Become an EDI Associate
Call for Expressions of Interest
Social Sciences Division: EDI Associates Programme, 2025-26
We recognise that there are many individuals across the Division with a passionate commitment to advancing equality, diversity and inclusion, and who have a breadth of experiences and wealth of skills and talents to contribute. Through our SSD EDI Associates (EDIAs) programme, since the academic year 2022-23, we have been building a community of such individuals to help enhance our collective knowledge and resources on EDI matters, while also enabling these individuals' own professional development. We have so far been joined by 22 members of academic, research, and professional services staff as well as DPhil students from across the departments, faculties and schools of the Division.
The 2025-26 SSD EDIAs programme will elect up to six EDIAs and is intended to generate ideas and plans for positive action to support early career academic and research staff with protected characteristics on fixed-term contracts and to strengthen our inclusive teaching and research culture. It is hoped that this initiative will suggest ways forward to effect meaningful change by illuminating how protected characteristics (as listed in UK Equality Act of 2010) - singly or intersectionality - affect the institutional experience, everyday workplace interactions, career progression and academic and/or research work of early career researchers, lecturers and other academics on fixed-term contracts in our Division.
We invite expressions of interest to undertake projects on one or more of the following:
- explore lived experience
- highlight barriers and inequalities
- identify systemic issues
- suggest practical actions for positive change
We expect these projects to draw and build on Oxford’s Breaking Barriers report and Equity and Inclusivity in Research Funding report. We hope that proposed projects will link with departmental and/or University priorities and initiatives, and enrich and extend these, but new and original projects are also welcomed. Proposed projects may relate to one or more protected characteristics, notably race, religion or belief, sex, sexual orientation, gender reassignment, and disability - including neurodivergence.
Outputs will be written reports on projects, but other suitable formats will also be considered. It is intended to hold an event at the end of the 2025-26 Academic Year to showcase the outputs and to award a prize to the project that offers most insightful findings and analysis and/or most constructive proposals for action. The outputs will be shared with all SSD departments to serve as a knowledge base for action and with the Centre for Teaching and Learning (CTL) for further dissemination across the University.
Expressions of interest are invited from members of academic, research and professional services staff at all stages of career, with the hope that wide participation will facilitate the institutionalisation of action to support early career staff on fixed term contracts and enhance inclusivity in our institutional culture. We invite proposals for short-term, small-scale projects that can be executed within six to seven months (December 2025 - June 2026). EDIAs will be expected to conduct these projects alongside their usual duties and produce the final output by the end of Trinity full term 2026. Each EDI Associate would need to be able to commit approximately up to 35-40 hours during the period December 2025 to June 2026, with the approval of their line manager/supervisor/Head of Department, but precise timings will be flexible, in order to fit around EDI Associates' other commitments. SSD’s Associate Head for EDI will provide advice and mentoring to EDIAs, supported by members of the SSD EDI Team, as needed.
EDIAs will receive a grant of up to £1,000 (to be claimed against actual expenditure) to be used towards their research expenses, conference attendance, or training and development, as they wish.
