Diversity in Research Podcast

Alfonso Pezella is a mental health lecturer at Middlesex University, and he has been part of the IENE9  research project that looks at intercultural training for nurses and health care workers in Europe with a focus on LGBTQ+ rights.

It was a broad discussion on the role of culture, the health consequences for LGBTQ+ persons and how training can look in this area. We also talked about how this approach can be used in health research collaborations where nurses and health care workers often play a significant role, and how we can use their findings when working with Horizon Europe and the EU Health Programme.

Our talk about internationalisation and being LGBTQ+ led to Alfonso sharing his own story of growing up gay in Italy and moving to the UK. We hope you all appreciate it.

We learned a lot from the chat and we'll be following both the IENE9 project and Alfonso's research closely in the future.

You can read more about the IENE9 project here.
Follow Alfonso at Twitter: @AlfPezella

Thanks for listening. Do please share, rate, review and follow us on Twitter @Divrespod .

If you're interested in our work with diversity and internationalisation in research please visit www.diversiunity.com. 

Thanks for listening. Please share, rate, review and follow us on Twitter @Divrespod .

If you're interested in our work with diversity and internationalisation in research, please visit www.diversiunity.com.

Jonathan Grant  is a professor at King’s College London , and we talk to him about his new book “The New Power University”. Jonathan’s book challenged and inspired us, so we had to get him on the podcast to explain how he sees universities changing in the 21st century.  We talk about how the world has changed without universities noticing it, and how universities will have to rethink the purpose of universities and how this will affect recruitment and career paths.  We think many of you will be interested in our talk about 'third space professionals'. Us being us we of course focused on diversity and internationalisation and the role the two in the new power university.  We believe it will challenge and inspire you as well – and perhaps even provoke some of you, but there is no getting around that the world changed – and universities forgot to follow along. Hear what Jonathan thinks is the consequence of that – and how he thinks we move on. 

We also covered  the report " The China Question", a report on UK-China research collaborations he co-authored. It shows just how complicated the relationship is and it will change in the future to us needing China more than China needs us. Jonathan has some interesting points on that and we discuss the challenges in light of the old and the new power university.

Click to read "The China Question"
Lear more about "The New Power University"
You can follow Jonathan at Twitter at: @jonathancgrant

Thanks for listening. Do please share, rate, review and follow us on Twitter @Divrespod .

If you're interested in our work with diversity and internationalisation in research please visit www.diversiunity.com. 

Thanks for listening. Please share, rate, review and follow us on Twitter @Divrespod .

If you're interested in our work with diversity and internationalisation in research, please visit www.diversiunity.com.

First of all apologies for the poor sound quality in parts of the recording!

In this episode, we talked to Thomas Jørgensen, the Senior Policy Coordinator at European University Association. We invited Thomas on the podcast to talk about “A global approach to research innovation, education and youth”, which is the EUA’s input to the EU Commissions consultation for their new strategy for research, and education links to countries outside the EU bloc.

This opened up a wide-ranging discussion around how we balance effectiveness and human rights in international research collaborations, the role of the UN Sustainable Development Goals and how the changes in international politics have changed the world and challenge universities and researchers in their work.

We draw to a close discussing how we all have to acknowledge that the world has changed and universities are international political actors. We ponder how universities, researchers and research managers navigate this world.

This episode launches around the time the EU Commission's strategy is published - so look it up and see if we got it right in the discussion.
 
The theme of this episode is much linked to our last episode on the future of researcher mobility, so if you haven't already listened to that we highly recommend you go give it a listen.

Learn more about European University Association and follow them on Twitter at:
You can follow Thomas at Twitter at: @Thomas_E_Jorgen
You can read the policy input. 

Thanks for listening. Please share, rate, review and follow us on Twitter @Divrespod .

If you're interested in our work with diversity and internationalisation in research, please visit www.diversiunity.com.

First of all apologies for the poor sound quality on some parts of this recording!

As the UK announced its national researcher mobility scheme named after after the famous Enigma mathematician Alan Turing to be launched as the new EU mobility programme Erasmus was being launched we decided it was time for a chat about the two schemes and what it would do to researcher mobility and collaboration both within Europe and globally.

For that we talked to Nabil Ali. Nabil has worked as an advisor for Universities UK for a number of years and was part of their Brexit team and today is situated in Brussels working with research and higher education.

As this marks the launch of the two programmes the talk was speculative in nature, but touches on how essential international collaboration is to research and how difficult this is becoming to navigate for researchers and universities.

We were very fortunate that Nabil said yes to this, and we feel certain that researchers and research managers alike will enjoy this conversation as much as us.

You can learn more about Erasmus here.
You can learn more about the Turing scheme here.
You can follow Nabil Ali on Twitter at: @Nabil__Ali__

Thanks for listening. Please share, rate, review and follow us on Twitter @Divrespod .

If you're interested in our work with diversity and internationalisation in research, please visit www.diversiunity.com.

Jennifer Stergiou is the Director of Research Services at the University of Northumbria and the chair of ARMA (Association of Research Managers and Administrators) in the UK.  She took over as chair in the middle of the pandemic, so we had a chat with her about how that has been.

The main reason for inviting her however was to discuss the recent revision of ARMA's strategic plan including a special view on equality, diversity and inclusion (EDI). Jennifer was very honest with us about what they learned about the organisation in a survey, how they have chosen to approach the topic of EDI and finally the role of research managers and administrators in promoting the EDI agenda in research and higher education.

Whether you are a researcher working with research managers and administrators or a research manager and administrator yourself, you don't want to miss out on Jennifer and ARMA's reflections on EDI and internationalisation and how we move forward in research institutions, collaborations and national and international organisations like ARMA.

Learn more about ARMA here: www.arma.ac.uk

You can follow ARMA on Twitter: @arma_uk

You can follow Jennifer on Twitter here: @JStergiou81

Thanks for listening. Do please share, rate, review and follow us on Twitter @Divrespod .

Thanks for listening. Please share, rate, review and follow us on Twitter @Divrespod .

If you're interested in our work with diversity and internationalisation in research, please visit www.diversiunity.com.

We were intrigued when we heard about the term bibliodiversity and had to learn more. The result was this eyeopening talk with Dr Arianna Becerril-García. She is a professor at Autonomous University of the State of Mexico and executive director at Redalyc.

We talk about the differences in how we look at scholarly publications in the Global North and the Global South, how open access models are the standard in Latin America, how the current models promoted by the Global North are strengthening the current power relations in higher education and how it could look like.  And finally, we talk about what we can all do to make bibliodiversity work for international diversity, collaboration and justice.

Since the interview bibliodiversity has become part of our vocabulary and a recurring theme in our conversations and adds new perspectives on the future of international research collaborations.

You can read more about Arianna at her website
You can follow her on Twitter at :@ariannabec

The article discussed in the podcast can be found here:
"Decolonizing Scholarly Communications through Bibliodiversity"

Learn more about Redalyc: www.redalyc.org

Thanks for listening. Please share, rate, review and follow us on Twitter @Divrespod .

If you're interested in our work with diversity and internationalisation in research, please visit www.diversiunity.com.

In the final episode of Season Two, we chat with Professor Alexander Serebrenik (Software Engineering and Technology cluster, Eindhoven University of Technology) and Senior member of technical staff, Reed Milewicz (Center for Computing Research, Sandia National Laboratories). Alexander and Reed met at a conference in Urbana-Champaign, Illinois where they built on their mutual interests as part of the LGBTQ+ communities. They are currently exploring the role of mentorship for software developers and engineers globally. We chatted to them about their research, some surprising outcomes and what mentorship might look like in this field.

If you would like to take part in the study you can book an interview on this webpage: https://mentorshipstudy.youcanbook.me/

Alexander's Twitter is: @aserebrenik
Reed's Twitter is: @rmmilewi 

Thanks for listening. Please share, rate, review and follow us on Twitter @Divrespod .

If you're interested in our work with diversity and internationalisation in research, please visit www.diversiunity.com.

In this weeks discussion, we chat with Professor Dr Ludovic Thilly, Chair of the Coimbra Group and Professor of Physics at the University of Poitiers. We discuss Professor Thilly's recent work developing HR strategies for researchers based on the presentation he gave at European Research & Innovation Days in September 2020. We talk about career paths and how we need to think differently about the role of a PhD and the problem of postdocs becoming "permadocs". 

We also specifically cover the topics of diversity and internationalisation, so we discuss the EU Commissions thoughts on mobility and how an HR certificate like HRS4R can help a research institution think through these issues and work with them to create more inclusive research environments. We also touch on the role of organisations like the Coimbra Group and the part they play in making research environments more inclusive and diverse. 

Thanks for listening. Please share, rate, review and follow us on Twitter @Divrespod .

If you're interested in our work with diversity and internationalisation in research, please visit www.diversiunity.com.

Dr Clara Barker is unique in that she is transgender and holds an academic research post at Oxford University. But how did she get there and what hurdles did she face along the way? In this fascinating chat, we learn about Clara's accidental road into research and how she almost walked away. Now in her academic position, she works to promote transgender voices and LGBTQ+ inclusion across academia. Recently she has supported work by the Royal Society of Chemistry to produce toolkits which enable universities, researchers and teachers alike to ensure they create inclusive environments, paving the way for more LGBTQ+ people to be themselves and succeed in STEM and research more broadly. 

You can follow Clara on Twitter (@ClaraMBarker) and her YouTube channel (https://www.youtube.com/clarambarker). 

The Royal Society of Chemistry toolkits can be found here: https://www.rsc.org/new-perspectives/talent/inclusion-and-diversity/resources/lgbt-toolkit/ and the accompanying report here: https://www.rsc.org/globalassets/04-campaigning-outreach/campaigning/lgbt-report/lgbt-report_web.pdf 

Thanks for listening. Do please share, rate, review and follow us on Twitter (@Divrespod).

Thanks for listening. Please share, rate, review and follow us on Twitter @Divrespod .

If you're interested in our work with diversity and internationalisation in research, please visit www.diversiunity.com.

To start 2021 we chatted with Tyson Yunkaporta. Tyson is an indigenous activist, thinker and academic in Australia who challenges us all to think differently about the way we live and work. Indigenous communities around the world have lived in sync with the land and with each other for generations and these approaches to thinking and knowledge are profoundly different to what we might be used to. In this conversation we explore these ideas, how we can be more in tune with our surroundings and understand the power of simple and complex systems. Academia and the production of knowledge are key parts of the jigsaw of how the world works and we explore with Tyson how Indigenous thinking can change academia and what that means for knowledge. Prepare to be challenged, we certainly were!

Tyson's book can be found here: https://www.goodreads.com/en/book/show/45449501-sand-talk 

Follow us on Twitter @Divrespod and do let us know what you think. Ideas for future episodes welcome too. Thanks for listening! 

Thanks for listening. Please share, rate, review and follow us on Twitter @Divrespod .

If you're interested in our work with diversity and internationalisation in research, please visit www.diversiunity.com.