About:
Date: August 2022
Black Minority and Ethnic Early Career Researcher - How to Stay in Academia conference is hosted by the University of West London and co-hosted by King's College, London. Dr. Bernadine Idowu founded the conference, now in its 6th year.
This year's theme was entitled Making the Invisible Visible. The annual event aims to help and empower young BME individuals through talks, networking and mentoring. This year's conference was chaired by its founder, Dr. Bernadine Idowu, an Associate Professor of Biomedical Sciences at UWL with a line-up of over 17 speakers from across academia and institutions.
Campaign Overview:
There was a selection of key specialist coverage for this campaign. The Big Issue ran an opinion piece from Dr. Bernadine Idowu in print in early August 2022 entitled 'In the academic world, hardly anyone looks like me. It's time to close the gap'. Times Higher Education (THE) also published an opinion piece all about inclusive peer mentoring for their THE Campus platform's EDI (equality, diversity and inclusion) section by Dr. Bernadine Idowu. The conference was attended by just under 400 people either virtually or in person, the biggest turnout so far, with attendees from as far as South Africa. There was even live streaming of the conference at the University of Kent.
There were a number of outlets which expressed initial interest but due to an ever changing news agenda, these fell through including an interview on Times Radio as well as the Observer and Conversation.