Athena SWAN gender equality Bronze award for School of Arts and Humanities

The School of Arts and Humanities is delighted to have been conferred the Athena SWAN Bronze Award  for gender equality, in recognition of its commitment to progressing gender equality within the School. 

The award recognises the School’s commitment to Advance HE’s Athena SWAN Charter, which sets out principles and a framework for transforming gender equality within Higher Education Institutions. 

This award means all schools at the University of Huddersfield, as well as the University overall, now hold an Athena SWAN award.

Discover more about the School of Arts and Humanities

In preparing for its Athena SWAN application, the School of Arts and Humanities formed a Self-Assessment Team, led by Helen Border, with staff and students drawn from across all academic and professional service departments. 

The team conducted various consultations with staff and students to understand perceptions around equality, inclusion, work-life balance, career development and wellbeing. These consultations, along with an evaluation of current policies and practices, helped to inform the application and action plan.  

Highlighted areas of good practice include the introduction of a new academic workload allocation model to ensure transparency and fairness, particularly for research and administrative activities; and the continuation of hybrid working arrangements post Covid, to support work-life balance, especially for those with caring responsibilities.

“From its inception the importance of embedding an inclusive culture within the School of Arts and Humanities has been a priority,” says Professor Nic Clear, Dean, School of Arts and Humanities.

“Many of the School’s inclusive principles are encapsulated in the school’s ident, a rainbow colour wheel, which tries to describe a pluralistic ethos that exists without rigid boundaries that, at any point, gives unique individual values. The wider cultural significance of the logo that uses the rainbow colouring is also a quite deliberate statement of intent. Receiving the Bronze Athena Swan Award is acknowledgement of the success of our approach.”

The School’s action plan for the next five years is ambitious yet achievable, and includes initiatives to increase the proportion of under-represented student groups, increase the proportion of female academic staff at senior levels, improve career development support and ensure gender balance in leadership roles.