This is My Environmental Journey

"This is My Environmental Journey" (TIMELY) is a NERC Opening up the Environment 2025 project. It aims to inspire and support underrepresented students, researchers, and professionals to pursue careers in environmental science. A key but under-addressed barrier is the lack of accessible, relatable, and inspiring career narratives, which limits individuals’ ability to envision a future in the field.

TIMELY responds to this challenge by curating and showcasing diverse career journeys through art-based methods, including curated exhibitions, creative storytelling, and visual elicitation. The project will identify role models from underrepresented groups, those with non-linear career paths, and individuals transitioning from other disciplines. Their stories will feature pivotal moments, opportunities, and achievements. These will be brought to life in the exhibition This is My Environmental Journey, presented both in person at the University of Warwick and online to ensure broad accessibility.

In this project, we will:

• Map and assess Warwick’s existing diversity and inclusion practices in environmental science.
• Co-create a scalable, transferable framework for curating career journeys. Researchers, professionals, partners, artists, and people with lived experience will define criteria for selecting role models, structuring narratives, and applying creative storytelling techniques.
• Organise in-person and online exhibitions to showcase diverse environmental career stories through multimedia storytelling, personal narratives, and visualisations.
• Form new partnerships with academic institutions, exhibition networks, and training providers. This will engage a broad range of stakeholders and audiences, build inclusive practices, and develop a platform for long-term change to improve diversity, inclusion, and interdisciplinarity in environmental science.