PALS Research Opportunity Scholarship

Fiona Ryland (UCL Chief Operating Officer): "I am incredibly proud that the Research Opportunity Scholarship for a Black student was started by our colleagues in PALS, and shows a real commitment and desire to address racial injustice and the imbalance within academia.  We have a fantastic community at UCL and we are committed to promoting equality, diversity and inclusion across the institution. I am hopeful that this will pave the way forward for similar initiatives."

Professor Peter Fonagy (Head of the UCL Division of Psychology and Language Sciences): "We were moved by the series of events that followed George Floyd’s horrific death in May. Many of us shared a feeling that we wanted to contribute to addressing the injustice that racism imposes on the life of a significant minority of our society. We are also aware that academic professional attainments highlight white privilege. For confirmation of this we need look no further than the proportion of Black postgraduate research students, junior and senior academic staff, at this and most other UK universities. 

To take a first step to addressing this issue, we are creating a PALS Research Opportunity Scholarship for a Black student. We strongly feel that if we were to ask UCL to pay for this we would miss out on an opportunity for all of us to make a personal and individual gesture that recognises that the advantages and opportunities we have enjoyed have to some measure been at the expense of others.

We have therefore sought and won UCL’s approval to ask members of staff to contribute to this scholarship from their salary over the course of four years. The entire cost of the PALS Research Opportunity Scholarship is approximately £25,000 per year, £110,000 over four years. Staff have been asked to consider making an anonymous annual contribution over the duration of the Scholarship. 

The recipient of the PALS Research Opportunity Scholarship will be placed in the Department of the Division most suited to their research interest and would be encouraged to support the Science of Bias module that is being developed by Dr Lasana Harris. In addition, we hope that the appointed scholar will contribute to improving our understanding of bias in all the Division’s teaching.

The Division will show its commitment by matching the amount raised from the staff to fund a second Scholarship for an individual who is the first person in their family to attend a university. Both of these suggestions were enthusiastically supported by the UCL PALS Divisional Management Group. 

We believe that this positive gesture may serve to initiate a larger response from other Divisions and Institutes within UCL.

I hope that this act of collective recognition of an ongoing state of injustice will signal both within the UCL community and beyond that we recognise the need to take an active stance to address systemic racism in our society."

Dr Lasana Harris (BME Attainment UCL Faculty of Brain Sciences Lead and PALS Senior Lecturer): “Broadening the pipeline of world-class BME researchers requires a commitment to doctoral research. This initiative helps achieve that by providing valuable funding for such promising students to pursue a Ph.D. I could not be prouder of all my colleagues who contribute to this initiative.” 

John Draper (PALS Divisional Head of Administration): "The scholarship reflects the commitment of PALS staff to furthering equality, diversity and inclusion issues and I am proud to be a member of the Division today – it is a major statement from PALS and the first of its kind at UCL. I would like to thank all those who will be making a contribution."