UCL consolidates its Athena SWAN progress

Five UCL departments successfully secured Athena SWAN awards: Chemistry (Silver), Earth Sciences (Bronze), Great Ormond Street Institute of Child Health (ICH) (Gold), Institute of Neurology (IoN) (Silver) and the Department of Medical Physics and Biomedical Engineering (Bronze).

The ICH successfully secured its first Gold level award, highlighting the sustained impact and beaconing of its work on gender equality.

Dr Philippa Mills, Co-chair, ICH Self-Assessment Team, said: 'We are d

elighted to have been awarded an Athena SWAN Gold award in recognition of GOS ICH's commitment to fostering a genuinely inclusive place of study and work. It is thanks to the dedication and commitment of many colleagues, at all levels and across all work areas, that we have been able to achieve this.’  

The department of Chemistry has secured its first Silver Award.  Professor Helen Fielding, who led the self-assessment team, said:  We are absolutely delighted to have achieved a Silver Athena SWAN award in recognition of the impact the Department’s actions and initiatives have made and are making on gender equality. The award reflects substantial effort from everyone in the Department to embed equality, diversity and inclusion in all our activities. This includes recruitment and promotion practices for staff and students, support for staff taking maternity leave, the promotion of female role models and the development of transparent workload models. We appreciate that the culture of valuing equality, diversity and inclusion improves the working environment for everyone.  

Reflecting on the nearly 40 awards across UCL, President and Provost, Professor Michael Arthur said: ‘Congratulations and many thanks to the huge number of dedicated colleagues that put the work in to make Athena SWAN awards happen. At a time when we face many challenges, these successes are simply wonderful and, alongside the progress of recent years, makes me very proud of UCL.’ 

Kevin Coutinho, UCL’s Athena SWAN Manager, said that ‘This awards’ round highlighted the continued commitment of UCL colleagues.  The work to redress structural and systemic gender inequalities would not be possible without their support, especially the 75 panellists that support UCL’s Internal Mock Panels and departmental leads to drive this work forward.   

Particularly at this moment, we recognise that there are many pressures on colleagues.  To support them and our departments, we launched a new SharePoint site this week.  It contains information and guidance on how to plan and prepare Athena SWAN submissions and includes examples of good practice and departmental submissions’.  

New online resource on SharePoint to support departments: 

To access UCL’s Athena SWAN SharePoint click here.   

---