May 14, 2018, by Simon Langley-Evans

Our Women In Biosciences Campaign

In the School of Biosciences we are very conscious of a ‘leaky pipeline’ of progression of women from undergraduate student up to professor. The students joining our undergraduate and postgraduate courses are predominantly female (around two thirds) and 54% of our postdocs and research associates are women, but by the time we get to academic posts we find that only 40% of assistant professors, 18% of associate professors and 13% of professors are women.

There are of course many reasons why women don’t progress through the academic ranks, but one that we have previously identified is a lack of role model visibility. We have tried to address this in several ways, including the use of some new imagery around the Sutton Bonington Campus.  The Women in Biosciences poster campaign is growing across the Campus. Posters featuring eminent women from across our range of subject areas and showing women currently in the School have been hung in high footfall communal areas (e.g. the student amenities building and the teaching laboratory).

Among the women currently featured in the poster campaign are:

Professor Dame Nancy Rothwell: Eminent Neuroscientist and Vice Chancellor of the University of Manchester (and my PhD external examiner!)

Professor Rosemary Pangborn: Pioneer of sensory evaluation techniques.

Elsie Widdowson: Eminent nutritionist- one of the founders of the nutrition science field.

Professor Anna MacGillvray: Brewing scientist

Professor Anne Willis: Cancer biologist

Dr Betty Kutter: Eminent bacteriophage biologist

Dr Fiona McCullough (School of Biosciences): Director of Teaching and Learning

Dr Amanda Avery (School of Biosciences): Associate Professor of Dietetics

Dr Julie King, Dr Surbhi Grewal, Dr Stella Edwards, Dr Caiyun Yang (School of Biosciences): Wheat Research Group.

Professor Chris Dodd and Delveen Ibrahim (School of Biosciences): Professor of Food Microbiology and PhD student.

We intend to have more posters in this campaign, featuring more of our own local stars. We hope that the success of these women will inspire other women to pursue a career in academia, whether as a lead investigator, postdoc, technical specialist or in a research administrative role.

If you have any suggestions of women who we could feature, do get in touch.

Simon Langley-Evans
Head of School

Posted in EDI