School of LSE
PEMENTOS
The Peer MENtoring TO Succeed (PEMENTOS) scheme offered at the School of Life Sciences and the Environment provides a peer mentoring scheme addressing awarding gaps which supported first year students.
Demographic awarding gaps are caused in part by disadvantaged students’ experience of a harder transition, and a reduced sense of belonging, to higher education. PEMENTOS is a peer mentoring project that aims to ease the transition of demographically disadvantaged undergraduate students into the LSE School and to increase their sense of belonging, thereby reducing awarding gaps. This will be done by alleviating the sense of isolation experienced by underrepresented students “as they interact with students who share their cultural and career values as well as giving them a sense of inclusion, purpose, identity, and meaning.” (Seery et al., 2021).
The scheme is for all students in the LSE School, but is particularly aimed at minoritised students who are more likely to be adversely affected by awarding gaps. These students include members of ethnic minorities and those from lower socioeconomic backgrounds. PEMENTOS will offer Year Two and Three undergraduates (and if possible, also MSc & PhD postgraduates) an opportunity to support the cohorts that follow them, helping later cohorts to develop a stronger sense of belonging through contact with more experienced students from similar backgrounds. We hope to see this reflected in a narrowing of the demographic awarding gaps seen at all stages in our School, in line with the existing evidence base (https://taso.org.uk/intervention/mentoring-counselling-role-models-post-entry/).
Undergraduate Research Bursary scheme
In 2021, the Department of Psychology created the Undergraduate Research Bursary scheme to increase transparency and inclusion in accessing research placements. Research placements offer invaluable opportunities for students to actively learn and apply knowledge, develop practical and transferable skills, and building networks and mentoring relationships with staff. The scheme offers standardised advertisement of positions outlining the skills required (rather than grades), a standardised application process with anonymous shortlisting, feedback to all students on their application, and financial help (£250). More details on the scheme can be found in this Times Higher Education article. In 2022, the RHUL Team Teaching Prize and the Student's Union "You're Valued" Award were awarded to team of staff that developed the scheme (Saloni Krishnan, Nura Sidarus, Ilham Sebah, Victoria Bourne, Dawn Watling).
Biological Sciences
The Department of Biological Sciences believes that there is inherent dignity within all of us and so we must strive to maintain an environment of mutual respect, equality and inclusion. We accept and respect the open expression of our individuality and diversity within the bounds of courtesy and sensitivity, and we will not tolerate any discrimination or harassment on the basis of race, colour, national origin, religion, gender identity, reproductive status, physical or mental disability, medical condition, genetic background, ancestry, marital status, sexual orientation, or citizenship.
Our EDI team comprises a diverse range of people from all aspects of the department, including the head of the department, directors of teaching, technical operations, outreach and careers. We are committed to the ATHENA swan charter, and are aiming for the Silver award in 2023. We recently set up a Women in Science scheme, to provide support for personal and professional development of female students and staff (academic, research, technical and administrative) in the Department of Biological Sciences and a forum for discussions and a unified voice to help raise issues and address the career challenges that women face. We are also participating in the School's PEMENTOS mentoring scheme.
Earth Sciences
The Department of Earth Sciences is a safe and welcoming department regardless of race, religion, sexuality, gender, disabilities, health or socio-economic background. We welcome, support, and value our students and staff. Recognised by our Athena SWAN Bronze Award of 2021, we endeavour to promote gender equality and to identify and address challenges particular for the department and our discipline. Our department has a rich ethnic and international diversity with a significant proportion of our members from non-British and Black Global Majority (BGM) communities. We support College Staff Networks, including the Royal Holloway Women’s Network (RoWaN), LGBT+ Staff Network, Staff Disability Forum, and BGM Network. For example, we advocate diversity in our department’s cultural richness via activities such as Mardi Gras/Carnavale social events.
Our Departmental EDI Team includes UG and PG students, PDRAs, Technical and Academic Staff, as we aim to maintain a healthy balance between male and female participants, people with different departmental roles and at varied career stages. The team covers a spectrum of knowledge and experience, blending new with more senior staff, equipped to relate and address different situations and issues.
Earth Sciences students are highly valued in our department. Their voices are included in our UG and PG Student-Staff Action Meetings and our Departmental Teaching and Research Committees. Our Senior Tutor also liaises with Wellbeing to provide Dyslexia and Neurodiversity support, and appoints Personal Advisors to provide students with further support throughout their entire journey of studying with us. We participate in LSE’s PEMENTOS peer-mentorship scheme, showcasing our dedication in addressing awarding gaps. In 2024, we also promoted our students’ participation as LSE’s Media and Communications Intern to assist in the production of videos to support other students in the School. We consider EDI-related matters of inclusiveness in the design and implementation of our field trips.
We strongly advocate support provided to our staff members in addressing wellbeing and equality, with a focus on departmental culture, family-friendly policies (e.g. maternity and paternity policies, return-to-work sabbatical following maternity leave), flexible working, career progression, and use of non-gendered language. All our new staff members are assigned a Probation Advisor, who act as a mentor to support them through their development and academic promotion. We encourage our staff to participate in LSE’s Dignity Listeners project to collectively tackle bullying and harassment.
We are imminently introducing our new Integrated Workload Model, which is based on contracted working hours and highly recognises EDI, with a focus on ensuring that research, teaching and academic administration are shared fairly and transparently as encouraged by the Athena SWAN Charter.
Geography
The Department of Geography is committed to operating in a welcoming environment where we celebrate our differences and support each other as an equal and inclusive community. We nurture a departmental culture that respects the dignity of staff and students and helps all members in our community to achieve their full potential.
EDI is embedded in all departmental meetings and working practices to ensure our objectives are widely known and understood so that actions can be taken to meet them. Recognising the value of equality, diversity and inclusion means coming to terms with the challenging legacies of the past, especially in the context of geography’s historical role as a discipline. The past can also be a source of inspiration as is clear from the history of Royal Holloway’s geography department, now a century old, which was founded and led by women for much of this period. Recent progress at Royal Holloway in tackling gender inequalities at staff level has contributed significantly to diversification and gender balance. Gender diversity (through our Athena Swan Silver award) is only one aspect of the challenge, as our objectives are intersectional (addressing race, sexuality, disability etc). We recognise the unwritten hierarchies of academia and want to empower the voices of all staff and students in the Department to advance their careers and safely advocate for change.
We are committed to nurturing Early Career Researchers, including PDRAs and new lecturers, helping them to create their own opportunities. It’s now a well-documented problem at national level that Geography has low Black Global Majority (BGM) student and staff diversity. We are committed to engaging more broadly with society, diversifying our recruitment at all levels, and ensuring a safe and empowering environment for our students and staff. We recognise that much remains to be done and we are committed to that positive action. Where we lack the power to directly change policy, we will advocate for that change with the University and at the level of funders and the government. We are committed to this as individuals and as a department. We also work with subject associations (for example the Royal Geographical Society with the IBG and the Geographical Association) to advance EDI principles across the discipline of geography. The Department is working with the RGS-IBG and other institutions to address the historic under-representation of ethnic minorities in the student population.
Health Studies
The new Health Studies department at Royal Holloway brings together a highly diverse group of staff and students, from different academic disciplines and life backgrounds. Our ambition is to create a community where everyone feels they belong and have a common purpose. We believe diversity means recognising and valuing that everyone is different and have different ways of thinking and working and that no assumption should be made on someone, based on what you cannot see as well as what you can. That’s why we are creating an environment that values diverse perspectives from different disciplines, as it is the common value of health in people and planet that gives us a common goal.
Being a newly formed department gives us a great opportunity to apply equality, diversity, and inclusion principles from the onset, championing initiatives and activities to address any form of inequality for our staff and students. We have developed the contents and assessments of our courses to be inclusive, decolonised and designed to suit different learning needs. We are also committed to the Athena SWAN principles to address gender inequalities and aim at applying for the Athena SWAN charter in 2024.
Psychology
Our department is committed to creating a welcoming and inclusive environment for everyone, promoting and celebrating diversity in our members, and ensuring fairness and equity in our processes. For this, we seek to embed EDI principles in all our activities by having an EDI team comprised of people with key administrative roles, such as head of department, directors of teaching, admissions, outreach, careers, research committee, as well as representatives of postdocs and PGR students. Our initiatives include having gender neutral bathrooms and staff rainbow lanyards, creating an Undergraduate Research Bursary scheme to facilitate access to research experience (details in awards section), the Sarah Parker Remond PhD studentship and the UG Sarah Parker Remond Psychology Award to support and increase the representation of black students, and diversifying our curriculum by creating new modules like “Psychology of Equality, Diversity and Inclusion”.
