EPSRC Equality, Diversity and Inclusion (EDI) Sharing Hub

Funding to establish an Equality, Diversity and Inclusion (EDI) Sharing Hub to support sharing of EDI good practices across the engineering, physical and mathematical sciences research community.

The Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC) has launched this network plus grant opportunity to support the establishment of an Equality, Diversity and Inclusion (EDI) Sharing Hub. The hub will provide leadership and coordination to support sharing of EDI good practices and ‘what works’ across the engineering, physical and mathematical sciences research community.

The aim of the EPSRC EDI sharing hub is to:

• Provide inspirational EDI leadership and coordination of community led EDI activities across the engineering, physical and mathematical sciences research community.
• Bring together and share EDI knowledge from across the engineering, physical and mathematical sciences community, drawing on work in non-EPS research disciplines and from professional HR and enabling roles.
• Engage with businesses and other research and innovation partners such as the learned societies and special interest groups.
• Enable sharing and knowledge exchange of EDI expertise, good practices and ‘what works’.
• Disseminate and consider how EDI interventions might be scaled up, embedded and broadened across the community to facilitate and empower action resulting in better inclusive practices and positive culture change.
• Support the wider development, implementation and evaluation of successful EDI initiatives and practice.
• Provide flexible funding to empower the community to initiate activities in gaps that are identified, that contribute to the EPSRC’s ambitions to embed EDI good practice across our research and innovation community.

The opportunity is designed to bring together a diverse range of people with different expertise, experiences, perspectives, approaches and ways of thinking, who are working to establish a better research culture for everyone. It is anticipated that this may include grant holders and participants from:

• Discipline specific network pluses.
• Programme grants, research centres and hubs that are active in promoting and embedding EDI good practices.
• EPSRC Inclusion Matters portfolio.
• EPSRC EDI fellowship holders.
• EDI champions and special interest groups across engineering, physical and mathematical sciences research areas.

The funding opportunity includes funding to enable agile responses to new approaches, scale up and embedding activities. This could also include secondments into partner organisations to help with knowledge transfer.

More information will be available when the opportunity opens on 4 September 2023.