EDI+ Projects
A collection of the Projects that the EDI+ Fellows have pursued during their fellowship
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.
