Author bio:

Pragya Agarwal is a behavioural and data scientist, honorary professor of Social Inclusion at Loughborough University, and founder of research think-tank ‘The 50 Percent Project’ that examines gender and racial inequities around the world. Pragya is the author of a number of scholarly articles, and three non-fiction books. ‘Sway: Unravelling Unconscious Bias’ was published in 2020 with Bloomsbury and was nominated one of best popular science books of 2020, Guardian Book of the Week and shortlisted for the Transmission Prize. ‘Wish We Knew What To Say: Talking With Children about Race’ was also published in 2020 and her next book ‘(M)otherhood: On the choices of being a woman’ was published in June 2021. Besides non-fiction books for adults, Pragya has also recently written her first book for children titled ‘Stand up to Racism’ published by Hachette. Her writing has appeared in Guardian, Prospect, Forbes, BBC Science Focus, Scientific American and New Scientist amongst others, and her creative non-fiction writing also appears in several literary magazines. She is a two-time TEDx speaker and has appeared on BBC Woman's Hour. NPR, Radio 5 live, BBC Breakfast, ABC and many other international media platforms. Dr Agarwal will talk with us about Unconscious Bias, based on her hit book "Sway: Unravelling Unconscious Bias".

This talk is part of the Department of Chemistry Diversity Book Club series, with the final book this year being "Sway" and exploring biases within the chemical sciences, with the project funded by the Royal Society of Chemistry, and the talk today kindly funded by the Science Faculty.