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The Dickson Poon School of Law

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Diversity & Inclusion

 

The Dickson Poon School of Law attracts students and staff from across the world, from completely different backgrounds and with a variety of religious, sexual and gender identities. We want to celebrate this incredible diversity in all that we do. 

Athena SWAN

The School has been awarded an Athena SWAN Bronze Award as part of its work toward gender equality. We have undertaken various student and staff-facing projects relating to diversity and inclusion, with the aim of improving the student and staff experience.

Our Diversity & Inclusion Committee, chaired by Professor Gillian Douglas as Executive Dean, takes ownership for diversity and inclusion at the most senior level of the School. The Committee is responsible for the development and implementation of a robust Diversity & Inclusion Strategy. We are also actively engaged with Diversity & Inclusion across the university, drawing on best practice from across King’s, as well as developing new and innovative interventions to ensure that we provide the very best for our staff and students.

We are always looking to improve our work, and actively seek feedback from students, staff and visitors to the School. The academic leads for the School are Professor Maleiha Malik and Professor Ann Mumford. 

Resources Available to Students and Staff

Training

Training

King's offers training on D&I to all staff members.

Women and Feminism

The Dickson Poon School of Law has taken significant strives to foster and develop our commitment, at all levels of the School, to tackling gendered barriers which contribute to sexism and and gendered inequality. In November 2017, we submitted our first application to the Athena SWAN Gender Equality Charter, administered by the Equality Challenge Unit. Through this process, we have developed a four year action plan, owned by our newly established School Diversity & Inclusion Committee, which will help us to make substantial progress towards gender equality for our students and staff.

The School is led by Professor Gillian Douglas, as Executive Dean, and Ms Rabia Harrison, as Director of Administration, making us the only Faculty in King's College London to be led solely by female senior leaders. The School supports our King's Women in Law Society, a formally ratified society within the School who provide a women's mentoring scheme, the Mother Daughter Network, and run events to highlight the successes of prominent women within the legal sector.

As a School, we appreciate that the concept of gender and feminist legal perspectives are not always readily built into our academic teaching, and that sometimes students may have to go looking to find such perspectives and viewpoints to be able to incorporate into their work. That is largely what we hope to support through the creation of this webpage: we hope that this will develop and grow into a resource hub of expertise, talks and studies which our students may be able to benefit from as part of their studies.

The Dickson Poon School of Law's Accessibility and Inclusion Statement

The School of Law recognises the needs of all students and our duties under the Equality Act 2010. We aim to increase the accessibility and inclusivity of learning and teaching for all students by mainstreaming approaches previously put in place as reasonable adjustments for individuals.

The duty to make reasonable adjustments requires education providers to take positive and anticipatory steps to ensure that disabled students can fully participate in education, and enjoy the other benefits, facilities and services which education providers provide for students.

In line with our Education Strategy, we seek to create a learning and teaching environment, and culture, that embraces and encourages diversity and is accessible and inclusive to all.

If you have any questions about this statement or any suggestions for how our Law School can become a more accessible and inclusive place of study, please contact our Student Experience team.

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Disability Support

Disabled students have access to specialist support from the Disability Advisory Service (DAS), a branch of the university Student Services. DAS partner with the School of Law to ensure that reasonable adjustments deemed necessary and appropriate for disabled students have been made available, and that all of the provisions put in place are serving the needs of each individual student in the most effective way. DAS also work to help the School to improve our overall academic practice, meaning adjustments which are relatively commonplace become part of our usual practice.

Mature Students

In The Dickson Poon School of Law, we value and welcome people who have had different experiences, and have taken different routes into university. We recognise that not everyone has had similar, or the same, experiences, and that this can throw up different concerns and questions for new students. As a mature student, you may have, or have had, other responsibilities, commitments, health issues, priorities and career focuses than many of your peers. We aim to cater to all students with varied needs, and to ensure that we have appropriate support and representation in place.

The School has a dedicated Mature Student Representative, who is a current undergraduate Law student. The Mature Rep is responsible for building a community of mature learners within the School by organising social events, holding focus groups and liaising with School staff about any issues raised. The Rep sits on the Student Diversity Forum which was set up in 2017 to promote diversity, inclusion and wellbeing in the School of Law.