, networking activities, dissemination of the hub resources and provide geographical reach across all four nations.
Partner universities include:
- Aberystwyth University
- Durham University
- Heriot-Watt University
- University of Bradford
- University of Bristol
- University of East Anglia
- University of Leeds
- University of York
How the hub will engage with communities
We encourage everyone in our community to engage with the EDI Hub+. There will be many opportunities to participate in knowledge exchange and co-creation activities, embedding the outcomes in the EPMS research and innovation ecosystem.
The EDI Hub+ plans to engage and co-create activities with the following groups.
Academic institutions
These include:
- EPMS EDI teams
- professional services staff
- research technical professionals
- doctoral students
- early career, mid career and established researchers at a broad range of higher education providers
Industry
Participants from industry will be sharing best practice and participate in cross-sectoral interventions.
EPMS EDI projects
These include among others:
- EPSRC Inclusion Matters
- EDI+ energy network
- EDI+ fellowships
- IGNITE Network+
- INCLUDE+
- WES ambassadors
Research and innovation projects
These projects act as Inclusion Advocates and EPMS EDI+ Ambassadors. They take a strategic approach by focusing on geographic reach, broad awareness, and wide impact through Centres for Doctoral Training, hubs, programme grants, Networks+ and others.