At our December meeting, the first item for discussion was around decolonising the curriculum. Several members of the committee had been at the ann
ual meeting of the British Ecological Society, were they attended a workshop on that topic. This is a journey in progress at the moment, and we are awaiting further guidance from the University around appointing a champion, a working group and having a specific remit. We moved onto workloads, noting that we are awaiting an update, following a dispute raised by the union to which the University has yet to respond.
Since our last meeting, the committee circulated our yearly culture survey to gauge perceptions on the School of Life Sciences working environment and culture. In total we received 52 responses from 38 academics, 8 technical and professional staff and 6 PDRA/PGR. We will be presenting the culture survey results to the School meeting in February 2022, and we will also be inviting Xiaotong Zhu or Rhianne-Ebony Sterling-Morris of the Lincoln Equality and Attainment Project (LEAP) to attend and give a short presentation on intercultural awareness and micro-aggression.
Finally, following our merger with the School of Geography – we are now the School of Life and Environmental Sciences with a Department of Life Sciences and a Department of Geography – we discussed how to merge the respective Equality, Diversity and Inclusion committees. Our Chair, Jenny Dunn, will write to the our colleagues in Geography, Theresa Mercer and Harriet Moore, to discuss this in the new year.