LATEST NEWS

RESEARCHER FUNDRAISER OPENS DOORWAYS FOR WOMEN AND GIRLS INTO RESEARCH

We are delighted to report that our book 'ResearcHER: The power and potential of research careers for women' has been distributed for free across the UK, Ireland, Australia and Africa via a network of Universities, Charities and Research institutions.  

The book demonstrates the true diversity of scholarship, and the women leading the way, exploring who researchers are and what they really do, all whilst celebrating female scholarship. Each short chapter offers an insight into a real-life researcher, their background and journey into a research career, what they’re currently researching, their top tips for budding researchers, and fun facts and activities to explore yourself.

ResearcHER smashes stereotypes to show you that researchers are women from all backgrounds, researchers come from diverse geographies, are disabled and able-bodied, are transgender, nonbinary, queer. Researchers look just like you, and you could be one too.

What we need now are donations so we can supply more free books and hold the doorway open to more girls starting a research career. 

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WOMEN IN ACADEMIA SUPPORT NETWORK #WIASN CONFERENCE LIVE STREAMED FREE IN OVER 100 COUNTRIES

Our conference 'Virtually Undisciplined: Diversifying Higher Education and Research through Interconnectivity' was FREE and open to all.  The conference was live streamed to our 12,000+ members in over 100 countries as well as to an additional 400 ticket holders. Over 2 days and 25 hours of content we welcomed presentations, performances, workshops and more from 54 speakers from 35 different Universities and organisations. Special thanks to support from Facebook, Royal Holloway University and Emerald Publishing. Find our dedicated conference website,  here

NORTHERN DIGITAL AWARDS - WINNER EQUALITY AND DIVERSITY

Sharing the night with the likes of ITV Coronation street and some of the UK most innovative social media and marketing companies -  WIASN were  announced winners of the award for Diversity and Inclusion at the Northern Digital Awards on 17th March 2022 for our digital activism for gender equity. Our online global professional network of over 12k academics and researchers was recognised for it's work in progressing gender equity and ensuring women excel in research careers.

NATIONAL DIVERSITY AWARDS NOMINEE

WIASN are delighted to have been nominated for a second consecutive year in the National Diversity Awards. In connection with ITV the awards celebrate the achievements of grass roots communities. Voting on the nominees closes on 20th May 2022. Good luck to all the nominees.

FACEBOOK COMMUNITY ACCELERATOR AWARD WINNERS

In 2021 WIASN was selected from over 42k global applicants to be one of the 2021-2022 Community Accelerator communities. The Accelerator provides coaching, training and financial contributions to aid the growth of the most influential social media communities. As one of only 10 communities in the UK cohort WIASN was able to develop new products and services for our membership as well as contribute expertise to Facebook in the development of their products and services and learn about new developments about the Metaverse

RESEARCHER BOOK LAUNCH!

We are absolutely delighted to launch our edited collection 'ResearcHER' published with Emerald Publishing. ResearcHER tells WIASN member stories to smash stereotypes of women in research and the kinds of research they do. An initial 1000 books will be distributed in 1000 schools across our membership 100 countries to inspire future generations into research careers. Keep an eye out for our fundraiser 'Million Reads' to donate even more books to more schools. Of course the book also makes an excellent gift and it is available on pre-order here ResearcHER

INCLUSIVE LEADERSHIP TRAINING ROLL OUT 2022

We started 2022 with the roll our of our Inclusive Leadership offer to staff at the Christie NHS Trust. We've had some amazing feedback and are working on future iterations of the training. On the back of this WIASN have been invited to contribute to further NHS Trust EDI work in the Northwest and we are looking forward to developing this exciting new phase of the business  - where healthcare and research based practice drive innovation and best practice. If you would like to discuss leadership training packages for your organisation please get in touch contact@wiasn.com

DISABILITY IN HIGHER EDUCATION: TRAINING AT UNIVERSITY OF MANCHESTER

Over 2021 and 2022 we saw the initial phase of our 'Students and Disability' training offer with University of Manchester. Sessions were designed by us as disabled scholars and drawing on our wider work with other staff disability networks and national groups. The training was delivered to staff across two schools in the Faculty of Humanities with a focus on PGR and undergraduate student experience. Using the social model of disability we explored what institutions and staff can and must do so that disabled students can flourish - whilst not forgetting that disabled student experience is linked to disabled staff experience. Properly supporting and excelling your disabled staff is a key way to improve disabled student experience.

WIASN TOP FOR DEVELOPING RESEARCH CULTURE: ALTERNATIVE REF AWARD WINNERS

We were honoured to have received an Alternative REF award for 'Hidden Role'. The REF is the UK Research Excellence Framework. The REF seeks to benchmark and award institutions for research excellence and this is done by scholars submitting examples of work to an awarding panel. However, REF promotes the idea of the lone scholar and fails to address that research is conducted within a community. That community contains researchers, grant writers, administrators and many, many more people than were named on the grant fund or research project in order for it to be successful and provide impact. The Hidden REF was conceived as a way to acknowledge that research takes a community and is more about collegiality than competition. For our work in bringing international scholars together and sharing our experiences, challenges, providing feedback on grant drafts, article drafts etc WIASN was awarded the Hidden Role and we couldn't be more delighted. The award speaks to how our members give of their time to support the collective effort of research.