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09/01/2026

Happy New Year!

Agenda

  1. Review of Actions
  2. Main Discussion:
  3. Any other business

Minutes

Actions

Main discussion

Given the size, goals, and intended outputs of the group, we will divide our efforts into smaller, topic-focused working groups. These were agreed at the previous meeting: 1. Community outreach 2. Curation of topic-based guides 3. Measuring the impact of EDIA initiatives

This meeting served as a “taster session” for the different working groups. Participants joined one of the three topic-focused breakout rooms, before reconvening with the main group for a collective discussion.

Community outreach

Summary: This mini working group will focus on outreach to the community, gathering both positive and negative experiences related to EDI.

The goal is to collect people’s stories and experiences and use them to directly inform our group’s outputs, help guide priorities, and ensure assumptions align with real experiences.

Purpose:

  • Collect experiences and stories to feed into the working group's outputs.
  • Ensure our community engagement work has a cohesive, public-facing element.
  • Share people's stories.

Key questions / areas of interest:

  • What does EDI actually mean to people in the community?
  • Do our assumptions about diversity (e.g. people, domains) match reality?
  • Who makes up our community, and who is currently missing from engagement?
  • Keen to capture both positive and negative EDI experiences

Community engagement challenges:

  • How do we reach people across the whole community, not just leaders or chairs?
  • Risk of assuming engagement with leadership = engagement with everyone

Approach considerations:

  • Use the community’s interest in science and discovery as a way to engage
  • Value in both qualitative and quantitative data collection
  • Be clear about why data is being collected and how it will be used
  • Handle sensitive data carefully and with intention
  • Make people feel comfortable sharing their experiences
  • Need to engage with:
    • EDI consultants
    • Experts in oral histories / community data collection
    • Existing connections within the group
    • May require funding (previously included in proposals)

Curation of topic-based guides

Summary: This group will focus on identifying, collecting, and curating existing resources on specific topics that are relevant to the communities our working group hopes to support (e.g. recruitment, events, communication, culture and pathways).

The goal is not to reinvent guidance, but to translate and adapt high quality existing resources so they are directly applicable, accessible and actionable to our community, in a series of ready-to-use resources. The intended output will be guides that can be shared with the community and evolve alongside the work of this group and other mini working groups.

Purpose and scope

  • Decide which EDI topics to prioritise for initial guides. Early suggestions: inclusive recruitment, inclusive event planning, inclusive communication
  • Clarify target audiences for each guide: e.g. event organisers, PIs, managers, RSEs, early-career researchers
  • General agreement that inclusive recruitment is a strong early focus

Intended outputs and impact

  • Aim to produce guides that are useful, actionable, and easy to adopt
  • Ideas for format and structure:
    • Organise guides by task (e.g. event organisation, recruitment, project management)
    • Use checklists as a core format
    • “Minimum / essential” checklist plus expanded guidance
    • Separate checklists for different contexts (events, recruitment, etc.)
    • Mix of short checklists and longer, more detailed guides to fill gaps in existing resources
    • Level of detail may depend on how frequently an activity is carried out

Use and dissemination

  • Possible formats and platforms:
    • Web pages with downloadable PDFs
    • Zenodo (or similar) for versioning
    • GitHub to allow comments, suggestions, and updates from the community
    • Guides should be living documents, regularly reviewed and updated

Ongoing engagement ideas:

  • Regular community contact (e.g. “guide of the week”)
  • Reinforce that the guides form a central hub, even if individual guides aren’t immediately relevant

Practical next steps

  • Agree on scope and priorities for the first set of guides
  • Identify who is interested in contributing to specific topics or sub-groups
  • Start gathering and reviewing existing resources
  • Include community input in the writing of guides

Measuring the impact of EDIA initiatives

Summary: This group will focus on identifying best practices for measuring the impact and success of EDIA initiatives. This may include reviewing existing materials, engaging with the community, and liaising with the Community Outreach group.

The aim is to help us understand what is working and how to demonstrate impact effectively.

Intended outcomes

  • Curate metrics to help quantify key EDI issues
  • Use analysis of these metrics to generate insights that feed into practical, real-world best-practice guidance
  • Take an evidence-based approach that keeps people at the centre of research, with infrastructure as a secondary consideration
  • Explore proactive solutions and recommendations to positively influence EDI outcomes and impact

Use and sharing of information

  • Tiered sharing approach:
  • Within the mini working group
  • Then with the wider EDI working group
  • Ultimately feeding into UKRI-wide conversations
  • Use sharing mechanisms agreed by the wider working group

Practical first steps

  • Discuss, across the whole WG, where to focus efforts (e.g. which communities or areas have the greatest need)
  • Engage with HiddenREF to explore collaboration on EDI in the REF context
  • Use mini-WG meetings to explore underlying questions and begin shaping:
    • Metrics
    • Analysis approaches
    • Use collected data to produce reports

Underlying questions / scope

  • What existing EDI efforts, reporting, and research already exist, and how should we align with or build on these?
  • Acknowledge existing work (e.g. RSECon, SC, Coded Language research on “acceptance”)
  • Identify and prioritise communities where the need is greatest
  • Political and economic context: consider geopolitical factors and how global events impact EDI within the UK
  • Explore the relationship between “hype” or funding-driven research areas and EDI outcomes
  • Does following funding trends create EDI challenges or opportunities?

Any other busines?

Date of Next Meeting (DONM): 06/02/2026, 10am, Online via Teams

(please contact cake-management@mlist.is.ed.ac.uk for any queries about these minutes)