From Research to Policy to Practice: Minimising Exclusionary Structural Barriers in Research Environments (Poster)

Last year at IRCC, Boehm presented a paper on “whiteness” and researcher careers, subsequently published in Exchanges (Boehm et al., 2024). This current poster will report on the progress achieved as part of this work stream that started over 3 years ago (Welikala, 2023; Boehm, 2023). The authors suggest that one of the biggest challenges lies in mainstream EDI interventions being generally built around deficit models, e.g. with a focus on groups or individuals who “need to be supported” instead of focusing on adapting institutional processes and “ways of working” to support more equitable and inclusive cultures.

As a few key actors in this space increasingly adopt, our work also makes a case for a significantly different approach, one that is different from mainstream EDI interventions, such as outlined in AdvanceHE’s 2019 report (Guyan et al., 2019), often resulting in incremental or non-measurable improvements, rather than a step change we believe we need.

We are advocating for a focus on interventions targeting systemic unconscious biases, structural exclusionary barriers and affirmative approaches to support a step-change to reaching various diversity targets and aspirations.