Recent Faculty EDI events

EDI initiative highlights

• Music and Media hosted a very successful Athena SWAN panel event, ‘Diversity in Broadcast and Post-production’. The event drew together industry experts to discuss the past, the progress and the development of diversity in the Broadcast and Post-production sectors, and what the future holds.
• Politics held LGBT+ History Month Annual Seminar talk by Dr Koen Slootmaeckers (City University London) ‘What progress, and progress for whom? LGBT equality beyond legislative initiatives’.
• Surrey Law School students who are members of Junior Lawyers Against Poverty are collaborating with International Law Book Facility by collecting law books to go to overseas universities, such as Uganda, Rwanda, to improve accessibility to justice.
• Sociology held a book launch Working Women on Screen: Paid Labour and Fourth Wave Feminism. The book is published by Palgrave MacMillan in the (Re)Presenting Gender series.
• Music and Media hosted an event for International Women's Day where they welcomed a guest speaker Dr Odaline de la Martinez, who has pursued a high-profile international career as conductor, composer, and record producer across more than five decades. Dr Martinez is a proud graduate in Music of the University of Surrey and current Honorary Visiting Professor.
• Surrey Law Schoo organised Lincoln's Inn talk and dinner aimed at students who are the first in their family to attend University.

Initiatives in 2023

• SHTM started a monthly communication on wellbeing (SHTM Wellbeing Monthly) with resources, tips, and events relevant to staff welfare - led by wellbeing champion.
• SBS had a very successful Athena SWAN Annual Lecture event presented by Dame Ann Limb who is newly appointed Pro-Chancellor University of Surrey, Chair at The UK Innovation Corridor, a British educationalist, business leader, and philanthropist. 
• SBS have launched an initiative for International Women's Day and Women's History Month 'Celebrating the Women of Surrey Business School' featuring women Research Centre Directors.
• Sociology and GSA jointly organised a performance by by ground-breaking theatre company Clean Break: A thought-provoking show highlighting the often-untold stories of women and criminalisation.
• Politics invited Dr Koen Slootmaeckers, Senior Lecturer in International Politics at the Department of International Politics at City, University of London, to talk about the symbolism of LGBT rights in contemporary politics. Drawing on his decade long research in the EU enlargement process and its impact of LGBT politics and lived realities, Dr Slootmaeckers critically engages with the idea of progress and asks What is progress? When can we celebrate that progress has been made? And if there is progress, progress for whom?
• Initiated by the students of GSA, who wanted to see more of a physical representation of our commitment to a diverse and inclusive culture, there now are three different style inclusive flags in the GSA foyer. The three flags GSA now proudly fly in their foyer is the pride progress flag, the black lives matter flag, and a neurodiversity flag.

Initiatives in 2022

• At GSA a scholarship was been set up by Ella Balinska, GSA’s BA Acting graduate, for a first year global majority student on the BA Acting course. This year the first student received the scholarship and completed his first year.
• Surrey Law School organised lunchtime lawyer series ensuring the panel speakers represent different protected characteristics. The series addressed issues on different EDI aspects.
• Undergraduate sociology society ‘SocSoc’ organised a quiz for International Women’s Day for staff and students on Tuesday 8th March. Winning team received £5 per member to donate to a woman’s based charity.
• In celebration of IWD2022, SHTM organised an exhibition with a display of women role models at all levels throughout the month of March.
• In Music and Media, the Film Production and Broadcast Engineering team coordinated the visit of a £50m outside broadcast vehicle, with professional crews from CTV and their collaborating industry partners, to hold a series of hands-on workshops for students, and for visiting school parties from diverse communities, in support of diversifying recruitment and awareness of the subject area.
• Politics organised an Online Seminar ‘Voting for Disabled Candidates' with Dr Stefanie Reher, University of Strathclyde.
• SBS celebrated International Women’s Day by organising a talk on ‘Creating your own Stories: Lessons from Inspirational Women’.
• SLL held a compulsory Race Equity Training day for all staff.
• Economics are leading a significant piece of econometrics analysis of awarding gap data.
• GSA are commencing a research project on the creation of a signed performance system for autistic audiences.