Our approach to equity, diversity and inclusion
RSVP aims to support and sustain a thriving research culture and community by embedding equity, diversity, and inclusion (EDI) principles within the way we approach, evaluate, and develop supervision enhancement strategies. Our ambitions are rooted in a commitment to address systematic barriers and forms of exclusion within postgraduate education impacting sociopolitically marginalised communities, supervisors, and the Higher Education (HE) sector at large.
As a consortium we strive to conduct each stage of the project in accordance with EDI principles and as such it is our goal to embed equitable positive action throughout our project materials, events, and management. By aligning and embedding equitable values into our project output, we aim to foster a more inclusive and supportive environment for everyone involved in doctoral education. Our overarching intent is to support the review, development, and testing of interventions that contribute to a positive and sustained cultural shift in how supervisory practice is understood, supported, managed, and recognised across the sector.
Our approach
Focus on EDI within supervisory relationships
Our project places a strong emphasis on higher education institutions (HEIs) seeking to understand power dynamics in supervisory relationships, encouraging institutions to tackle structural barriers experienced by supervisors and doctoral candidates. We aim to support institutions in engaging positive action to address these barriers faced by supervisees and supervisors from marginalised communities, with a recognition that power and inequity impact the supervisory relationship and research potential for many. We are doing this by developing workshops and sector resources, underpinned by pedagogy and empirical data, that explore power, inequity, neuroinclusion, mentoring, and more.
Representing diversity across institutions
We are committed to representing and engaging the full spectrum of UK institutions in terms of size, regionality, culture, and disciplines. We aim to address, learn from, and bolster the work done at higher education institutions, doctoral training partnerships (DTPs) and Independent Research Organisations (IROs), each with its own unique values, policies, and approaches to Continuing Professional Development (CPD) for supervisors. RSVP makes this commitment with the recognition that under-resourced institutions are often disproportionately composed of PGR and supervisory populations from marginalised communities. We aim to both learn from the existing mechanisms of addressing inequities within such institutions, as well as provide further resources for cultivating equitable supervisory practice. By doing so, we intend for our interventions to be inclusive – by delivery and design – and relevant to the entire doctoral community.
Creating a sustainable model for long-term impact
To ensure the sustainability of our efforts beyond the project's lifetime, RSVP is collaborating with researcher developers and professional support staff to develop a sustainable handover blueprint for CPD materials that is inclusive by design and delivery and allows organisations to adapt and embed interventions into existing organisational provisions. We are developing these materials with a focus on intersectional, equitable positive action embedded throughout. By the end of the project, our world-leading suite of professional development resources and materials will be freely open and available for institutions to use, with the goal of continuing to enhance UK research supervision by making effective supervision equitable, visible, and accessible to all. This commitment of open access is done with the recognition that socioeconomic and institutional access to materials has been a sector-wide challenge. By doing so, we hope that the positive changes brought about by our project endure and continue to benefit the sector.