The Equator Project works with doctoral training providers to understand and address barriers to equity in postgraduate environmental research.
From 2025 onwards, the Equator team will work with our new network of Doctoral Landscape Awards sponsors to explore and address barriers to race equity in environmental research. This continues work carried out during the NERC-funded Equator Project in 2022.
In 2022 Equator formed a doctoral training working group focussed on identifying and removing barriers to diversity that exist within the UK doctoral training organisation framework.
Through group discussions, workshops and a survey, a set of evidence-based recommendations for admissions processes was devised to improve ethnic minority representation in the postgraduate environmental research.
Three categories of recommendations were developed:
- Student-facing: to attract a more diverse group of applicants, including supporting students at the expression of interest stage and with pre-interview preparation.
- Procedural: to develop standardised and actively anti-biased recruitment frameworks, and clearer reporting of applicant and cohort diversity
- Evaluation: to correct imbalances in the evaluation process that introduce bias against applicants from non-traditional backgrounds
The recommended actions span those that can be immediately implemented within doctoral training centres, through to those where coordination from funding councils or host universities is required on a multi-year timescale.
Our overarching recommendation is that the frequency and breadth of multi-stakeholder dialogue, from potential applicants through to training grant holders, must be expanded.
This work was published in Nature Geoscience, and is transferable to other subjects and to countries beyond the UK.