Diversity and Inclusion update

Dr Allán Laville, Dean for Diversity & Inclusion, provides a report on some projects and institutional work during 2022/23 that are helping make Reading an inclusive community.

The 2022-23 academic year has provided many opportunities to advance meaningful inclusion activities at the University.

Decolonising the Curriculum

In September 2022, we published our Decolonising the Curriculum resource, which has received excellent feedback from internal and external colleagues. Our decolonising the curriculum journey has been published by Advance HE, Oxford University Press, and Times Higher Education.

Since then, the Decolonising the Curriculum Working Group have focused on developing resources for:

• Inclusive Teaching and Learning environments
• Utilising student-staff partnership approaches to decolonising the curriculum
• Decolonising research to inform Teaching and Learning content

These new resources will be published in September 2023 and we look forward to receiving your feedback on how these resources have advanced your Teaching and Learning practice.

Race equality

In January 2023, our work in race equality has also been acknowledged by being awarded the Advance HE Bronze Race Equality Charter award. This award acknowledges our significant commitment and actions to advance race equality at the University.

Our 2023-2028 action plan will now been overseen by our newly established Race Equality Implementation Team, which is chaired by myself and includes members from across the University and Reading Student’s Union.

LGBT+ support

In February 2023, the University launched the LGBT+ inclusion fund to support meaningful LGBT+ inclusion activities for our students and staff. The fund was created by Ceara Webster (Diversity and Inclusion Adviser), Jem McKenzie (RSU Inclusion and Communities Officer), Dr Ruvi Ziegler (Co-Chair of the LGBT+ Staff Network) and myself.

Many congratulations to the successful student-staff partnership bid titled ‘From labelling LGBT+ a ‘mental disorder’ to supporting the community: The changing attitudes of Psychology’. The seminar series is led by Eleanor Benford (BSc Psychology with Neuroscience student) and Aamir Sohail (Centre for Neuroscience and Neurodynamics (CINN) Operations Support). The project is also supported by Dr Gabriella Rossetti (Research Fellow, CINN), Dr Brendan Williams (Research Fellow, CINN) and Professor Anastasia Christakou (Professor of Neuroscience). Please watch this space for further details on how to sign-up for seminar series!

Since February 2023, we have been working with Stonewall as part of their strategic review of the Stonewall Workplace Equality Index. To date, this has included consultation on minor changes to the Index, with the full review of the Index launching later this calendar year. I am very much looking forward to working with Stonewall to make sure their metric accurately captures meaningful LGBT+ inclusion.

As a reminder, due to the current pausing of our membership for the Stonewall Workplace Equality Index, please make sure any Stonewall logos are removed from local webpages and your email signatures.

To further advance LGBT+ inclusion at the University and at RSU, with many thanks to Jem McKenzie, we will be engaging in a listening exercise with LGBT+ students to consider the most appropriate actions to advance student LGBT+ inclusion. This listening exercise builds on our earlier work in 2019 and will take place in Autumn term 2023/24. The actions from this listening exercise will then be discussed with the LGBT+ Action Plan Group and if agreed, resource allocated appropriately.

Gender equality

In March 2023, our Technical Services team led by Dr Karen Henderson, became the first professional services team in the UK to gain the Advance HE Silver Athena Swan award. This is an exceptional achievement in the area of gender equality, and I would like to commend the team on an excellent submission, which had very strong intersectional considerations throughout the application. In my view, Diversity and Inclusion should view individuals holistically and this was front and centre in the successful submission.

Centrally, we are continuing to implement the institutional 2020-2025 Advance HE Silver Athena Swan action plan, which is over seen by the Athena Swan Implementation Team. In Autumn term, we will be issuing a call for colleagues to the join the Athena Swan Self-Assessment Team, who will lead on our May 2025 submission. The submission will include several listening exercises including staff experience, staff advancement, and supporting Trans colleagues.

Disability & Neurodiversity

In May 2023, the Disability and Neurodiversity Action Plan Group are exploring progress made towards the 10 recommendations in the Disability and Neurodiversity Review (2022).

From more recent conversations with colleagues and students, it is clear that progress towards disability and neurodiversity inclusion within physical estates (Recommendation 2) is a key priority. The Action Plan Group is grateful for the upcoming conversation with Andrew Casselden, Director of Estates, so we can collaborate on improving disability and neurodiversity inclusion at the University.

A second key priority is digital accessibility (Recommendation 10). Following this recommendation, we have seen significant advancement in this area including the current ‘Look again’ digital accessibility campaign led by Dr Tharindu Liyanagunawardena (Digital Accessibility Officer) and Pete Bryant (Staff Engagement Manager). Please do explore the various articles and interactive material/sessions, which are being provided as part of this campaign.

Beyond these two recommendations, we are working closely with the Staff Disability+ Network to advance the line manager toolkit (Recommendation 4) and with People Development, who have now launched the Active Bystander training (Recommendation 6), which can be booked now via UoRLearn.

All of these important actions will support us to apply for Level 2 of the Disability Confident Scheme in 2024.

I would like to close by thanking all of my colleagues who have supported our Diversity and Inclusion work across 2022/23 and I am very much looking forward to seeing all of the exciting achievements in 2023/24.

Dr Al Laville
Dean for Diversity and Inclusion