Project background

During 2011 Vitae led the Every Researcher Counts project to improve equality and diversity for research staff within the higher education sector. The project was funded by HEFCE with support from the other higher education funding bodies as an important part of their strategy to implement the Concordat to Support the Career Development of Researchers.

Many of the challenges relating to equality and diversity are systemic within the higher education sector, particularly for research staff. These challenges create a difficult environment for any researcher striving to achieve a research career within higher education, but particularly disadvantage some constituencies including women, disabled and black and minority ethnic researchers.

The long-term aim of this programme of work is to change culture and practice, and build capacity within HEIs, by embedding equality and diversity within normal business of research workforce employment and career development.

As part of the Vitae 2013-15 contract UK funding bodies and RCUK will continue their support of the Every Researcher Counts project.

More sustainable benefits and the required cultural change will only be achieved by:

• extending reach to engage more principal investigators and senior researchers
• maintaining exposure at a senior level of the importance of equality and diversity for research staff
• strengthening and extending the champions network
• extending the reach to and developing parallel resources for research staff
• providing practice sharing opportunities for research staff developers and the champions network.

Project aims

Within the next phase of the project aims are:

• an increase in PIs, senior research staff, senior managers and HR professionals’ engagement with the equality and diversity agenda through targeted events, briefings and champions network
• use of Every Researcher Counts resources in Principal Investigator/Research Leader development programmes in research intensive institutions
• a series of awareness raising events, and training events to raise the profile of equality and diversity as part of the future Concordat implementation
• an updated and informative equality and diversity section on the Vitae website, which hosts an online library of resources, briefings, case studies and documents, and also hosts a community hub for discussion and dissemination of information
• a range of regional events to build researcher developer capabilities to deliver new freely available equality and diversity resources for research staff