Race equality

We are committed to becoming an actively anti-racist institution.

As an education provider and leading employer in Cardiff, we have a responsibility – legal, ethical, intellectual and emotional – to be inclusive and to encourage diversity of thought and action.

Despite our work to date to ensure an anti-racist ethos, we acknowledge that we are on a journey – one that we are undertaking with openness and a desire to learn. Every member of our community has an important role to play in making sure that the lived experience of all staff and students matches our aspirations.

Over the last six months, we have taken several important steps to improve our understanding and to widen access for under-represented communities. These include the following new activities:

• inviting Professor Dinesh Bhugra to return to the university, to review our progress on issues of race equality, following the independent review that he led five years ago (2017). His report recognises the extent of progress made and the breadth and quality of work undertaken, and provides recommendations for improvement, which we have accepted in full
• developing a race equality action plan to be implemented as part of our institutional Strategic Equalities Plan.
• recruiting for a Head of Equality, Diversity and Inclusion, a new post which will report directly to the Deputy Vice-Chancellor, and which will lead, coordinate and support the delivery of EDI activities across the university
• appointing our first Widening Participation Manager for Diversity and Inclusion, who is currently scoping the barriers to Cardiff University for Black, Asian And minority ethnic groups, with an initial focus on Black British students
• addressing the Black, Asian and minority ethnic awarding gap as part of a comprehensive ‘Inclusive Curriculum’ project
• collaborating with the Cowrie Scholarship Foundation to provide scholarships for financially disadvantaged Black British students
• joining the Citizens Cymru/Wales Community Jobs Compact, to improve the diversity of our staff recruitment and to enable our staff to progress and develop in a supportive environment
• launching our ‘Talking Anti Racism’ series, where our academic experts collaborate with specialist guest speakers to open up important discussions on racism
• launching Cardiff Parent Power in Grangetown, Cardiff. Working with the Brilliant Club, we’re creating a parent community empowered to make changes to support their children’s future and to ensure their children have a fair chance in education and their future careers
• becoming a supporting organisation of Race Alliance Wales and signing Race Council Cymru’s Zero Racism Wales pledge

We are committed to open, transparent and challenging dialogue on racism, and of equality, diversity and inclusion more generally – aware as we are of the vital issue of intersectionality.

This page will be updated regularly to chart our progress; those with an interest in learning more about our work in this area should get in touch: