EDI+ Projects
A collection of the Projects that the EDI+ Fellows have pursued during their fellowship
Professor Simone Abram, Principal Investigator of EDI+ and Executive Director of Durham Energy Institute, reflects on what happened when 21 Fellows were given training, funding and the opportunity to tackle inequality and improve diversity within their own institutions.
International academics make up a large share of the UK university workforce, particularly in STEM disciplines. Yet their presence is far less visible at senior levels. In this piece, EDI+ Fellow Dr Sanchari Deb at Newcastle University explores why access to information may hold the key to understanding this disparity.
Introduced by the Scottish Government in 2017, Graduate Apprenticeships (GAs) were meant to widen access to degree-level study by combining paid work with university learning. Almost a decade on, EDI+ Fellow Dr Stewart Beattie, a Senior Teaching Fellow in Geotechnical Engineering at the University of Strathclyde, is using his Fellowship to explore why that promise still falls short in civil engineering, where informal recruitment, limited understanding in schools and the need to find an employer first can all narrow the route in.
Researchers are increasingly expected to embed equality, diversity and inclusion into their work, yet many struggle to translate that expectation into practical design decisions. Through her EDI+ Fellowship, Dr Lennie Foster at Loughborough University helped shape and refine a collaboratively developed online toolkit that guides people preparing funding bids and research proposals through key design questions, helping them think more carefully about who their work affects and how those decisions shape the quality of their research.
Through her EDI+ Fellowship, Dr Litka Milian at Durham University set out to better understand how disabled students experience studying chemistry. Her work points to a gap between support on paper and support in practice, especially in a subject shaped by labs, timetables, assessment pressures and the added demands of managing health alongside study.
International mobility has long underpinned the UK’s research strength. Through her EDI+ Fellowship, Professor Marina Freitag at Newcastle University examined how Brexit-era changes to fees, visas and mobility routes are narrowing the path into research. Bringing together data and lived experience, her analysis shows the strain this is placing on diversity, collaboration and future research capacity, while also suggesting that restored access can help repair some of the damage.
Through her EDI+ Fellowship, Dr Nur Sarma at Durham University set out to understand whether her department’s existing mentorship programme was working for the people most likely to need it. Her work explores how standard support structures around traditional mentorship may not always reflect the distinct experiences and challenges faced by early-career, international and minority academics.
Energy models help shape decisions about infrastructure, investment and the route to net zero. But the people who build them remain a narrow group, and others who could contribute may not see the field as open to them. Through her EDI+ Fellowship, Dr Lirong Liu at the University of Surrey has been growing the Energy Modelling for All network. Along the way, she has found that one barrier may be the word “modelling” itself.
Engineering design education is frequently presented as an inherently collaborative and student-centred learning environment, providing opportunities for creativity, problem solving, teamwork and a more authentic experience of professional engineering practice. However, questions remain regarding the extent to which these environments are genuinely inclusive for all students. Despite group projects being a familiar part of university life and peer-moderated marking being introduced to make them fairer, marks often reward the work that is easiest to see.
Through her EDI+ Fellowship, Dr Anna Chatzimichali at the University of Bath examined peer assessment for disabled students in engineering design teams. Her work investigates how disability affects design team performance.
Writing the EDI section of a funding proposal can be difficult, even for researchers who want to do it well. Through his EDI+ Fellowship, Dr Oliver Fisher at the University of Nottingham has been developing an AI-supported coach that provides structured feedback on draft plans, slowing the writer down, asking the next question, and helping them work out what equality, diversity, and inclusion actually mean for the project they are proposing. Crucially, it will not write it for them.
Building services engineers make decisions that determine how a building feels to the people inside it, from temperature and ventilation to lighting and noise. But those decisions are guided by standards that often assume an average occupant. Through her EDI+ Fellowship, Associate Professor Hua Zhong at London South Bank University is exploring what those assumptions may miss and whether changing how engineers are taught could lead to buildings that work better for more people.
Engineering has spent years asking how to bring more women into the profession. But there has been much less focus on what happens once they get there, including whether the jobs they are given offer the security to build a career. Through her EDI+ Fellowship, Dr Hannah Mullings at the University of Manchester began looking for answers in her own faculty’s contract data. What she found was a gender gap in who holds secure academic posts, and a question about who can stay in the discipline long enough to build a career.
