Category: Uncategorized (Page 2 of 22)

At Equality, Diversity and Inclusion we understand the importance of recognising the brilliant contribution of researchers from Black, Asian and minority ethnic (BAME) backgrounds and have therefore committed to spotlighting their work.

This piece was authored by Dr Chiamaka Nwosu, a Research Fellow based in King’s Business School, to highlight the important work they have been carrying out as an early career researcher. Dr Nwosu specifically dives into their experience of being a researcher, the impact their expertise and research will have on the King’s community, and what they have gained from their experience as a researcher at King’s.

My main research interest has been shaped by my PhD which I completed here at King’s Business school. My research aims and objectives were to explore the factors associated with student Higher Education (HE) participation and attainment in the UK. I was particularly interested in how the student experience differs for students from minority ethnic backgrounds, and how this may impact their HE participation and attainment. I have recently published one chapter of my PhD research titled “Does Study abroad affect student academic achievement” in the British Educational Research Journal (BERJ) and currently in the process of publishing another chapter, which is currently under review.

Before joining the Business School as a Lecturer in Policy Evaluation and Research Fellow at the Policy Institute, I worked at the Widening Participation Department at King’s College, where I was responsible for conducting research on students who may be disadvantaged either due to their ethnic group or widening participation status such as being a first-generation student, coming from a financially disadvantaged family, or receiving a contextual admission offer. This is helpful in identifying disadvantaged students who may struggle with continuation, progression, and/or attainment.

Given that my PhD research and subsequent work on student experience, sense of belonging and self-efficacy among students from minority ethnic backgrounds was conducted using King’s as a case study, my research has direct implications for the university and provides recommendations to improve the higher education experience for students.

From an innovation standpoint, I have also developed KITAASTAT, a web-based statistical software package that makes it easier to understand the results from correlations, hypothesis tests & regressions. This term, I have introduced this as an additional learning tool for students taking the Research Methods module in the MSc in Public Policy and Management programme at the Business School and have received positive feedback from the students on the ease of use, and design of the software.

As a quantitative researcher, one of the biggest challenges to research is data access as data restrictions can severely affect the timescales of a research project as well as limit the quality and validity of the work being done. While working as a researcher at King’s, I have enjoyed certain resources that help moderate these data access concerns. For instance, the Information Compliance team is readily available to work with researchers who require administrative data for research purposes, subject to data protection regulations. Also, being able to work with experienced colleagues who have similar research interests has been extremely valuable as an early career researcher.

Further resources:

As part of our mission to more effectively communicate race equality initiatives across the College, we have not only committed to spotlighting the impactful contributions of our Black, Asian and minority ethnic colleagues, but using our platform to highlight resources we think would be beneficial to all staff.

We encourage you to explore the following:

• The Equality, Diversity and Inclusion (EDI) team have created an anti-racism and allyship toolkit which includes information and tips on race, racism, anti-racism and allyship. It can be used to support individual learning and/or as part of existing learning opportunities within Directorates, Faculties and Departments.
• Consider taking Diversity Matters training, which has been specifically designed for King’s staff and updated in response to staff feedback and current staff training needs. Find out more on the EDI training webpages.
• Request Tackling Microaggressions training for your department, faculty or team! These sessions discuss the formation of bias, how that manifests into microaggressions and what we can do to challenge microaggressions when we experience and/or witness them. This training does not occur on a scheduled basis and will need to be requested. If you would like us to facilitate a session, please get in touch at diversity@kcl.ac.uk.

Want to Learn more about Equality, Diversity & Inclusion at King’s College London?

• Found out more by visiting our Equality, Diversity & Inclusion at King’s pages.
• Follow us on Twitter.
• Email the team at diversity@kcl.ac.uk

In our latest blog to mark UK Disability History Month Equality, Diversity & Inclusion Consultant Adam Perry explores this years theme ‘Disability, Health and Well Being’. Adam reflects on his own lived experiences of wellness as a person living with invisible disabilities. 

Events to mark Disability History Month and explore this years theme further are taking place across King’s and you can find out about these here.  

The concept of wellness is interesting and what that means to people seems incredibly variable. When I think of wellness, I think of mental and emotional wellness. Which can be much harder to have agency over, particularly when wellbeing is inextricably linked to culture, attitudes and perceptions.  

This leads me to reflect on my own experiences of wellness, as someone with invisible disabilities.  From my experience, with invisible disabilities it can be incredibly difficult to get people to listen, let alone adapt. It can feel like listening and making adjustments is considered optional/nice to have. Maybe this is because if a condition isn’t visible, people can distance themselves because they aren’t confronted by the impacts?  

I have Asperger’s syndrome, a form of Autism. Many people have heard of Autism, but if honest, people likely have limited awareness which is influenced by stereotypes. This is reflected in a YouGov poll commissioned by Autistica, which found that across the UK there is a real lack of understanding surrounding Autism. This means that in practice, people tend to not consider that presentation and experiences of the condition can differ greatly between individuals. I manage my condition well. I have strong relationships, strong interpersonal skills, am deeply empathetic and navigate nuanced and unclear situations regularly. As a result, it can be unclear to people why I may be asking for adjustments because the challenges I face do not impact the other person.  

To truly include a person with Autism, one needs to be open to listening, be prepared to view people holistically and be prepared to make changes to the status quo or preferred ways of doing things. This may mean embracing the fact that the person experiences challenges which are not personally tangible because of one’s own experiences of the world. People can struggle with this, perhaps feeling a little resentful that they need to change their approach, rather than the person with Autism. The irony is, that Autistic people change their approach to fit in, every day. I think the misconception surrounding Autism being a learning disability (which it is not) has a role to play here. It can be easy to view the person as deficient in some way or characterise them as inflexible… which I have certainly experienced. Yet the reality is that looking through the lens of the Social Model of Disability, people are disabled by barriers in society, not their impairments. Autistic people are not asking for people to share the same view of the world, rather, to try to understand their view of the world.  

Having to battle to be listened to and heard, to be considered and supported is hard. To regularly monitor that hard fought adjustments are consistently applied is challenging. To do this, whilst trying to manage other people’s comfort and perception of you and your ability/credibility is exhausting and erodes wellbeing. Whilst this is based on my lived experience, I can confidently say that it is not an isolated experience. One only needs to look at the fact that The Autistica Employment Plan  highlights that only 2 in 10 Autistic people have a job to see that there is a systemic issue here, and one which needs action.  

The good news takeaway? You can positively impact individual experiences and shift culture by taking simple steps such as: 

• Truly and empathetically listening to who have invisible disabilities 
• Committing to advancing your own learning 

• Avoiding making assumptions about people’s abilities, instead consider creating psychologically safe spaces to have honest dialogue 
• Being proactive in ensuring that support is put in place and consistently applied 

Want to Learn more about Equality, Diversity & Inclusion at King’s College London?

• Found out more by visiting our Equality, Diversity & Inclusion at King’s pages.
• Follow us on Twitter.
• Email the team at diversity@kcl.ac.uk

This year’s theme for UK Disability History Month is ‘Disability, Health and Well Being’. This theme invites us to consider how barriers to inclusion affect disabled people’s wellbeing and it also prompts us to reflect on how far we still have to go at King’s to make sure our environment enables disabled members of our community to flourish.  

Events to mark Disability History Month and explore this theme further are taking place across King’s and you can find out about these here.  

In this blog, our Senior Sponsor for Disability Inclusion at King’s, Professor Richard Trembath (Senior Vice President Health & Life Sciences and Executive Director of King’s Health Partners) reflects on the progress we have made in the past two years, the challenges we still face and our priorities going forward.  

Professor Richard Trembath (Senior Vice President Health & Life Sciences and Executive Director of King’s Health Partners)

Disability Inclusion has been a priority in the Equality, Diversity & Inclusion Strategy since 2019 and, to support this, a Disability Inclusion Action Plan and Maturity Model were developed in consultation with King’s staff. King’s also has a dedicated team to support disabled students, the Disability Support & Inclusion Team, and I am pleased to share some of their work below as well.   

Two years ago, we published a blog ‘How far have we come, and how far have we to go?’ in which we reflected on progress on Disability Inclusion at King’s. In that blog myself, and colleagues from EDI and Access King’s were able to share progress in key areas. This included my appointment as Senior Sponsor to ensure disability inclusion is championed among senior leadership and also significant steps forward on digital accessibility and Equality Analysis. Since then, we have continued to make progress and further embed disability inclusion at King’s but we have also faced challenges and have learnt some important lessons along the way. To mark Disability History Month this year I wanted to reflect both on the positive steps we have taken forward but also on those difficult lessons.  and how we plan to learn and grow from them.  

Learning from our mistakes 

At King’s we understand disability through the Social Model, which means we want to focus on removing barriers to create an inclusive work and study environment. While this is our aim, the theme of this year’s Disability History Month calls us to reflect on how well we do this and what the impact is on our disabled staff and students’ wellbeing. Particularly in the last two years we have been confronted with the challenges of making a large historic estate physically accessible to our community. The shortcomings of our buildings and the ability of our processes and structures to find quick and satisfactory resolutions to these barriers, and others, has come to the fore. I hope you will see in the priorities at the end of this blog post that there is work underway to learn from our mistakes, understand where things aren’t working and make sure we work together to overcome these challenges.  

Before sharing those priorities and the positive progress we have made in the last few years, I wanted to start with this acknowledgement that we know we don’t always get it right and we are sorry when our progress is not rapid and responsive enough to meet the needs of our community. We are extremely grateful to our staff and student community who are so generous in sharing their experiences, their concerns and frustrations and help us to understand the impact of this work on their experience at King’s and their wellbeing. In so doing, you push us to do better and we thank you for that.  

Another key area that you have told us needs to improve is how we communicate with the King’s community about the challenges and progress in disability inclusion. I hope this update goes some way to provide insight into the work in this area and I am also pleased to share that we have new pages on the Disability Inclusion Hub to provide more transparency on the Disability Inclusion Steering Group and our Disability Inclusion Action Plan and Maturity Model. 

Progress  

I am delighted to share some of the key areas that have progressed in the last two years. The activity below reflects work from teams across King’s under the four strategic pillars of Disability Inclusion Action Plan:  

• Leadership, Governance & Culture   
• Policy, Process & Procedure  
• Local Experience  
• Data, Outcomes & Evaluation 

Under each of these four pillars are a range of objectives that aim to address the structural inequalities that impact disabled people at King’s. Work to fulfil these aims is being carried out across King’s. Below I have highlighted some of the key progress that has been made in the last year.  

Leadership, Governance and Culture  

• The Disability Inclusion Steering Group (DISG) includes key leaders from across King’s whose work focuses on disability inclusion or who can help us embed disability inclusion projects and practices across the College. The DISG now needs to move forward at pace with delivery to a number of key objectives and needs to ensure disability inclusion is connected to our governance structures and has recognition at King’s.  

Policy, Processes & Procedure  

• Following previous work from the EDI Function to promote Equality Analysis in King’s policy changes and projects, Estates and Facilities are embedding Equality Analysis into their Capital Projects handbook to ensure the big projects involving new buildings for King’s campuses consider the impacts on marginalised groups, including accessibility and inclusion for disabled staff and students.  

Local experience  

• The Disability Support & Inclusion team have enhanced the support of disabled students through a range of actions including:  
  • Ensuring engagement with the student voice by conducting a student survey in summer 2021. The results of the survey have informed thinking of the DSI Service Strategy and the changes being introduced to better support disabled students in 2022-23. 
  • Working with Residences to review and enhance the Additional Accommodation Requirements (AAR), ensuring appropriate accommodation offers are made to disabled offer holders and students.  
  • Collaborating with faculties and departments to improve adjustments provisions and process for students around assessment and coursework.  
• A range of new resources have been created to provide information and support to King’s staff and students:  
  • The Disability Inclusion Hub has been developed by the EDI Function, which includes the Disability Toolkit and the Digital Accessibility Toolkit both published in the last two years.  
  • The Centre for Doctoral Studies have developed a PGR Disability Support Hub with advice, case studies FAQs and contacts for key services for both PGR students and their supervisors.  
• The Centre for Doctoral Studies, with support from the Disability Support & Inclusion team, have developed a reasonable adjustments process for PGR students and are committed to reviewing and continuing to improve this process.
• The Digital Education Accessibility Task-and-Finish Group have developed the Digital Education Accessibility Baseline. This KEATS course outlines the core principles for digital education accessibility and gives guidance on how to apply them to teaching and learning material. A valuable accompaniment to this course is the Digital Education Blog which provides post offering insight on how different teams across King’s are applying the Baseline.  
• Access King’s, the Staff Disability Inclusion Network at King’s, has continued to flourish and provide an invaluable space for staff to find community, support and advice. Special mention must go to Abbie Russell who has been integral to the success of the Network since its inception – Abbie steps down as Co-Chair this year and her passion, integrity and collaborative spirit will be much missed. However, Access King’s will no doubt continue to thrive and help hold myself, the EDI Function and all those working on disability inclusion to account.  
• Disability Inclusion has been embedded in two new EDI training courses introduced by the EDI Function:  
  • The Introduction to Equality, Diversity & Inclusion e-learning module launched in April 2022 to provide a baseline introduction to the Equality Act 2010, discrimination and EDI at King’s.  
  • The relaunch of Diversity Matters training in October 2022 following the procurement of a new training provider brought in to deliver a new version of the training based on revised learning objectives and consultation with the King’s community.  
• Estates & Facilities have renewed King’s membership with AccessAble who provide accessibility audits and information for King’s campuses. Access Guides are provided for all King’s buildings and audits of King’s sites are now being used to review and implement accessibility improvements.  
• King’s took part in a Student Disability Adjustments Passport Pilot which was led by the University of Wolverhampton. The passport is being developed by the Department for Education and aims to help students transition into employment with the support they need to succeed. Through our involvement King’s students were able to directly influence how the scheme is developed.  

Data, Outcomes & Evaluation  

• The Personal Circumstances Form and Guidance for the Academic Promotions process have been updated to better support disabled staff members going through the promotions round and we hope to have more influence on this process to ensure it is disability smart.  

Priorities 

Based on the lessons learnt from staff and students not getting the adjustments and support they need, many of our priorities and actions for the next year focus on improving how this is delivered at King’s and how the governance for disability inclusion ensures responsbility and accountability are clear.  

The Estates & Facilities Directorate have started to introduce a range of new initiatives to improve how accessibility issues are dealt with and how disability inclusive practice is embedded in estate projects and design. A new group is being created to enable specific accessibility challenges to be overseen by the key people who can make decisions and progress adjustments. They are also introducing an accessibility category on the help desk ticket system to ensure accessibility issues are easy to report and are processed quickly to enable swift resolution. Alongside these changes to address existing issues, E&F are also proactively working to embed inclusive design to prevent such issues arising. There is also work underway gathering staff views on office and open plan workspaces, with the aim of improving the accessibility of these spaces.   

Disability Support & Inclusion and the EDI Function are working together, with support from Strategy, Planning & Analytics, to ensure disability inclusion is effectively embedded in governance at King’s and responsbility and accountability for this work is clear to the whole King’s community. It is important that disability inclusion is effectively connected to the new Staff and Culture Strategy Committee and the priorities of King’s Strategy 2026.        

The EDI Function will prioritise improving the processes and support relating to staff disability adjustments. This will include the launch of the Staff Adjustments Passport as well as training and guidance for line managers and other key staff members who play an important role in the adjustments process. The EDI Function will also review King’s Disability Policy to ensure it meets the needs of the King’s community and includes Workplace Adjustments more clearly. 

As mentioned at the start of this blog, communication has also been highlighted as a key priority and the EDI Function will work with colleagues across the College to improve how we share updates and issues and keep our community better informed. The EDI Function will continue to utilise the Disability Inclusion Hub to provide updates and they will also commission new blogs about disability, accessibility and inclusion at King’s.  

Celebrating key dates, such as Disability History Month provides the opportunity to shine a light on the contributions and experiences of disabled staff and students in our community has always been a priority for many across the College. Access King’s have a fantastic range of events planned for the next year and there is also work underway to find a permanent home for the Neurodiversity at King’s display created by the KCL Neurodiversity and Mental Health Student Society.  

I am confident that with the commitment of so many, that the changes and developments outlined above will help us to better respond to the needs of our community. I hope this update has been helpful and has given you a sense of the fantastic achievements that have been made alongside the important lessons we have faced.  

If you would like to learn more about Disability Inclusion at King’s you can go to the Disability Inclusion Hub (for staff) and the Disability Support & Inclusion (for students) intranet pages.  

Want to Learn more about Equality, Diversity & Inclusion at King’s College London?

• Found out more by visiting our Equality, Diversity & Inclusion at King’s pages.
• Follow us on Twitter.
• Email the team at diversity@kcl.ac.uk