Imperial is committed to promoting and embedding equality, diversity and inclusion throughout the College. We have a number of committees and working groups across the College focused on different activities and aspects of equality, diversity and inclusion.
EDI Strategy
Imperial’s EDI Strategy brings a focus and coherence to our efforts to promote equality, diversity and inclusion at the College. It expresses our desire to be more proactive, and more courageous in our efforts to be truly inclusive, by supporting individuals and by reforming structures and practices that maintain inequality and discrimination. It explains why we aim to position EDI at the centre of everything that we do and outlines our priorities and the practical steps that we will take to achieve our aims.
Accreditations
Imperial's commitment to equality, diversity and inclusion is reflected through our accreditations, standards, and charter marks. Using these external frameworks can help us as an organisation to assess where we are now, identify problems, and develop actions to move us forward.
Imperial is an Athena SWAN Silver Award winner, a Bronze Award recipient of the Race Equality Charter, a Stonewall Diversity Champion, a Disability Confident Leader and works in partnership with GIRES to promote respect for trans people.
Training and policies
The College provides a range of EDI training, including Unconscious Bias training for staff and students. The College’s online equality and diversity course is recommended for all staff, and recruitment and selection training is mandatory for all staff involved in recruitment.
Imperial has also introduced a range of new EDI policies around conference and workshop organisation and conduct, as well as operational policies.
We have an ongoing review of our policies and processes for reporting and recording bullying and harassment, and provide Active Bystander training to staff. Imperial is dedicated to creating an environment which is respectful and collaborative and has a zero-tolerance approach to bullying and harassment.
Support for EDI
We have recently run the EDI Excellence Seed Fund to identify and support new activities that promote EDI at the College. Activities funded include outreach work, the creation of diverse staff and student portraits (for example, the Shifting the Lens series celebrates staff and students from ethnic minority backgrounds at Imperial), discussion events, and workshops. One of the activities in 2020 sought to address widening participation in postgraduate research, tackling the underrepresentation of BAME students.
The Mary Lister McCammon Summer Research Fellowship is another example of widening participation in STEM postgraduate research study. Run by Imperial’s Mathematics department, the fellowship provides up to 14 funded places for final year female undergraduates to undertake a 10-week research project in the areas of mathematics or statistics, as well as participate in cohort building and professional development activities.
