New Dates: Equality, Diversity & Inclusion Training

Please see below new EDI Training Dates available to all Academics and Professional Services staff.

• Title: Be an Active Bystander

Overview:  We all need to be mindful of our individual and collective responsibility in our everyday and working lives to take action when we witness bullying, harassment or other forms of inappropriate behaviours.  Being an active bystander means being aware of a situation and choosing to take action.  This programme will support you to find your voice, to step up and speak out.  You will learn to recognise when someone may need help and the bystander intervention strategies and techniques to address the perpetrator about their behaviours.

Access and sign up to the ‘Be an Active Bystander Programme’

• Title: White Privilege

Overview: White Privilege introduces participants to the concepts of “privilege”, “whiteness”  and the intersectionality of these two constructs.  The programme also discusses specifically what being white and privilege means and how it impacts on our environment and our responsibilities to challenge this to ensure under-represented members of our community can benefit from the powerful white privilege position some of us hold.  This programme has been designed to initiate important conversations, understanding and empathy, all in a safe space to explore, experience and discuss the difficult concepts of “whiteness” and “white privilege”.

Access and sign up to the ‘White Privilege Programme’

• Title: Anti-racism and Allyship

Overview: The Anti-racism and Allyship training programme follows on from the White Privilege programme.  This programme continues the concepts explored in White Privilege with connected ideas on race and racism.  The training addresses the importance of behaviour through examples, self-reflection and group discussions.  It also provides advice and approaches for challenging, developing and changing our behaviours so that the University becomes a place of anti-racism and allyship for our colleagues, students and visitors of Black, Asian and ethnic minority backgrounds.  This programme has been designed to initiate important conversations, understanding and empathy, all in a safe space to explore, experience and discuss the concepts of race and racism.

Access and sign up to the ‘Anti-racism & Allyship Programme’

For queries about any of the above programmes contact Vi Parker 

• Title: The Modern Slavery Training course

Anti-Slavery Day is marked every year on October 18th

Overview: Many people think that slavery ended with abolition in the 19th century, but this is not the case.  Modern slavery is a global problem and international crime, affecting millions of people worldwide, including many victims within the UK. Men, women and children of all ages and backgrounds are victims of human trafficking, forced labour, domestic servitude or debt bondage

Do you wish to support and demonstrate the University’s commitment to issues of social justice?

Then the above course is an opportunity you must not miss! Enrol and complete the course on the central Learning Management System.

Register for the Modern Slavery Training Course 

Duration:  10 to 15 minutes.

• Title: Serious Women: a discussion with Crystal Abidin, Sarah Burton, Sarah Hill and Cassandra Phoenix (20 October)

Overview: The SACS EDI committee is thrilled to present the first event in its 2021-22 EDI seminar.  It features three excellent discussants from the UK and Australia. The purpose of the event is to create a space for colleagues at all levels to reflect on and discuss the challenges facing women and non-binary people as they carry out, and communicate their research, both in and outside of the University.

• Date: Wednesday, 20 October 2021
• Time: 10:00 hrs – 11:30hrs
• Venue is via Zoom 

What it is about
This panel aims at sharing experiences of scholars who have faced barriers to being ‘taken seriously’ when trying to conduct and communicate their research, and develop their careers. This panel takes as its starting point that women and non-binary people are often positioned as not being ‘serious’ enough researchers, both in and outside of Higher Education, and that these positionings tend to be intersectional in nature, and influenced by things like race, disability and class. The panel also recognises that the challenge of being ‘taken seriously’ is one that can be experienced by those in Humanities and Social Sciences in particular, where lone working styles, and neoliberal approaches to research mean that the ability to cultivate collaborations, recruit research participants, and establish networks for advancing careers are often impacted by other people’s perceptions of the researcher.

 What  to expect
At this EDI event, our panellists will reflect on some of these issues, and discuss how they have impacted their own careers, or those of colleagues around them, as well as discussing the kinds of strategies that have worked for them in the past, as they have had to navigate these obstacles.

 Emphasis of this event & activities
Thinking through how, at a University level, we might start to tackle the issue of some researchers ‘not being taken seriously’. As such, aspects of this workshop will involve active participation from attendees, so please do be ready to come along and share your experiences and ideas.

Access and register for the ‘Serious Women’ EDI Seminar

Details of all speakers
Crystal Abidin is A socio-cultural anthropologist of vernacular internet cultures, particularly young people’s relationships with internet celebrity, self-curation, and vulnerability. She is Associate Professor of Internet Studies, Principal Research Fellow, and ARC DECRA Fellow at Curtin University.

Sarah Burton is a Leverhulme Trust Early Career Fellow in the Department of Sociology at City, University of London. Her research addresses the relationship between knowledge, knowledge production and concepts of cosmopolitanism, modernity, value, and neoliberalism. Her Leverhulme project focuses on the figure of ‘the intellectual’ and how this relates to ideas of experts, expertise, language, and the public sphere.

Sarah Hill is a Lecturer in Media and Cultural Studies at Newcastle University. Her research interests lie within feminist media studies and girlhood studies and her current work explores disabled girls’ and young women’s online self-representation practices. She is the author of Young Women, Girls and Postfeminism in Contemporary British Film (Bloomsbury, 2020).

Cassandra Phoenix is a Associate Professor in Physical Activity and Health at Durham University since 2019 and Fellow of Wolfson Research Institute for Health and Wellbeing.  Her research takes the form of two inter-related strands. The first focuses on healthy ageing across the life course and the second strand focuses on the connections between health, wellbeing and the environment by examining people’s engagement with and connection to “nature”.

Who can attend?
All HaSS staff and PGR students.

For more information/queries contact: Verena Niepel or Katie Markham

• Title: For Families – family friendly policy news

Last week People Services together with the For Families team announced some significant enhancements and new provisions to our suite of family friendly policies. You can read about this in an article written by the Director of People Services.

Notable are some improvements resulting from your feedback namely:

• De-coupled our maternity/adoption policy into two separate policies and, following a consultation with adoptive parents,
• Rewritten the Adoption Policy to make it more flexible and fit for purpose.
• Introduced a 2-week bereavement leave provision within our Maternity/Pregnancy policy and Paternity/Partner policy for colleagues who sadly suffer a miscarriage within the first 24 weeks of pregnancy.
• Introduced a  Family Time policy with provision for foster carers (up to eight days’ paid leave in a 12-month period), colleagues and partners undergoing fertility treatment/assisted conception (paid time off for up to 10 appointments in a 12-month period) and time off for grandparents (one week unpaid leave every time there is a new addition to the family).

What happens next and what else has been achieved?

• These new/revised policies will come into effect immediately.
• This opportunity has equally been used to update the following two related toolkits:
  • Maternity Toolkit
  • Adoption Toolkit
  • The toolkits contain checklists, FAQs and timelines to ensure better support for both colleagues and their line managers through these processes.

For additional information or queries contact Renita Barbour