Inclusion and Diversity Forum: Continuing to push for a better future for chemistry
Dedicated members of the chemical sciences community and influential experts united to celebrate the return of our Inclusion and Diversity Forum last week.
Dozens of guests, speakers and allies came together at our Burlington House HQ in London for the fifth edition of the event. Viewers from across the world also tuned in via a live stream as the amazing efforts of those within the scientific community were placed in the spotlight.
A bumper schedule saw speakers from institutions across the UK, some of the American recipients of LGBT+ Inclusion in STEM grants and senior RSC leaders address delegates on a wide array of topics.
Our president Dr Annette Doherty welcomed participants to our London base, saying: "We know that keeping up our efforts is not easy. It can be uncomfortable, complicated, deeply personal – because inclusion and diversity are not abstract policy discussions. They affect lives, careers, futures.
"We are all operating in a changing, challenging, and uncertain environment. Across the world, we see inclusion and diversity efforts coming under scrutiny, or being stalled, or even reversed. And that is not just a political or institutional challenge – it is personal.
"For many people, this moment is causing real hardship, uncertainty, and worry – about the future of their careers, their safety, their ability to thrive in the spaces they have worked so hard to enter. No one should have to carry that alone.
"At the Royal Society of Chemistry, we have made a commitment: not just to acknowledge those barriers, but to act. To use our voice, our partnerships, our influence – to push for real change."
Dr Doherty's opening remarks were followed by a presentation to honour the winners of the 2024 Inclusion and Diversity Prize. Professor Robert Mokaya, our President Elect and Chair of our Inclusion & Diversity Committee, presented Dr Victoria Mason with the medal to celebrate the work of Discovery Planet CIC.
A summary of our work on disability and accessibility then explored our latest contributions to the improvement of inclusion and diversity within the chemical sciences.
Dr Daniel Smith, Head of Physical Science at EPSRC, and Professor Vania Dimitrova, of the University of Leeds, followed this by giving a talk on the EPSRC EDI Hub+. This will provide leadership and coordination that supports the sharing of EDI good practices across the engineering, physical and mathematical sciences research community.
Speaking after the presentation, Prof Dimitrova said she was 'impressed by how serious the Royal Society of Chemistry is about inclusion and diversity and how much progress has been made' and the strategic nature of our approach.
This evidence-driven approach and this commitment to actually truly make a change to culture is really inspiring ... We need to show that if we want to make sure that the science is embedded and it's for everyone. We need to make sure that we diversify our teams, and we need to make sure that everyone is welcome and included.
Presentations from the LGBT+ Inclusion in STEM grant recipients and a Q&A session enabled researchers to discuss the findings of their respective studies into the attrition and retention of LGBT+ scientists.
The £485,000 programme, which started in August 2023, saw five transatlantic partnerships of STEM and social science researchers explore how we can progress policy changes to support the LGBT+ STEM community.
All five recipient groups shared their perspectives based on their individual areas of research in the Q&A session, which was chaired by the Chair of the Board of Trustees for the Windsor Fellowship, Kevin Coutinho.
Speaking later in the day, he said: "What we see is over the course of a number of years, how the Royal Society of Chemistry has helped to start up and initiate data conversations to help us understand what's happening, but then proactively look at research as a means of informing our understanding of the challenges, responses to the challenges, and the potential for impact."
At the end of the day, inclusive science is better science, and that doesn't happen by accident ... By drawing us together, we're able to actually feed off each other in terms of our knowledge, our experiences, learn, network, and think about potential future collaborations, and then finally, galvanise ourselves, because when we go back and we're watching the news at the moment, there's lots of challenges around what's happening in society. But in environments like this, the Royal Society of Chemistry is actually facilitating knowledge exchange and a community of practice that can actually strengthen our responses.
Dr Marco Reggiani was one of the grant recipients and presented alongside Dr Timothy Atherton, Tufts University, USA. The University of Strathclyde academic added: "It's an amazing opportunity to come together with a community that has worked a lot around equality, diversity and inclusion, and hear results from the work that the Royal Society of Chemistry is doing, results from the LGBTQ+ inclusion grants.
"There's still a lot of work that we need to do so I would hope that events like this drive forward momentum for change. We need investment, we need resources, and I hope to see them in the future."
Dr Ale Palermo, our Head of Global Inclusion, next chaired a series of flash presentations from some recipients of our Inclusion and Diversity Fund grants. The talks covered a broad spectrum of topics, including race, physical conditions, underrepresentation and mental health.
One of those speakers was Dr Kelly Kousi, a Lecturer of Chemical Engineering at the University of Surrey, who said: "I actually think that the most striking thing today is the importance of data because we can talk about our stories, and usually we go by feeling for these things. But actually data is important. So if we can gather those data and have them presented in a nice way, as we've seen today, that would make a much bigger impact."
The flash presentations were followed by a presentation titled 'Sign O Times: Trying to convey hope in challenging times' by University of Cambridge Professor Jason Arday. Our CEO Dr Helen Pain brought proceedings to a close before a networking session allowed guests to delve deeper into some of the day's discussions.
Reflecting on the day's event, Prof Mokaya said: "The space in which we work is always evolving, and the conversations we're having today, the presentations we're having today, the people who are here represent that. There's so much work to do that actually it feels like one is almost working at the cutting edge - the innovation and the things that people are doing are always changing - so for me, it's very impressive and it's very encouraging."
Nobody ever said that actually taking this view and driving this work is going to be easy ... If we are convinced as we are that this is the right thing to do, it's a fair thing to do, it's the reasonable thing to do, then we just carry on. Sometimes, actually, you don't need 100% of everybody agreeing with you to be able to do something. Just go with those who are with you, and we can still make a difference, and that's what we want to do.
Our work on inclusion and diversity
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