Subscribe
Share
Share
Embed
In this series, guests from across UCL and beyond share their innovative solutions and ideas for addressing societal challenges, discussing topics from a cross-disciplinary perspective and inspiring and encouraging us to think differently about issues of local, national and global concern.
Ethne James Souch: Hello and welcome to this episode of Disruptive Voices from UCL Grand Challenges. I'm Ethne James Souch, your host and coordinator for UCL's Grand Challenge of Inequalities.
Through this mini series, Challenging Inequalities: Conversations on Inclusive and Just Futures, we invite you into conversations with UCL researchers who are working to build a more inclusive and equitable future.
In today's episode, I'll be speaking to Professor Sara Mole, Noël Caliste and Dr. Sinead Murphy to explore how their research is helping to shape more equitable policies within UCL for those with protected characteristics.
Professor Mole is Professor of Molecular Cell Biology whilst at the UCL MRC Laboratory of Molecular Cell Biology, or LMCB. Professor Mole used the Athena Swan framework to lead the department to improve gender diversity, which was recognised by a Silver Award in 2009, the first at UCL and then the first Gold Award at UCL in 2016. In 2018 she was appointed as Provost Envoy for Gender Equality and supports the institution to improve gender equality, including chairing the Gender Equality steering group. In 2024, she was appointed Chair of Advance HE Athena SWAN Governance Committee.
Noël is an Executive Assistant at UCL. He has been a Chair of the LGBTQ Equality Steering Group, otherwise known as LESG, since 2019 and he is the Envoy for the LGBTQ equality at UCL. The LESG has its origins in a staff network set up in 2009 and Noël was also the Chair of the LGBTQ Equality Implementation Group that worked on the LGBTQ Action Plan that has been taken on by the EDI team to ensure LGBTQ equality across the institution alongside Athena Swan and the Race Equality Charter. In 2023, both Sara and Noël were awarded funding by UCL Grand Challenges to focus on centering mental health in safer space conversation.
Sinead is a Policy engagement coordinator for UCL's public policy in Research, Innovation and Global Engagement. She is currently the Faculty Representative on UCL Disability Equality implementation group. In 2024 she was awarded Grand Challenges funded on a project titled Head Together, looking at the overlooked issues of chronic migraine a non visible disability. So I thank you all for joining me today.
So, as I mentioned in the introduction, you've all been funded by Grand Challenges recently and these are to create safe space environments for staff and students to talk openly about their challenges they face due to their sex, gender or disability while centering wellbeing and mental health. Sara, if I could come to you first, could you start by giving us a brief overview of the grand challenges funded project Safer Space Conversations?
Sara Mole: yes. So Safer Space Conversations is a project that was set up to learn how to hold good conversations with people who may think or hold views that are quite different to our own or certain topics. These are the type of conversations that may happen between colleagues or friends or within families. We first spent time thinking about how to create a safe or safer and brave space and how to facilitate this. And it became clear early on that centring mental health and wellbeing was very important as we have a responsibility to care for ourselves and for others if we want that conversation to be meaningful and, and to explore an issue. We then put on a series of events where we practise this. We focus on relationships and commonalities where we might agree because this might provide space with potential for change to bring people together rather than push apart.
Ethne James Souch: And Noël so what inspired this project and why is it so timely today?
Noël Caliste: in 2022, there were a number of residents on campus that caused disruption and that made staff and students feel uncomfortable. In response to that, we wanted to do something that tried to address these disruptions that had a longer lasting impact than a statement or a letter, and we came up with what is now known as Safer Spaces Conversation. Following numerous meetings to figure out what we wanted to do and how we wanted to do it, we proposed the SSC project to the UCL EDI Committee in 2023 and while they were supportive, had no budget for it. so that is where we came into grand challenges.
Ethne James Souch: Brilliant. Thank you. And I wonder, Sara or Noël were there any emerging findings or recommendations that you found those Safer Space conversations or are you planning to do more events?
Sara Mole: Yes. So, our next phase, really from next academic year is we're going to analyse all the reports of the events we did and all our early findings and put that together in, an academic publication or a publication, basically trying to bring things together and then we'll bring that to UCL and see how to move forward with this. We feel it's been a very successful project and we've learned a lot doing it. And, we think that learning is worth sharing.
Ethne James Souch: Brilliant, thank you. And we'll definitely be highlighting this project and Sinead's project in the show notes so that people can read more about this and kind of follow the project as it generates further impacts and outputs. so just moving on to you, Sinead, could you describe your grand challenges funded project Heads Together, and what it aimed to do and what inspired the project?
Sinead Murphy: Absolutely. and thanks very much for having me. so, yeah, the Heads Together project aimed to highlight the lived experience of invisible illness and disability, and particularly how it feels to navigate those experiences at work. So I focused on chronic migraine and, 1 million people in the UK have chronic migraine. I was also interested in, some work that the Migraine Trust had done around experiences at work. And as part of that, they revealed that 34% of those with chronic migraine feel discriminated against at work. So we can sort of surmise that many of our UCL colleagues with migraine are likely to be struggling, to be seen to be supported and to be treated inclusively.
To be honest with you as well, I've had migraine all my life, so that was part of the inspiration. It became chronic during my PhD, so I have an intimate understanding of what it's like to manage it in different workplaces, and most of those have been universities. the other part of it is I was really keen to look at all of it through the lens of disability justice. so that's a framework that focuses on liberation and collective care rather than individuating needs or framing health care and wellbeing as the sole responsibility of individuals. anyone can become disabled at any time and disability justice is about centering that reality and seeking out better ways of living for everyone. and I also approached the project with my public policy role hat on. so with that in mind, I wanted to offer some clear, actionable recommendations for change. And listeners can see in the project report that the reasonable adjustments that make migraine easier to manage in the workplace are often relatively easy to implement. And they'd also benefit from a lot of other people beyond just those with migraine.
Ethne James Souch: Brilliant. Thank you. And you've just kind of touched on my next question, so I hope you can expand. But what kind of insights have emerged from engaging those staff, about their experiences? And how do you hope that these insights will inform institutional change at UCL?
Sinead Murphy: yeah, like, I was totally struck by how candid everyone was articulating their experiences. one person that really Stays with me. is a participant who been at UCL for many, many years and she described feeling like an intruder in her own workplace due to migraine. they also, the participants in the project also created powerful images and metaphors to describe, what are often invisible symptoms. And I'd love for people to look through that imagery in the actual report. everyone who participated expressed a lot of relief in finding community around their experience of migraine. so peer support is clearly very valuable and we all know that building community helps to mitigate isolation and stigma.
The other thing is that even though migraine symptoms and experiences can vary really widely, everyone agreed on a set of tangible adjustments that would help to manage migraine at work. And so I really hope that many of those can be implemented, either locally or centrally. And it also emerged that smoother, coordination between different teams would really improve staff experiences, so to name a few. human resources, occupational health, digital accessibility, information services, estates and so on. and I think better link up between those services would benefit large numbers of staff in general and that goes for other institutions than UCL as well.
I really hope the project demonstrates that support structures that don't involve consultation with those they serve can be pretty limited as a result. and lastly, I was just really struck by the different qualities that the colleagues with migraine brought to that space. And I'd really like people to understand how their colleagues with migraine bring things like resilience, thoughtfulness, empathy and perseverance to their work.
Ethne James Souch: Great. Yeah, they're very tangible recommendations and I would encourage anyone to read the brilliant report that you had produced and I hope that there is going to be some change within UCL to support these groups of people.
just moving us slightly more about the Grand Challenges programme and all your projects mentioned, speaking to people with lived experience and UCL's Grand Challenges Programme enables that interdisciplinary collaboration. So Noel, from your perspective, what are the key benefits of working in this way and why did you think it was important for your own project?
Noël Caliste: the lived experience is a pivotal part of Equality's work. However, intersectionality is often an overlooked yet important perspective of the lived experience. When interdisciplinary collaborations occur, it is at the benefit of intersectionality. For our work, it was paramount that we brought together people knowledgeable about sex and gender, as well as those who were educators or researchers in those areas, alongside experts in teaching or facilitating conversations on topics that were often contested in a way that was respectful. It was important that all attendees engaged and that there were opportunities for everyone's opinions to be heard and respected.
Ethne James Souch: Absolutely. and I think, as you mentioned, it's super, important to have those people's voices centred. So I'm glad that the programmes can at least encourage that. That small grant can make, such a big difference. I just want to move back slightly.
Coming to you, Sara. I mentioned in the introduction that your department won the silver Athena Swan award in 2009. so from your experience of working at UCL for a long time, how has UCL approached equality over the years and how have those frameworks, like Athena Swan, helped shape departmental culture? Have there been any key milestones or big challenges along the way that I hope you can share with our listeners?
Sara Mole: yes, I'd love to. So I've been at UCL for over 30 years, so I've seen the importance of equality and fairness and justice for UCL students and staff emerging. UCL was the founding member of the Athena Swan Charter for gender equality, 25 years ago now. And the Athena Swan framework supports institutions and departments in gathering and analysing data on sex and thinking about where there is not parity. Why this is so, and what we can do about it. And this is important because it affects all of us.
How Athena Swan and UCL does this has changed over the years. We were all learning in the beginning, but now there is so much more awareness and understanding and unfortunately still so much more to do. Thinking about, UCL as an institution, UCL can ensure the systems are in place to support equality for students and staff, for the education of students when they're studying and for fair recognition of this.For staff working at UCL progression in their careers and for being rewarded for their achievements. If I look back, one, example of success for academic staff is the new, well, what we still call the new academic Promotions framework that was introduced around 2018 and this resulted in an immediate doubling in the numbers of women being promoted to professor. And it's going to be reviewed next year to make sure it's still doing what it was set out to do. And I'm sure there'll be some tweaks to it.
If you look at this work from academic departmental level, which can address the culture of the UCL bubble for those in that department, which for many people that's the part of UCL they're most familiar with. In my experience and observations this has made a massive difference to some departments, but it does take time to have impact and it takes effort. There are now 21 silver and, seven gold departmental awards at UCL And we have the most golds of any UK higher education institute, which is testament to years of grassroots EDI equality, diversity, inclusion work and the impact this has had. But the challenges are many.
A really supportive senior leadership team is essential, as is a team, that represents the whole department and that is open to what the data is revealing, recognises inequalities where they occur and the reasons why, and also is creative in tackling what is under the control of the department. For example, there's no excuse for a lack of gender parity in external speakers as they are invited by the department and so completely under the control of the department. And although much effort may be needed to ensure that you think widely when you're inviting people to speak, to make sure there is gender parity, it is possible to do or certainly to improve on, the current status.
When I look back, what I find particularly interesting is that most new initiatives were introducing or extending good practice. And so as Sinead said earlier, this benefits everyone. It's also encouraging when people who were not previously thinking about equality at all first start to look through a gender lens in their department and then they also start to use other equality lenses and they recognise inequality that they were completely unaware of before and that some people have multiple disadvantages and then, usually they're motivated to work to offset this. And this is surely simply good practice, which is a phrase we sort of coined quite early on. It really is just simply good practice.
Ethne James Souch: Thank you. And, I think a key term that's been ringing through the discussion is that, intersectional lens and thinking about if you're doing good practice, as you mentioned, Sara, it's going to benefit many people from many groups.
so I suppose just related to that, Noël and Sinead, UCL has done one thing to kind of tackle some of these challenges or creating spaces or groups to listen to the community by setting up many staff equality networks and groups looking at race, gender, disability, sexual orientation, etc, etc, and we love an acronym here, but I won't go through them all. but why do you think if I come to you, Noël first and then Sinead, why do you think it's important to address inequalities in academic settings and what broader benefits arise when institutions take this seriously?
Noël Caliste: So atUCL there's four main equality steering groups, race, gender, LGBTQ and disability, which form part of UCL's governance and receive some administrative support from the EDI team. In addition to that we have staff networks that serve as an opportunity for staff to find like minded individuals, let's say their community at work. By being able to build your own sense of belonging at work, it can aid people with being able to bring their best selves and in turn be more productive. For me equality networks are important as it is about wanting and trying to make a difference to combat the inequalities of the institution. For example here UCL in an attempt to make a level playing field irrespective of your social or economic background. When institutions take the work of equality networks seriously and invest in them appropriately, staff feels seen, appreciated and supported. We spend most of our adult life at work and we should feel comfortable bringing our authentic selves which will only have a positive impact on productivity.
Sinead Murphy: yeah. So if I add to that I completely agree that there's a need for academic institutions to take the work of equality networks seriously. UCL, you know it's a, it's a research, teaching and learning institution. It's a, it's a site of knowledge production. So for me it's within our power and it's our privilege working at UCL, to model the systems and structures that include and serve everyone. and as well as the points Noel was making about productivity, like if we want work to be meaningful and impactful, it's our shared responsibility to make sure that everyone we work with is able to be their most genuine creative, energised self.
And just on networks as well, I think it's very important to have networks that focus on specific experiences. For example we're talking about decisions, race, gender and their other protected characteristics. but as we've been speaking about earlier on, approaching inequalities intersectionally is also really vital if we want to create a broader culture of inclusive practises and thinking with the nuances that come with intersectional thinking. so recognising how different inequalities intersect has also been key to the work that my team have undertaken in partnership with UCL Grand Challenges on the Structurally Unsound Project. Of course Ethne is familiar with that because we work on that with our colleagues Siobhan Morris and Olivia Stevenson. and that project won an award earlier this year. It's a UCL Professional Services support award for Knowledge Exchange. But the project evidences how the comorbidity of different structural inequalities, as in where already marginalised people are Further disadvantaged indicates the need for policy measures to be effective at, intersections.
Ethne James Souch Thank you. And I think we've focused a bit on the present, the past. So now I want to jump and look towards the future. And as I've mentioned in the beginning, this is part of our, Challenging Inequalities series. So a question to put to you all, looking ahead, where next in your work for addressing structural inequalities within higher education, whether it be your own research, this project or part of the staff equality networks your part of. I'd love to hear more. What's next? I'll come to you, Sara, first.
Sara Mole: Yeah, well, I'm keen to support UCL to work so hard and successfully at tackling gender inequality that it's recognised as the Gold Institute and for all higher education institutes in the UK to be supported and to work hard to achieve this. Otherwise higher education is not a fair place for everyone. And this also includes, our professional service staff. Top of my personal concerns is the polarising culture that we're in, and particularly the contention around gender and sex and the huge impact this is having on some. I'm confident that we can do much better and that UCL is the place where this can happen.
Ethne James Souch:And I think that's a wonderful positive note from you, Sara. Sinead, I'll come to you next.
Sinead Murphy: Thanks. yeah, I'm really looking forward to the implementation of the recommendations that came out of the, DESG Because it's called Disability Equality Implementation and especially around combating ableism, ableist cultures and practises.
For me, I'm going to continue being involved in the faculty, EDI Committee at RIGE and the EDI Community of Practice, which is a brilliant, like kind of grassroots, sort of organic network that has really kind of flourished over the last year or so at UCL one of the key strands of my, My work in public policy is the Knowledge Broker Academy and that's in its second year and it's a programme that explicitly aims to foster inclusivity, academic policy engagement, be that across career stage discipline and protected characteristics.
in terms of my kind of role in policy engagement as well, I've been thinking a lot about positionality and the knowledge bases that inform how we move research into policy. so one project I'm involved in is funded by UPEN, the university's policy Engagement Network, and we're creating a digital tool to help universities assess and embed equity into their policy engagement practises.
outside of UCL there's a bit of an overlap of interest between myself, Sara and Noël I'm part of an interdisciplinary research collective called Beyond Gender. So we work on expansive ideas of gender identity and speculative fiction and we've done lectures and talks at places like Science Museum, the LGBT foundation, we've written five collectively authored book chapters and at the moment we're doing very fun things, writing a play and a zine. and then my own kind of independent research coming from my PhD background, has focused on speculative fiction, Middle Eastern literature and decolonization. And recently I've been really interested in Jasbir Puar's work on debility and disability, especially in the context of Palestine.
Ethne James Souch: Brilliant. seems busy as ever. and we can link to any of those other networks you're part of or any of your other work in the show notes, so that would be great to share that. So Noël where's next for your own work?
Noël Caliste: it's 2025, right. diversity across the board should be embraced and for that equality and diversity need to be fully inclusive in order to meet the needs of the ever changing society demographic.
In terms of the future for me, I'm not sure, a lot has happened since I've been in post, in my post over the last six years. and I think it's time for me to hand over to someone or other people who have fresh and new energy, so that's what I'll be doing in the immediate future. outside UCL I volunteer at Tonic Housing. Tonic housing is the UK's first provider of LGBTQ + affirmative retirement housing. And I think it's really important to, I guess, give back right, because we're all going to get old, we're all going to get to the stage where we're going to need support. and I think especially with the LGBTQ community it can be very lonely. So I get a lot of just self reward I guess and satisfaction from helping them out when I can.
Ethne James Souch: Well, we want to say thank you and all your long standing of in your posts and I'm sure it'll be passed on to someone equally as brilliant within UCL so that you can focus on other things. I just wanted to open up the floor if there's anything that we haven't covered that you would like to mention here. Now, this is your platform
Sinead Murphy: I was just kind of thinking about two things, on reflection while we've been speaking. And one of them is, I mean, firstly, thanks for bringing us together and having this sort of series. Because I think actually just the kind of volume of work that myself, Noël and Sara not individually represent but are sort of even pointing to at UCL there's so much going on and I think it can feel really difficult to sort of make progress when there is so much work still to be done and also when it can be slightly fragmented. but I think having spaces to come together, to convene to find out what your UCL colleagues are doing, because UCL is massive, is actually really important to sort of consolidating the good practise, the simply good practise. As Sara said, that's already there. and I think just, thinking about what Noël said about like, how much work, that you've done in the last six years that I just do think it's very important to signal that it's really necessary to materially support this, like, be it with funding, with like, kind of protected time in the working week so that people can dedicate hours to this. Because a lot of these roles are done on a voluntary basis and a lot of them are done, by people who have some kind of lived experience or contact with lived experience. But it should, it should be really. Everybody's kind of, you know, responsibility and also privilege. It's, you know, Noelle was saying this is very affirmative work. so people should be, able to access the joy of doing it
Noël Caliste: What has been very evident to me. I'm a professional services member of staff. when I initially took on these roles, my department was very supportive, kind of allocated time for me to do them, was very flexible in terms of kind of workloads and what have you. for example, when I organised pride, obviously that took a lot more time up. So obviously they were a little more understanding. However, it's like, Sinead said, it's not recognised in our career development. There's no career Framework that kind of acknowledges the work we do, the time we put towards this. A lot of it is done in our spare time. And so, yeah, I think we should be pushing for equality for all staff who do equalities work across the board, whether they are academics or not.
Sara Mole: Yeah, I'd like to agree with, things that have just been said. I think UCL has an opportunity to bring people together more because there's so much experience there, and to join things up more obviously. I'm most aware of what's happening in the gender and sex area and yet, I, feel there's opportunity to have more conversations across UCL and to think about that more. and, you know, Noël and I have been thinking about this for quite a number of years and that's before, you know, the things that have changed in 2025.
So we really could have been far more ahead of the game than we are and we really could be leading on this and indeed many areas. And also to say that obviously a lot of people, again, it's sort of volunteer time that they're doing, whether they're fitting it in within their work hours or actually working additional hours, to do this because it's really important for them and to have the recognition and, reward for that, whatever that might be. It can take many forms. UCL is a place where people put an awful lot of energy and effort in. It's a place they want to be. It's a place they want to do well in. They want UCL to be the best it can be. There's so much we can tap in there, but the work has to be acknowledged, I think, and the effort.
Ethne James Souch: Thank you. Thank you all for your final thoughts. And I thought, just to add, obviously, we're at the cusp, of the EDI, UCL's EDI strategic plan being launched next year. So hopefully, I know that's going through consultation at the moment. That hopefully that it will address or at least improve some of the concerns that you've been raising. So thank you all so much for such an interesting discussion and for joining me today.
you've been listening to Disruptive Voices. This episode was presented by me, Ethne James Souch, produced by Decibelle Creative, and was edited by Annabelle Buckland at Decibelle Creative. If you'd like to hear more of these discussions from Disruptive Voices, make sure you're subscribed to this podcast so you don't miss future episodes. Come and discover more online and keep up with the latest Grand Challenges, news, events and research. Just Google UCL Grand Challenges