Equality & Diversity course timetable

Virtual afternoon tea and chat to share experiences, discuss challenges and get updates on University initiatives and policies to support parents and carers.

Zoom joining details will be provided on your booking confirmation email.

Virtual coffee and chat to share experiences, discuss challenges and get updates on University initiatives and policies to support parents and carers.

Zoom joining instructions will be provided on your booking confirmation email.

Suicide Prevention Day - 10 September

Suicide could impact your life at any time and without warning. But is suicide inevitable?

As we mark World Suicide Prevention Day 2021, this presentation, delivered by Yvonne McPartland and Sarah Hughes from the Staff Counselling Centre, aims to increase awareness around suicide, dispel some myths and share some lessons from experience at the Staff Counselling Centre.

The session is designed to give staff and students the confidence to challenge the taboo around suicide that makes it such a difficult subject to broach, with colleagues, family members, friends and even total strangers: What is it OK to say? What should I be looking for? What should I do next?

The message is that having a conversation could really save a life. Let’s challenge the taboo and have a conversation that may empower you to intervene and potentially save a life.

Resources and further information:

• Information on Staff Counselling webpages
• Information on Student Counselling webpages
• Sources of support in an emergency
• Suicide awareness training from Zero Suicide Alliance (online module)
• Article: Impact of Covid on Suicide rates

Mentoring provides a valuable relationship in which an individual supports a colleague, by sharing their professional knowledge and experiences and utilising key skills and personal attributes, to enable that colleague to achieve their goals.

This session will provide an overview to the self-match mentoring scheme and be followed by an informal WSN networking session. A great way to meet women from different areas of the University.

Come along to this session if you’d like to develop tools for becoming an antiracist ally and to build a strong antiracist identity.

The training will be split into two 1h sessions.

This will allow us to make space for discussion while not making the zoom meeting too long.

While the session may be most helpful to white colleagues, everyone is warmly invited to attend.

YOU MUST BE AVAILABLE TO ATTEND BOTH SESSIONS.

These sessions are only available to members of the Dept. of Physiology, Development and Neuroscience

Come along to this session if you’d like to develop tools for becoming an antiracist ally and to build a strong antiracist identity.

The training will be split into two 1h sessions.

This will allow us to make space for discussion while not making the zoom meeting too long.

While the session may be most helpful to white colleagues, everyone is warmly invited to attend.

YOU MUST BE AVAILABLE TO ATTEND BOTH SESSIONS.

These sessions are only available to members of the Dept. of Physiology, Development and Neuroscience

Virtual afternoon tea and chat to share experiences, discuss challenges and get updates on University initiatives and policies to support parents and carers.

Zoom joining details will be provided on your booking confirmation email.

October’s networking discussion will focus on career progression and debate questions that were raised in a recent WHEN article. Is it every woman’s dream to move upwards, in pursuit of title, income, and status? Should success be measured in such a linear way?

Why is it seen as important to reach the heights of senior management to be considered a success story? How can you shape your current job role to improve your satisfaction? Join us to discuss these questions further and meet new colleagues.

This talk by Dr Lucy Delap looks at the history of feminism from a global perspective, with particular attention to how women of the global South engaged with questions of women’s rights and freedoms in the past 200 years.

Based on her recently published, Feminisms: A Global History (Penguin 2020), the presentation explores connections and encounters between activists spanning struggles in Egypt, Nigeria, Spain, Britain, and Japan. The event is designed to allow plenty of time to discuss and debate the history and present day forms that feminist activism has taken, and all are invited to the conversation.

Lucy Delap teaches history at the University of Cambridge and is a Fellow of Murray Edwards College. She has published widely on the history of feminism, gender, labour, and religion, including the prize-winning The Feminist Avant-Garde: Transatlantic Encounters of the Early Twentieth Century, Knowing Their Place: Domestic Service in Twentieth Century Britain in 2011, and Feminisms: A Global History in 2020

In June this year, Advance HE launched a new transformed Athena Swan Charter. The newly enhanced framework was developed in full consultation with sector practitioners, EDI Champions and specialist sub-groups overseen by the Athena Swan Governance Committee. The framework has been transformed based on the recommendations made in the Independent Review led by the Athena Swan Steering Group.

Those who apply for Athena Swan awards under the transformed charter can expect to benefit from:

• A paradigm shift from prescription to autonomy and flexibility
• Advance HE moving from being in a position of assessment to a developmental and supporting approach
• A reduction in administrative burden including a halving of data requirements.

Join the ED&I Team to hear about the new scheme in more detail, and how this will affect your future applications.

For more information, and to view the new forms, information pack and resources please visit the Athena Swan Resources Sharepoint folder.

AI and Technological Impacts on LGBTQ Communities – Dr Shakir Mohamed

5.30 – 6.30pm VIRTUAL MEET UP

6.45 – 8.00pm In person drinks at the Maypole 20a Portugal Place, Cambridge, CB5 8AF

AI and Technological Impacts on LGBTQ Communities Queer communities are a key part of the sociotechnical landscape of modern technologies: being shaped by technology, and in turn shaping them. I'd like to use our time together to open a discussion on technological impacts specifically for queer communities, in areas of censorship, language and identity, and sexual and mental health, and how modern technologies and the advances in artificial intelligence interact with these core issues of queer life. And hopefully hear your own experiences, thoughts, and solutions.

Dr Shakir Mohamed works on technical and sociotechnical questions in machine learning research, aspiring to make contributions to machine learning principles, applied problems in healthcare and environment, and ethics and diversity. Shakir is a research scientist and lead at DeepMind in London, an Associate Fellow at the Leverhulme Centre for the Future of Intelligence, and a Honorary Professor of University College London. Shakir is also a founder and trustee of the Deep Learning Indaba, a grassroots organisation aiming to build pan-African capacity and leadership in AI. Shakir was the General Chair for the 2021 International conference on Learning Representations, and a member of the Royal Society’s Diversity Committee.

Virtual afternoon tea and chat to share experiences, discuss challenges and get updates on University initiatives and policies to support parents and carers.

Zoom joining details will be provided on your booking confirmation email.

Overall Aims:

• Help recognise your signs of stress and anxiety
• To ‘normalise’ stress, anxiety, worry
• To understand the power of our individual attitude towards stress & anxiety
• To foster resilience and coping with stress and anxiety
• Be given the time in our busy lives to consider our individual responses to stress and anxiety

This workshop will be an opportunity to learn about stress and anxiety and begin to think about our own experiences. Come prepared with a pen and paper as there will be some self-reflective exercises.

• Introduction to stress and anxiety
• Simple breathing technique
• Considering ‘good versus bad’ stress
• Sources of stress
• Difference between anxiety and stress
• Individual symptoms

Delivered by Euan Ambrose from the University Counselling Centre

Joining instructions will be provided on your booking confirmation email.

November’s networking discussion will focus on work/life balance.

Having a good work/life balance is described as ‘finding peace and balance between the demands of work and those of personal fulfillment'. But is there really such a thing as work/life balance? What does work/life balance mean to you? Has your focus changed at different stages of your life? Has working during the pandemic changed your view on what’s important?

What advice and approach do you have on this topic? Join us to discuss these questions further and meet new colleagues.

These sessions, specifically for postdocs and researchers, provide a safe space to hear about race-related issues and reflect on your own racialised identity. You will have the opportunity to contribute to the discussion, and tools and resources will be shared to increase your understanding of systemic racism and help you build your capacity to challenge racism.

University staff members who have attended similar training run by this experienced team appreciated having "a safe space to share feelings and experiences" and found that "having the chance and time to reflect on the issues was very helpful and eye-opening." They also found that the selected resources and tools were "really well chosen and very helpful."

The training will be split into two 1h sessions. This will allow us to make space for discussion while not making the zoom meeting too long.

Everyone is warmly invited to attend.

Please only book if you can attend both sessions.

Overall Aims

• Help recognise your signs of stress and anxiety
• To ‘normalise’ stress, anxiety, worry
• To understand the power of our individual attitude towards stress & anxiety
• To foster resilience and coping with stress and anxiety
• Be given the time in our busy lives to consider our individual responses to stress and anxiety

The focus of this workshop will be on worry and anxious thoughts and how they impact our wellbeing. We will look at strategies to help address worries directly as well as activities to distract and soothe us. There will be two relaxation exercises and time for Q&A at the end.

• Introduction – The worried mind
• Progressive relaxation exercise
• How worry and anxious thoughts impact our wellbeing
• CBT strategies to manage worry
• Assessment and action process
• Soothing and distraction
• Rest and relaxation
• Guided meditation

Delivered by Sarah Hughes from the University Counselling Centre

Joining instructions will be provided in your booking confirmation email.

Overall Aims:

• Help recognise your signs of stress and anxiety
• To ‘normalise’ stress, anxiety, worry
• To understand the power of our individual attitude towards stress & anxiety
• To foster resilience and coping with stress and anxiety
• Be given the time in our busy lives to consider our individual responses to stress and anxiety

In this workshop, we will take a deeper look at stress and anxiety, work on what our triggers are, and any behaviours that might maintain an anxious state.

• What Triggers anxiety?
• Think more about the physical symptoms
• What maintains anxiety
• Negative Automatic Thoughts
• Intrusive Thoughts

Delivered by Euan Ambrose from the University Counselling Centre

Joining instructions will be provided on your booking confirmation email.

This session will provide the opportunity to hear from four women about their careers, what has impacted on their choices and any lessons they have learnt along the way.

We aim to hold a number of these sessions during the academic year, so please get in contact if you would be happy to share your story – email jenny.rampling@admin.cam.ac.uk.

The session helps to increase the understanding of systemic racism and race. It encourages participants to reflect on their own identity, building confidence to speak about race and the capacity to challenge racism.

The training will be split into two 1h sessions. This will allow us to make space for discussion while not making the zoom meeting too long.

Everyone is warmly invited to attend.

Please only book if you can attend both sessions.