Diversity in Research Podcast

Open data has been a recurring theme on the podcast - for better or worse. Every year, Digital Science and Springer Nature publish a report on the status of open science, so we thought this year's report was a good occasion to take stock and have a good discussion not only on the status of open status but also on where it's going, how and why. To help us, we invited one of the report&apo...

As two cis-gendered men without children, talking about motherhood in academia isn't really our forte. So, with Lachlan travelling, we took the opportunity to invite Hélène Draux from Digitial Science as guest co-host with Jakob for a conversation about motherhood in academia with Lisette Espín-Noboa and the role it plays in the gender gap. Lisette is a postdoc at the Complexity Science Hub a...

 There is no doubt that AI has thrown a lot of our conceptions of science—or at least how we work in and with science—up in the air. Digital Science has written a report about it: “Research Transformation: Change in the Era of AI, open and Impact: voices from the Academic Community.” We invited two of the authors, Suze Kundu and Simon Porter, on the podcast to chat about where this transformation...

Many of us tend to forget that all research institutions are not big, comprehensive universities. Actually, quite a few are smaller institutions either because they are fairly new, specialize in a single discipline, or are based in more rural areas where there isn’t the population needed for a big research-intensive university.  But how do you navigate international collaborations in a setting lik...

We often discuss researchers and research managers on the podcast, but publishers are also key players in the research ecosystem. So, we invited SpingerNature to discuss their report “Insights into diversity, equity and inclusion in the global research community.”  Sowmya Swaminathan, their director of DEI, Research who also directs Springer Nature's DEI Program in Research Publishing and ser...

Welcome back to Laura Heath-Stout - our first return guest on the podcast! Laura is a postdoctoral fellow in archaeology at Stanford University. She has a new book out: 'Identity, Oppression, and Diversity in Archaeology.', so we wanted her back on the podcast for a chat about it. And while we aren't all archaeologists the peculiar dimensions of archaeology, such as excavations, rig...

Gender equality in academia and research has been a topic for decades. And between that and the #metoo movement, one would think we had solved the problems.  Yet, here we are. While we usually say that diversity is more than gender, it's also gender. So we invited Marcela Linkova from the GenderSAFE project on the podcast to discuss the project and their mid-way report and for a broader discu...

Creating equitable research collaborations between the Global North and Global South has been a struggle for many years. How do you create equitability when there is a structural imbalance in the core element of research: funding? And how do you balance the need for global collaboration with differences in values on diversity issues like gender, race, LGTBQ+ issues, etc.? These are not easy questi...

A core element of our work is to make research managers key promoters of diversity in research and research management. But sometimes, we felt a little alone with this agenda. Then, along came Kris and Joey. Kris A. Monahan is the President of NCURA (National Council of University Research Administrators), and Joey Gaynor is chair of NCURA's International Region. We had a great conversation a...

Join us in this conversation with Robin van Kessel, a health policy researcher at the London School of Economics, as we explore the intricate dynamics of health data, digital health technologies, and AI in healthcare. Robin shares his expertise on health data poverty, the challenges of ensuring inclusive health datasets, and the importance of nuanced policymaking in addressing these issues. We dis...

Like many others, we’ve been exploring the capabilities of AI tools. However, when we started considering their implications in terms of diversity and security, we found ourselves with more questions than answers. We're not afraid to admit that we see potential problems, and we're eager to discuss them.  That’s why we invited Avi Staiman on the podcast. Avi is the founder and CEO of Acad...

Being queer is many different things, and we try to remember that our experience as white cis-gendered gay men in the UK and Denmark is not representative. We have long talked about inviting Professor Sandy O’Sullivan on the podcast, and what better occasion than Pride Month?  Sandy is a Wiradjuri (Aboriginal), transgender/non-binary person, and a Professor in the Department of Indigenous Studies...

When discussing diversity, we talk a lot about gender, race, and LGBTQ+ issues. There is, of course, more to the issue – and according to Kathrine Deane, disability is the next frontier.  Kathrine is an associate professor at East Anglia University. She has a disability herself, but that doesn’t stop her from being a force of nature – and an absolute delight to talk to. And she doesn’t compromise....

Not all research institutions have a set of courses or clearly defined career pathways for their researchers. We expect researchers to be born with the necessary skills to project manage, plan their career and support research networks or miraculously achieve them when they get their PhD degree. Pedro Resende co-founded Chaperone, the first personalised online career development platform for scien...

This week, we are joined by Sarah McLusky, who is a consultant, trainer and facilitator who helps research organisations and individuals maximise their research and research careers. Sarah hosts the brilliant Research Adjacent podcast where she talks with those working in the research space how they support research to be the best it can be. In this episode, we delve into the crucial concept of be...

One of the challenges with working with diversity is how some of it has been politicised. In this episode, we explore the case of UK Secretary of Science Michelle Donelan. In the fall of 2023, after the Hamas terrorist attack on Israel, she accused two researchers of sympathising with Hamas. The two researchers were on the UKRI Expert Advisory Group on Equality, Diversity and Inclusion, and the se...

Global collaborations in research, teaching and student recruitment remain at the heart of the work of higher education institutions across Europe. The European Universities Association (EUA) recently released a report which explores possible futures of transnational cooperation for universities. Taking an exploratory foresight approach, the report provides the tools for universities to think thro...

Research management has grown globally over recent years, with universities, funders, and policymakers recognising the profession's importance in ensuring effective research delivery, particularly as research becomes increasingly international in focus. A new book, The Emerald Handbook of Research Management and Administration Around the World, reflects this growth by taking a global approach...

Along with much of the European research community, we're slowly warming up for what FP10 - the next European research framework programme - will look like. Our primary concern, not surprisingly, is what role diversity and internationalisation play. A main consideration, of course, is what is politically feasible, and without naming names - well, we are - some European countries have more con...

UK politics are never boring - not even when it comes to research policy (which - let’s face it - can appear quite sedate for non-research-geeks). In this episode, we explore the recent spat after UKRI announced that in the next REF - Research Culture would count for 25% of an institution's score which was closely followed by a tender to develop indicators to help them measure culture. That d...

Eva Kagiri-Kalanzi from Scientia Scripta joins us this week to talk about Science Communication and public engagement, working across higher education research institutions and her experiences as a black woman in research management who migrated first to Finland and then the UK.  Scientia Scripta is an ethical consultancy, we discuss what that means along with how to engage universities in gender...

Societal impact is increasingly important, and as such, impact is a term that is now widely used across academia and research. Luckily, Julie Bayley, impact guru (and "Murder She Wrote" aficionado), has written a book about what research impact is, how you can achieve it and how we document it. We loved reading her book - "Creating Meaningful Impact" - but we, of course, had so...

In this episode, we talk to Dr. Alfredo Carpineti, science reporter, founder and chair of PRIDE in STEM.  We explored what PRIDE in STEM is - whether it's still important - and whether things are worse for LGTBQ+ people in STEM than in the rest of academia. That all led us to a conversation about the challenges of the politicisation of LGTBQ+ issues in many countries, internationalisation - a...

Season seven is here! We kick off the new season by discussing how you can include diversity and internationalisation in research proposals.  We know this isn't always familiar territory for people so we thought talking you through our approach might take away some of the fear! We developed a model during the pandemic that we use in our work to help researchers and research managers get start...

We begin this episode by welcoming the new EU Commissioner (expected at least) Iliona Ivanovo, by saying “Hey gurl”! as only two gay guys can do it.  We finish season 6 with a look back at the first half of 2023 and looking at wins and fails from our point of view. We look at some of the workshops we have run, research policy and other things going on in diversity and internationalisation in resea...