Equality, diversity and decolonisation work showcased at national conference

Published on 13 March 2024

More than a dozen staff and students from the Faculty of Health and Life Sciences presented their research and initiatives at the annual Advance HE Equality, Diversity and Inclusion Conference 2024.

The conference was held in Liverpool on the 6-7 of March with the theme ‘The future is now: Building EDI practice for the changing world of HE’ and attracted over 250 delegates from across the country.

Staff and students presented talks, interactive workshops, walk-shops and posters. Dr Kate Hammond gave a talk setting out gold standards for inclusive life sciences laboratory teaching to support autistic students, while Dr Carl Larsen spoke about the benefits of working with students as allies in culture change. Carl also displayed exhibits on decolonising science at the conference, which are usually available to view on rolling display in the Harold Cohen Library.

An interactive workshop showcased toolkits developed for embedding equality, diversity inclusion and wellbeing (EDIW) and decolonisation in both research and teaching within health and life sciences.  The three toolkits are available for use across the university and are available externally to view: School of Medicine EDI Toolkit (Professor Taz Goddard-Fuller), Health and Life Sciences EDIW Researcher Toolkit (Dr Lesley Iwanejko, Dr Mark Morgan, Professor Judy Coulson, Laura Davies), Decolonising the Curriculum Toolkit (Dr Carl Larsen, Amal Abdulkadir, together with students Zayna Alam, Isobel Diaz, Saffron Shiels and Shuxian Zhou).

There was very positive feedback from conference delegates attending the interactive toolkits workshop, with 82% of survey respondents planning to, and 18% considering, changing their practice as a result.  Colleagues were also keen to adopt the framework and adapt the content of each toolkit to suit different disciplines within their own universities.

The first day closed with a plenary panel discussion of ‘Future perspectives on inclusive curriculum in higher education’. Senior academics and the chair of a national disability association were joined on the panel by Obimobi Onyeukwu-Onyenso, an undergraduate student from the University’s School of Life Sciences. He presented an overview of his work on decolonisation as part of a student-lead co-creation project, and shared insightful opinions on some of the major inclusion questions facing the sector.  His contribution earned a special mention at event’s closing summary.

Dr Lindy-Ann Blaize Alfred, Lead Consultant in EDI at Advance HE said “Seeing Obim on the stage made me very emotional – both in terms of the future of academia and in terms of the example he set for my son, nephews and all young people who ever feel they are not enough.”

Professor Judy Coulson, Deputy APVC and Faculty EDI Lead in HLS said: “It was fantastic to see so many of our colleagues and students presenting sector-leading work at this major EDI event. The conference laid bare the current challenges for the HE sector in maintaining momentum and embedding EDI practices, but the collective work on show made me optimistic that we can achieve this at the University of Liverpool.”

Advance HE is a member-led charity which works on behalf of the Higher Education sector, helping institutions like the University of Liverpool to achieve high standards of teaching and learning, leadership development and equality, diversity and inclusion.