MHM achieves Athena SWAN Bronze Award for gender equality

The School of Music, Humanities and Media (MHM) is delighted to have been successful in its application for an Athena SWAN Bronze Award. The award recognises MHM’s commitment to Advance HE’s Athena SWAN charter which sets out principles for transforming gender equality within Higher Education institutions.

The School established a self-assessment team - composed of academic, administrative and technical staff along with undergraduate and postgraduate students - which met regularly throughout the process. MHM’s Diversity Co-ordinator Dr Dave Calvert took the lead on preparing the application, with Data and Quality Administrator Helen Border co-ordinating the extensive dataset.

The application evaluates the School’s current investment in advancing gender equality and sets out a comprehensive Action Plan to strengthen this further by considering all aspects of student experience and achievement, staff appointments and promotions, and the awareness of equality issues throughout the School.

"I am immensely proud of the positive steps the School has taken towards gender equality in the past years. However, the Athena SWAN award is as much a call to action as it is a badge of honour - there is much work to do yet, and I look forward to tackling the tasks at hand together with staff and students in Music, Humanities and Media" (Professor Thomas Schmidt, Dean MHM).

MHM’s success follows the University’s renewal of its Institutional Bronze award, and the Athena SWAN awards attained by the School of Applied Sciences and the Business School.