Cardiff University School of Physics and Astronomy leads on a successful bid for a GW4 Building Communities Development Award

Academic and Professional Services staff, along with students from the four GW4 universities, have been successful in their bid for funding from the GW4 Building Communities Development Awards to develop a community of practice in STEMM (Science, Technology, Engineering, Maths and Medicine.)

The GW4 Alliance has funded three projects as part of the new Awards; this ongoing funding scheme provides awards of up to £5K to support new or existing research and innovation collaborations across the GW4 universities of Bath, Bristol, Cardiff and Exeter by funding single activities or resources.

The successful project, led by the School of Physics and Astronomy, will use the funding to help to create a GW4 EDI community of practice in STEMM (the GW4 Equity, Diversity & Inclusivity hub) with the goal of achieving cultural change across the GW4 institutions in this area. The project will begin in September 2023 with a conference ‘Redefining the status quo in academia’ held at Cardiff University.

Senior Lecturer and School EDI chair at Cardiff University, Cosimo Inserra, said: “Many of us involved with this community have organised initiatives previously. However, there are limitations in the single department and institution approach as they can lack the power to change the overall culture of organisations. GW4 includes tens of STEMM departments and is the perfect platform to create the first STEMM EDI hub in the UK, a community of practice developing coherent methodologies and good practices to support other academic institutions to nurture inclusive environments”.

GW4 Building Communities Funding supports both the creation of new GW4 communities and the development of the strongest ideas emerging from our existing communities, and is open to any academic area. To date, the GW4 Alliance has invested over £3.1M in 112 collaborative research communities, which have generated £62.8M in research income.

To find out more about the GW4 Development Awards and Generator Fund visit the website.