Diversity in Research Podcast
Diversity in Research Podcast
Diversiunity & Cloud Chamber
An exploration of diversity in research management and international research collaborations. We cover how we make research environments more inclusive and why doing this helps us to solve global challenges through research. Based in Europe but talking to the world of academic research.
The Lost Voices - postdocs, precarity and diversity
You just have to admire the five people behind "The Lost Voices".  We had the fortune of talking to them about the campaign. They started as a group of London based postdocs with diverse backgrounds who found it difficult to navigate academia and couldn't imagine having a career in research. That made them initiate "The Lost Voices" where they told their stories of race, religion, sexuality, ability etc that set them apart - and how precarity made it difficult for them to raise their voices. They did so anyway, and we are in awe of the risk they are taking, and for their home institutions who have funded them and listened to their findings. You can hear more about their background and the work they have done in the episode, where we also talk about the report on diversity that the Russell Group published in late Spring this year, and as usual, we talk about how people in support functions at universities can help people whose voices are lost in academia. If you are as impressed as we are and want to work with them please reach out. We know they are looking for collaborators worldwide.  You can learn more at:‘The Lost Voices’ national campaign website: https://ukpostdocs.toothycat.net/thelostvoices/‘The Lost Voices’ national campaign final summary video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fR2pbmGa21I&t=1sOr find all their content and social media channels at  ‘The Lost Voices’ Linktree: https://linktr.ee/londonpostdocsThanks 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 
Jun 24, 2021
1 hr 32 min
Research Integrity - how does it relate to diversity and why should we care?
This has been a long time coming.  But luckily we found Gowri Gopalakrishna and Krishma Labib from Amsterdam UMC , and they we're more than happy to be part of this conversation of the role of diversity in research integrity. They told us about their own research on research integrity (fx the Netherlands Research Integrity Survey and the diversity of the 7th World Conference on Research Integrity), and why some people in the field do not necessarily think diversity should play a role when talking about research integrity. They also shared some of their experiences of being women of colour in research, and as always we are grateful for people sharing personal stories like that. Finally, they share how those of you in supporting roles can advance diversity in research integrity. Research integrity is a developing research area, and with people like Gowri and Krishma working in this space we feel certain it will develop in a positive direction. You can find our guests at: Gowri Gopalakrishna:  https://research.vumc.nl/en/persons/gowri-gopalakrishna (You can also follow her at Twitter as @gowrigopala)Krishma Labib: https://research.vumc.nl/en/persons/krishma-labibYou can read more about the National Survey on Research Integrity here: https://www.nsri2020.nl/research-integrity-covid-19 where you can also read about research integrity concerns concerning COVID-19 and vaccines. 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 
Jun 8, 2021
1 hr 5 min
The role of culture in health workers' approach to LGBTQ+ patients - a conversation with Alfonso Pezella
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: @AlfPezellaThanks 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. 
May 25, 2021
54 min
Jonathan Grant and the New Power University (No, it's not a new boyband!)
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: @jonathancgrantThanks 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. 
May 10, 2021
1 hr 1 min
The EU strategy on global research collaborations; the EUA perspective with Thomas Jørgensen
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_JorgenYou can read the policy input. 
Apr 27, 2021
52 min
Erasmus, Turing - and the future of global researcher mobility
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__
Apr 13, 2021
1 hr 9 min
What ARMA learned about being an inclusive organisation and the role of research managers and administrators.
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.ukYou can follow ARMA on Twitter: @arma_ukYou can follow Jennifer on Twitter here: @JStergiou81Thanks for listening. Do please share, rate, review and follow us on Twitter @Divrespod .
Mar 30, 2021
46 min
Bibliodiversity: How academic publishing impacts the Global South - and what alternatives could look like
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
Mar 16, 2021
50 min
The power of mentorship for LGBTQ+ researchers and software developers - a global perspective
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: @aserebrenikReed's Twitter is: @rmmilewi 
Feb 16, 2021
54 min
Why do universities need an HR strategy for researchers?
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. 
Feb 3, 2021
1 hr 3 min
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