School of Cardiovascular and Metabolic Medicine & Sciences: Development, Diversity & Inclusion

Mission statement

We champion Diversity and Inclusion across this School.

The School works with university-wide Diversity & Inclusion objectives. We are committed to creating an inclusive environment across our Sections that is fair to all, in line with the King’s Strategic Vision 2029

Diverse, but united.

This School celebrates the diversity of our employees and students. We work to encourage inclusivity, to make our School a better place. We do this by monitoring diversity, inclusion and wellbeing in the School, raising issues and lobbying to make changes for the future.

What are we doing? Collaborating across our Different sites and Sections, we aim to have representatives from different backgrounds, to represent all parts of our School. Some of our projects include:

Development Symposia: We hold Aspiring Leadership Symposia, aimed at ECRs and PhD students. A recent symposium featured ex-students from our School who now work in pharma/biotechs or publishing. The next one is planned for spring/summer 2022.
Identifying microaggressions: We surveyed the School to understand how microaggressions affect those in our School. We progressed to start to develop some short animations on microaggressions. We have published two videos tackling microaggressions, that are linked to bullying and harassment.We have made a short, animated video, this time concerning laboratory microaggressions. We have evidence that they occur within our Faculty and especially within the laboratory research environment. 
The video can be viewed via this link: https://bit.ly/lab_microaggressions.
To report a case click here: https://reportandsupport.kcl.ac.uk/
Raising awareness: We aim raise awareness and make progress. Immediate projects include this website, analysing PowerBi data on identifying diversity gaps within the School and the academic environments.

Members

Fulye Argunhan

Post-doctoral Research Associate

Susan Brain

School Lead DDI

Alison Brewer

Senior Lecturer

Marina Cecelja

Research Fellow

James Clark

Professor of Cardiovascular and Physiology Education

Vasco Claro

PhD Student

Sarah Double

Operations Officer - Education

Luca Faconti

Clinical Lecturer

Mark Holt

Research Fellow

Aileen King

Reader in Integrative Physiology & Diabetes

Jessica Morris

PhD Student

Dina Parekh

School HR & Finance Manager

Monica Stollery

EA to Head of School

Andrew Webb

Clinical Senior Lecturer

Microaggressions campaign

Microaggressions occur every day to students and staff. These insults and snubs may be often unintentional. They can act to exclude and marginalise individuals. We have identified common microagressions and are producing animation tools to tackle this subject at university and in the research lab. The Development, Diversity and Inclusion Committee (DDI) of the School of Cardiovascular Medicine & Sciences have been carrying out a project to determine how microaggressions aﬀect those in our School, and also more widely in the Faculty. Using results collected in a School DDI survey, launched soon after the murder of George Floyd, we have developed a short video on microaggressions. This encapsulates examples of the four most common types of microaggressions that occur. We would like our staﬀ and students to become more aware; so that microaggressions stop. Additionally going forwards, we want to work with the Faculty and College to give support to those who still receive microaggressions. Please feel free to contact any member of our DDI committee if you would like more information.

Microaggressions in Research and Teaching video

Aspiring Leadership symposium – explaining the work of the DDI committee and Microaggressions

Aspiring Leadership Symposia

We aim to host symposia of interest to the Development of ECRs that also include a chance for them to be actively involved. Recent topics have been ‘Obtaining a Fellowship’ and ‘Career profiles following an education at King’s’. Below are some of the sample of the career profiles talks we have organised:

Scientific writing – Quyen Chu

Working in Biotech – Raj Mistry

Working overseas - Salil Srivastava

Working in consumer pharma (Industry) - Anne-Marie Mooney

Surveys

Conduct surveys to gauge the mood of our school, including staff, students, and visitors. Exit Surveys are key to establish what we are doing well and what we can improve on. When I joined the school, exit surveys were incomplete and over the last 6 months there has been a big push to encouraging staff leavers to complete the questionnaire. Results will be published soon. Other recent School surveys covered ‘DDI, where do we stand?’ and ‘Lockdown, how has it affected you’? This has led us to understand that Teams is an extremely useful tool to keep our community together.

School results Covid BAME survey

Exactly How Diverse are We?: Power Bi

The PowerBi analytics data for Diversity & Inclusion provides information across King’s College London, in terms of disability, gender and ethnic diversity for all staff and students across the faculties and across the hierarchal employment structure. This information is accessible to all staff members, and I would urge you to acquaint yourself with it. The data obtained in 2018/2019 provides some interesting findings.

Exactly how Diverse are we - pdf

PowerBi Data

School Review of Academic Staff On Probation

The School is responsible for ensuring the probation process fulfills the requirements of the College and Faculty. Additionally, that the academic is prepared in the expectations of the end of probation meeting. Please see links to relevant paperwork and we have also designed a tool to help probationers. (for further information on this please contact sue.brain@kcl.ac.uk)

Academic staff probation documents