Edinburgh Business School scholars offer leadership and collaboration to new EDI+ research hub

Heriot-Watt University will partner with the new, national EDI+ Hub that will harness the engineering, physical and mathematical sciences (EPMS) research and innovation community’s collective effort to address diversity challenges specific to the sector.

Known for industry-leading research around Equity, Diversity & Inclusion (EDI) and inclusive workplaces, scholars from Edinburgh Business School and across Heriot-Watt will serve as active leaders, researchers and collaborators with the hub. Professor James Richards will lead the hub’s neurodiversity research and engagement strand, and the University has also allocated two new Doctoral Training Centres to support partnership with the hub. Further, the EDI Caucus, led by Edinburgh Business School researchers and hosted by Heriot-Watt, will also be a primary collaborator.

Professor Richards said: "I'm delighted to be part of this hub, which will bolster inclusivity in UK’s engineering, physical, and mathematical sciences sector. The work of the EDI Hub+ will tie in closely to the EDI Caucus, where I am a part of the Management Team. I hope to play a key role in the EDI Hub+ based on my experience related to neurodiversity and employment.”

The EDI Caucus, led by Professor Kate Sang, provides high-quality research evidence on EDI that informs policy and practice in the research and innovation system. The EDI Hub+ will collaborate with EDI Caucus and on themes that are aligned, and it will also build on the work of other important existing initiatives like the EPSRC Inclusion Matters projects.

Professor Sang said: “The EDI Caucus looks forward to working with the new EPSRC Sharing Hub and congratulates the successful team. We are excited to collaborate to accelerate equity across the EPSM community, to share best practice on what works to remove the barriers faced by those who have experienced marginalisation.”

Overall, the Equality, Diversity and Inclusion (EDI) Hub+ will act as a focal point of activity and knowledge of good EDI practice across the UK. Drawing on expertise and insight from people and organisations from within and beyond the sector, the hub will provide leadership to pinpoint diversity challenges unique to EPMS. These challenges will be tackled by scaling-up EDI interventions which will be integrated and adopted within the community.

The hub involves eight university partners and is led by Vania Dimitrova, Professor of Human-Centred Artificial intelligence at the University of Leeds, and Louise Jennings, Professor of Medical Engineering at the University of Leeds.

It is supported by the UKRI Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC) through a £2.5 million investment. EPSRC Executive Chair Professor Charlotte Deane said:" The diversity challenges we face deprive individuals of opportunity, with the result that the research and innovation system, and society more widely, cannot benefit from their contributions and perspectives. The EDI Hub+ aims to address the persistent challenges we see across the engineering, physical and mathematical sciences community by harnessing our collective accumulated knowledge. It will consolidate the work of existing initiatives and lead new programmes of work, ensuring that the best solutions can be brought to bear on challenges specific to the engineering, physical sciences and mathematics communities.”

The EDI Hub+ is one of the activities in EPSRC’s three-year EDI action plan. It will focus on three themes:

• career pathways: including removing barriers to doctoral study for underrepresented groups, providing inclusive support at key career transitions and growing diverse leadership
• research funding and processes: including trialling and evaluating alternative approaches to funding opportunities and peer review, and reducing the burden on specific groups
• organisational culture: including making workplaces more inclusive and accessible, fostering inclusive leadership and adopting equitable work-life balance approaches.

It will deliver:

• a coordinated and collaborative network across the four nations, bringing together the full breadth of the EPMS research and innovation community (universities, businesses, funders) to facilitate knowledge exchange, share good practice, identify unmet needs, and co-create interventions that seek to address those needs
• an interactive online resource of EDI interventions, with robust evidence as to what works and, crucially, what doesn’t work
• EDI maturity indices and supporting material that help us to get the right intervention to the right organisation at the right time
• piloted interventions embedded in EPMS research and innovation contexts
• scaled-up and fully evaluated interventions that have the potential for widespread adoption
• EDI national-level guidelines, pledges, policies and programmes
• co-created interventions which will be backed by a Flexible Fund to enable piloting of co-created interventions, scaling up of successful pilot projects, and evaluating the effectiveness of interventions.

Working with universities, learned societies, industry partners, professional bodies and international collaborators, the EDI Hub+ will lead initiatives to empower individuals throughout the EPMS community.

EDI Hub+ partner universities include:

• University of Leeds
• Aberystwyth University
• Durham University
• Heriot-Watt University
• University of Bradford
• University of Bristol
• University of East Anglia
• University of York