Research Culture, Equality, Diversity & Inclusion

Research Culture

 
Three individuals sitting at a table with laptops and engaged in conversation.

Achieving a vibrant and supportive research culture is critical to our organisation’s success and this programme will model best practice. We are building a research culture within this programme which includes equality, diversity and inclusion (EDI) activities, research integrity and open research practice. These issues are interconnected and addressing them together will positively influence the research environment by increasing collaborative, collegiate and respectful ways of working. We have a zero-tolerance policy to bullying and harassment.

Beyond robust processes for EDI we will embed three drivers for good research culture:

  1. Patient and public involvement and engagement (PPIE), which ensures research is inclusive and incorporates broader perspectives, and researchers are reminded of the wider importance of their research.

  2. Interdisciplinarity and collaboration, which increases diversity in viewpoints and demonstrates their value within supervisory teams and the training opportunities offered.

  3. Open and reproducible science and research integrity, which is a means of improving scientific processes and democratising science.

These aspects will be supported through monitoring, supervisory arrangements and training.

Equality, Diversity & Inclusion (EDI)

The principles of equality, diversity and inclusion (EDI) are at the heart of King’s culture. We combine “top down” and “bottom up” approaches to embed EDI into all policy, processes and practice and to put interventions in place to eliminate barriers to participation and success.   We are committed to continuing to discuss, implement, promote and monitor strategies aimed at improving the working environment for all our staff and students. 

Within the IoPPN, we established an EDI programme over the past decade that highlights culture as an integrated part of EDI across everything we do.  Our IoPPN Diversity & Inclusion Team comprises a Core Team led by Professor Ann McNeill, our Vice Dean (Culture, Diversity & Inclusion), Champions, and department area, and student representatives who work closely with our IoPPN based EDI Working Groups and Networks to ensure EDI is accounted for in all decision making, policies and action.  

The work of the EDI Team applies an intersectional perspective to extend across all nine protected characteristics (age, disability, gender reassignment, marriage and civil partnership, pregnancy and maternity, race, religion or belief, sex, and sexual orientation).  

Our IoPPN EDI team has developed a wide range of EDI information and resources to support staff, students and our wider community, as well as assist with annual monitoring and evaluation of this programme.  

In developing this programme, we worked closely with the IoPPN EDI team to identify challenges in developing a diverse and inclusive workforce, many of which were implicit in the structures of the organisation. We identify three under-represented groups and we particularly encourage people with these characteristics to apply for the PhD-fellowships:

  • Health Professionals with lived experiences of mental disorders face continued discrimination in addition to the challenges related to their mental health.  

  • People from diverse racial and ethnic groups are starkly under-represented within academia and clinical research – the lack of diversity in academia likely begets a lack of diversity among research participants.  

  • Nurses are under-represented in academic careers in mental health.  

We will continue to work closely with King’s and IoPPN EDI teams, supervisors and students to implement best practice, to encourage research into how to implement change and to achieve deep rooted transformation within our programme and more broadly across academia and the health and social care sector.  

Image by Delia Fuhrmann