Dr Nicola Darling, a senior postdoc in in Sir Philip Cohen’s lab in the MRC PPU, has been awarded the prestigious School of Life Sciences People’s Award.
In addition to running her research project that focuses on understanding the role that a group of kinases termed SIKs play in controlling immune biology, Nicola has organized a series of superb unit-wide discussions to explore how we can promote equality, diversity and inclusion (ED&I) within the MRC PPU. Each discussion has focused on a specific topic, with invited specialist speakers and organised in a way that encourages everyone in the unit to share their ideas, concerns, and questions (with options for anonymous feedback running alongside). The discussions are held at a time to allow the maximum number of staff to attend and is very well attended by all staff and students.
Following each of these discussions, Nicola collates information and holds follow up meetings with PIs from the unit and other relevant staff to make an action plan. Each topic then has a further discussion planned in 4-6 months to track what changes have been made and what impacts they have had. This has had a major impact on how we consider ED&I issues and operate as a Unit. It has also resulted in new policies as well as a new section on the MRC PPU website setting out our vision on ED&I.
Nicola has taken on the responsibility of sharing our experiences with other divisions within the School of Life Sciences and beyond in the University of Dundee, on how ED&I can be better incorporated in all our activities. Nicola’s efforts are significantly improving our culture of inclusivity and her proactive approach has been of inspiration for all.
On presenting Nicola with her award, SLS Associate Dean for Professional Culture Inke Näthke commented “I attended one of the sessions to give a short talk on Athena SWAN and I was genuinely impressed with the engagement of all the staff taking part, and the commitment from the management of the division. I feel it was a great example of a ‘safe space’ – where people are encouraged to share their experiences, challenge each other and come to new understandings. It is the sort of thing that is frequently hard to do but absolutely vital for meaningful change to occur. It allowed people to ask questions without worrying about being judged. I congratulate Nicola on her extremely well-deserved award”.
Nicola responded “When we had our first unit-wide discussion it was immediately clear that diversity and inclusion was extremely important to everyone in the unit. The aim is to create a space where everyone can contribute to the unit’s diversity and inclusion work, so we use these discussions to listen to each other’s experiences, concerns and new ideas and I am very grateful to everyone in the unit for supporting these sessions. After each discussion we create an action plan and I am honoured to co-ordinate an enthusiastic team who work ‘behind the scenes’ throughout the year to implement these.
Thank you to the School of Life Sciences for the 2021 People’s Award and for highlighting this work. I look forward to continuing to lead our diversity and inclusion work and seeing the positive impact on our research culture. I know we have many more ideas to come in 2022!”