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Enabling equitable cultures: postgraduate programmes

Academic researchers Equity, diversity and inclusion

This page contains a collection of equality, diversity and inclusion (EDI) resources with relevance to postgraduate programmes. These resources were collated as part of the Enabling equitable cultures of knowledge and practice in physical geography and environmental sciences project, funded by the Natural Environment Research Council (NERC).

This page is dynamic; if you know of other relevant resources or wish to submit your own case study, we’d like to hear from you at rhed@rgs.org

The Society does not accept responsibility for the content of the external sites. Inclusion on this list does not equate to an endorsement of any content or organisation. Please contact the external site for questions regarding individual resources.

Case studies

Recruitment and training at doctoral level: best practice principles

Natural Environment Research Council (NERC) (UK).

Recommendations on best practice in all stages of recruitment and training for NERC training grant holders, including finding talent, shortlisting and interviews, nurturing talent, monitoring and reporting.

EDI Policies

The Central England NERC Training Alliance (CENTA) (UK).

We ask that PhD project supervisory teams strive to be diverse, for example including academics with a mix of gender, ethnicity and career stage.

Through our Flagship proposal scheme, we strongly urge academics to collaborate with CENTA partners on PhD projects. This improves visibility of career opportunities beyond academia, which is a key consideration for some groups of students when considering PhD level study.

We ask our academics to use inclusive language in the PhD project description, the links below provide good advice on this topic and can be used to check the language in project descriptions.

Ahmet, A. (2020). Who is worthy of a place on these walls? Postgraduate students, UK universities, and institutional racism. Area, 52, pp. 678-686.
Barncroft, S.F. (2018). Toward a critical theory of science, technology, engineering, and mathematics doctoral persistence: Critical capital theory, Science Education, 102(6), pp. 1319-1335. Access this resource.
GuildHE (2022). Understanding the lived experience of ethnic minority students in postgraduate research. Access this resource.
McKendrick, J.H. (1996). A discipline of equal opportunity? Gender and participation in postgraduate geography, Area, 28, pp. 318–330.