3rd UKCGE Conference on Equity, Diversity and Inclusion in PG Research

One of the programmes under the Brad-ATTAIN Project is the Brad-ATTAIN Travel Bursary Fund. The fund is dedicated to ethnically minoritised postgraduates (PGRs) who are presenting their work at conferences within the UK and abroad. 

We are proposing a 30-minute (3–4min. on experience; 15 min of questions) oral presentation where four fund awardees will document and report on their experiences of being an ethnically minoritised researcher abroad and their reception within a globalised context. As PGRs find themselves manoeuvring into a world of extremely divisive geo-politics amongst a backlash to equality/​equity, diversity and inclusive initiatives, it is imperative we understand the importance of remaining diligent in providing these opportunities for PGRs. Thus, the objective of this session is understanding the impact of these international opportunities on PGRs alongside developmental details of the travel fund programme itself from the project manager.

Racially minoritised women undertaking doctoral study in England navigate an academic landscape where structural inequities are deeply embedded. Their experiences are often characterised by invisibility within institutional structures, a lack of credibility accorded to the intellectual contributions of racially minoritised scholars and questions around belonging in spaces that frequently privilege whiteness and masculinity (Arday & Mirza, 2018; Rollock, 2021; Mahmud, 2025). We advance three central arguments. First, visibility alone is insufficient: while initiatives to highlight diversity are increasingly common, they rarely translate into cultural safety or equitable access to resources. Second, when credibility is systematically undermined as the scholarship and perspectives of racially minoritised women are marginalised, this affects confidence, supervisory relationships, and career trajectories. Third, even when there is representation, without genuine recognition and institutional commitment this risks tokenism, leaving deeper patterns of exclusion intact. 

This presentation draws on four years of qualitative and quantitative data from the Generation Delta Postgraduate Research Student Survey (2022–2025) to illustrate how these dynamics shape doctoral journeys and the extent to which institutional services address—or neglect—their specific support needs. We contend that addressing these challenges requires universities to embed cultural safety into doctoral support infrastructures. Recommendations include developing race- and gender-responsive supervisory training, investing in culturally competent mental health services, and sustaining peer-led mentoring models, such as ​“Brave Spaces,” that enable racially minoritised women to flourish in academia. 

This presentation moves beyond descriptive accounts of underrepresentation to reframe the debate around equity, credibility, and belonging in postgraduate research. It concludes with a call for sector-wide policy and practice shifts that reimagine doctoral education as a space where racially minoritised women are not only present but recognised, supported, and enabled to lead.

This presentation will introduce and launch the main output from the Close the Gap project: A Toolkit for Doctoral Admissions for Ethnically and Racially Minoritised Applicants. 

Close the Gap (2022–2025) is an equal partnership between the Universities of Oxford and Cambridge which is co-funded by the two Universities and the Office for Students/​Research England as part of their broader programme to improve access to postgraduate research (PGR) study for BME students. The project targets a significant offer rate gap for Black British, British Pakistani, and British Bangladeshi applicants and aims to develop a socially just research ecosystem across both Universities through fair doctoral admissions. 

The purpose of the Close the Gap Toolkit is to provide an overarching approach for collaboratively examining and reforming existing doctoral admissions processes and practices, towards the goal of closing offer rate gaps and promoting fairness in doctoral admissions. The audience for the Toolkit is those involved in shaping policy and strategy for doctoral admissions and access at UK Higher Education Institutions. 

Based on the structure of the project itself, the Toolkit consists of three key parts: 1. Understanding the Issue; 2. Developing and Implementing Solutions; 3. Evaluating and Sustaining Change. The Toolkit also includes a series of ​‘resource packs’ that detail specific initiatives developed and tested through Close the Gap, as well as ​‘spotlights’ on the work that has taken place in Oxford and Cambridge. The resource packs are focused on topics such as communications with prospective supervisors, competency-based admissions, contextual data and race-equitable interview practices. 

The presentation will introduce the Toolkit, highlighting some of the resource packs and inviting discussion regarding work that other universities have undertaken in this area and how the Toolkit may be adapted and used in local contexts.

Dr Lara Lalemi was inspired by her experience navigating academia as a Black, queer PGR in aerosol science to dedicate her career to dismantling barriers in education for underrepresented and marginalised students. To challenge exclusion within academic spaces, she researched the history of colonialism in science and developed ​“Decolonising Science” workshops, which she delivers at institutions across the UK. To address barriers faced before entering academia, Lara founded Creative Tuition Collective in 2020, providing career development opportunities and training for young people and partnering with employers across the UK to deliver meaningful experiences that build confidence and transform future career paths.

Lara now works with the EPSRC Centre for Doctoral Training in Aerosol Science to integrate decoloniality, ED&I and inclusive research practices into core PGR research training. The Aerosol Science CDT is globally unique, bringing together leading academic teams across 8 UK universities with over 90 industrial and public-sector partners in healthcare, material science, energy and transport, environment, consumer products and agrochemicals. Over its current projected lifetime, the CDT will train over 200 PGRs and support more than 600 years of research. By making inclusivity central to their research training, the CDT intends to make a transformative impact on research practices across the aerosol science community, creating an inclusive environment for researchers and research that better serves a diverse world. 

In this presentation, Lara will share her journey to this point and her experiences as a black, queer PGR that inspired her journey. She will discuss the evolution of her Decolonising Science workshops and their impacts, and how this work influenced the foundations of Creative Tuition Collective. She will finally share the current iteration of training co-developed with the Aerosol Science CDT, employing innovative methods, including a new, experimental, inclusivity game jam developed with Bristol Digital Games Lab. 

The UK’s academic landscape is currently suffering from a significant underrepresentation of racialised minority academic staff, emphasised by the increasing disparity between staff and growing racialised minority student populations. A stark disparity arises when tracking progression from undergraduate study to professorship, where racialised minority students progressing from undergraduate to professorship are significantly decreasing at the student to doctoral researcher (DR), and the DR to early career researcher (ECR) stages of academic career pipelines. Thus, this presentation assesses the influence institutional racism has on DRs and ECRs imaginations of their academic career trajectories in the future. Imagined futures are defined as the perceptions and representations of the future that are yet to come to fruition and can be highly instructive for understanding present societies. Using a mixed-methods approach of 27 semi-structured interviews and 185 online survey responses, the presentation combines theoretical resources from Critical Race Theory (CRT) and intersectional feminism to centre the voices of racially marginalised DRs and ECRs, thereby transforming their narratives about career agency in the context of systemic oppression into tools to dismantle systems of discrimination in academic work and employment. My findings show that irrespective of institutional geographical location and generation, participants exhibited similar doubtful imaginations of the future of higher education, stemming from previous experiences of whiteness and discrimination in the workplace, and wider observations of inequalities in academia. Individually, imagined futures can appear independent of racist structures and associated to the individual’s self-efficacy, but as a collective, the research reflects a wider pattern of racial inequality in career-making influenced by whiteness built into the normative structures of the university. These findings contribute to wider discussions on the relationship between ​‘race’, intersectional identities, and career-making decisions, articulating that practitioners must take a more preventative approach to the fixing the academic career pipeline before it breaks.

PGR students have only recently received a focus as a student population facing distinct EDI barriers and challenges that require dedicated attention and action by both funders and institutions. Using data derived from HESA, Advance HE in their annual equality in higher education statistical reports have been presenting analysis on the EDI make-up of PGR students that could be helpful and useful in assisting the sector in better understanding what this population looks like, as well as how it is changing across time. 

The presentation will draw data from the last 5 years of the above publication in an attempt to shed light into how the PGR population in UK HE has evolved. Breakdowns by domicile will be provided, before a deeper dive into the ethnic profile of UK-domiciled PGR students. Data by detailed ethnicity will also be explored, trying to highlight that treating ethnically diverse PGRs as a homogeneous group hides important nuances. Moreover, emphasis will be placed on intersectionality, in an attempt to highlight how the interconnection of sex and ethnicity, for example, contribute towards shaping differential inequities. Additional data not featuring within the Advance HE publication will be brought in (mostly from HESA) for insights into areas such as qualifications obtained by subject area. 

This presentation focuses primarily on familiarising the audience with Advance HE’s annual student equality statistical report publication, which has just been transformed from a static PDF version to an interactive Tableau dashboard. Besides raising awareness on what kind of information this report provides and how the audience could interact with it, the main aim of the presentation is to highlight EDI priority areas at a sectoral level, which can help trigger further investigation and action at the micro-level, through, for example, providing a basis upon which benchmarking data could be collected.

We are collaboratively developing a modern understanding of neurodivergent students’ access to, participation and success in doctoral study from pre-entry to post exit (including barriers and enablers). Findings will be translated into practical guidance relating to the whole student journey which will be freely available for the sector. Our research builds on a previous project, the findings of which are widely informing the doctoral viva experience of UK-based autistic candidates.

We are currently conducting focus groups and surveys with neurodivergent PGR candidates, PGR alumni, those who were unable to start or complete a doctorate, and staff in various roles associated with PGR study.

Findings so far has revealed that numbers of neurodivergent doctoral candidates are increasing, professional services staff working with PGRs to negotiate reasonable adjustments are often unfamiliar with PGR study requirements, candidates and staff are not well informed about available support and staff involved in supervising and examining are often unfamiliar with neurodivergence and legislative requirements to facilitate access. In order to be of practical use, we have ensured that the research includes authentic voices of PGR’s and staff in various relevant roles. Principles of Universal Design for Learning are emerging strongly, and we are finding that the practical ideas proposed by participants have the potential to benefit everyone.

In the workshop we will report briefly on our process and findings to date and then invite participants to share ideas which will be incorporated anonymously into the study. The group size will determine the practicalities, but we anticipate a café style layout utilising paper tablecloth, post it notes and markers which will enable participants to group around questions of interest, record ideas informally for subsequent thematic analysis by the research team. (We can be flexible if a different form of input would fit better with the conference).

The HE sector lacks ethnic diversity at every level, limiting our capacity to solve the complex challenges facing society. One of 13 projects funded by Research England and OfS, the Yorkshire Consortium for Equity in Doctoral Education (YCEDE) brings together five large and varied universities across four workstreams to widen participation for UK racially minoritised graduates into postgraduate research and to support their progress and success.

In this symposium, we will present our experiences in implementing multiple interventions across multiple HEIs and how we are defining, measuring and evaluating the impacts for race equity. Often there is a focus in HE on quantitative metrics in showing impact; YCEDE partners are indeed proud that we are successfully tackling underrepresentation: For example, In 2022, the University of Leeds faced a significant challenge: increasing the proportion of PGRs from minoritised ethnic groups from only 13% of the ​‘Home’ PGR community to the UK university average of 18%. Through targeted outreach activities, scholarships, and contextual admission measures Leeds UK BAME PGR recruitment now stands at 21.7%. However, the numbers only tell part of the story. In addition to tackling underrepresentation, the lived experience of navigating HE as someone from an ethnic minority is important to capture through qualitative data collection and evaluation; Central to YCEDE’s work has been ensuring that the voices of racialised students, PGRs and faculty are heard and amplified. 

Through talks, discussion and facilitated activity, we will explore YCEDE’s approaches to running and evaluating a complex, multi-institutional project as a stimulus to discuss the challenges and opportunities for institutional change in support of racial equity. We invite an exploration of these tensions in efforts to achieve racial equity in postgraduate research and how we assess progress in addressing underrepresentation and inclusion.

As part of the cohort training model used at the University of Salford PGR students attend an EDI session. Initially sessions focused on information-giving, discussing terms, and signposting to the whistleblowing scheme. This model was inclusive in intention and design but failed to meet the needs of the students.

Knowledge Exchange is often seen as a process through which research knowledge is transferred to wider community beyond the University, yet exchange means a two-way learning process. To develop more effective EDI sessions, we moved to a model which actively engaged with the PGR community, employing students to research EDI topics such as: Decolonising the Research Journey; The International Student Experience and The Neuro-diverse Student Experience; and then embedding the student’s findings in cohort training. 

Our EDI sessions now focus on Micro-aggressions, boundary blurring and decolonising research. Students are shown video resources on these topics and are invited to discuss them with student facilitators. This acts as a hook to spark conversations about the lived experience of students and to actively draw awareness to the issues students and their communities face. 

This knowledge exchange model is then taken a step further; the facilitators provide examples of historic and recent research projects which have intentionally, or unintentionally, excluded minoritised groups. Newly enrolled PGRs then discuss how they can include minoritised groups in the design stage of their research projects and as a group they explore wider knowledge exchange mechanisms to enable original and inclusive research design. 

This paper will explore Salford’s journey to our current knowledge exchange model and discuss the merits of this approach as a practical way to break down the barriers to an equitable research culture, empower students to voice share their experiences, and speak out against discrimination and harassment. 

Effective, high quality, actionable feedback practices remain an integral part of the doctoral student’s development into an independent researcher (East et al., 2012). There is need for research that captures the experiences of minoritised-ethnic doctoral students when accessing feedback because barriers to accessing high-quality, effective and actionable feedback are documented as one of the contributing factors to the low retention of early career researchers, especially from minoritised ethnic communities (Derrick et al, 2023; Herschberg and Berger, 2015). This study focuses on the doctoral-supervision relationship, exploring the feedback experiences of ethnically minoritised doctoral students completing their PhD in UK Higher Education Institutions. The study also captures how this supervisory feedback enhances the doctoral student’s preparedness for receiving quality feedback as independent researchers. In addressing this aim, this qualitative study utilised semi-structured interviews and reflexive thematic analysis. Nine doctoral students were interviewed. Interview ranged in length from 66 minutes to 132 minutes, with an average of 96 minutes. Preliminary analysis suggests that: (1) ethnically-minoritised doctoral students interpret some feedback as constructive and others as ​“symbolic violence,” that is, feedback that ​“discounts,” ​“discredits” or tries to ​“change” the shape of their ideas or the way the ideas are expressed, or what information is attached to those ideas. (2) When it comes to topics around race, class, identity, discrimination, the identity of the supervisor plays a role in how the feedback will be received and interpreted, particularly if the supervisors does not have lived experience, lacks specialisms in their area of research or has not engaged with these topics outside of the academic space. (3) Doctoral students express that some constructive feedback may not be effective if the supervisor lacks an understanding of the student’s emotional state and needs, particularly how the student may subjectively interpret the feedback. The doctoral-supervision relationship presents, not only as a key socialisation opportunity into feedback practices in academia, an opportunity for doctoral students to receive the feedback needed in the student’s metamorphosis into independent researcher. This study is one of the first in highlighting the feedback experiences of ethnically minoritised doctoral students in the U.K.