Gender

UCL Geography gained its Bronze Athena Swan award in 2016, the first in the Schools of Law, Social and Historical Sciences, and Arts & Humanities. In 2022, we were upgraded to the Athena Swan Silver. You can download our Athena Swan submission here. While Geography as a discipline is attractive to all students regardless of gender, work still needs to be done to reflect this in our staff profile.

Through our Equality, Diversity and Inclusion committee, we are working on key strategic aims/objectives below. We aim to keep our targets clear and measurable.

• Produce an EDI Action Plan
• To continue to improve gender balance in all staff categories
• To improve balance of Black, Asian and minority ethnic staff in all categories
• Put into place a clear Dignity at Work statement that reflects the values of UCL Geography in the 2020-2021 academic session
• Introduce diversity training for all staff and students
• Establish mentoring schemes to reflect the diversity of our staff & students
• Unconscious bias awareness training held for everyone on recruitment panels
• For departmental vacancies, unconscious bias observers observe and advise recruitment panels
• Establish an Early Career Researcher (ECR) Forum

Being Geography, our EDI strategy is informed by data, surveys and evidence from the social sciences. Our staff have participated in training including unconscious bias and harassment prevention.

Achievements include

• Guaranteed sabbatical for academics coming back from maternity leave
• We have a 100% return rate from maternity leave
• Established an LGBTQ staff-student group called Out in Geography
• Established an network for our Black, Asian and minority ethnic staff and students
• Established a network for Women in the Physical Geography
• Redesigned web content and pages to make explicit out commitment to equality, diversity and inclusion
• Introduced weekly staff-student drop in sessions / coffee and cake afternoons
• Maintained an almost 50:50 gender balance in presenters at both human and physical geography seminar series for the past 5 years

The Women's Network stands for bettering women students’ life at UCL. For further assistance, appointments can be made by completing the Student and Registry Services Student Enquiry Form, selecting the option ‘request an appointment’ and the service required ‘Adviser to Women Students’.