Top Tips

1. Embed in EDI as part of good public engagement practice

EDI should not be seen as an addition to your practice, but rather as part of good public engagement practice. There are a number of ways to get started with this, including:

• Reviewing how inclusive your slides are for talks such as checking the size of the text, background colour and font used. Here is this guide to get you started
• Use inclusive language in your talks and avoid exclusionary language and phrases such as “as everyone knows”
• Provide image descriptions for images used in social media posts and in slides
• Having a budget specifically for taking into account barriers to participation for the audience, staff and volunteers. For example, childcare costs, loss of income due to participation, cost for taxis, etc.
• Ask for dietary requirements if there is catering and providing an equally good range of non-alcoholic drinks to alcoholic drinks if they are served at an event
• Assess the inclusivity of a space you will use for an event, for example how accessible it is for wheelchair users, if there are any gender neutral toilets and if there is a room which can be used as a quiet space. This information should be included in your event description so that potential attendees can choose whether the space is accessible for them
• Use a code of conduct and include this in the event description for all involved to agree to
• Do not assume access needs for your audience, staff or volunteers involved in a public engagement activity. For example, two people can have the same disability and have different access needs, and needs can change on a day-to-day basis

2. Do not make assumptions about audiences

It is important not to make assumptions about your audience such as assuming what knowledge they may have of your research area. It is best to ask them questions about what they know and what their experiences are.

Our assumptions can be influenced by our biases. Unconscious bias is informed by our life-long experiences and can lead to unconscious thinking, positive or negative, of a person or a group of people and can lead to exclusion. This can affect how we engage with an audience during a talk or interactive activity as well as how a public engagement activity is designed.

In addition a group of people or demographic will not be homogenous. Intersectionality is an analytical tool that we can use to see how people can have unique experiences of discrimination due to overlapping systems of oppression. If we do not apply intersectionality to our work, we can end up missing crucial parts of the picture and many voices can be unheard.

Intersectionality is a term coined by Professor Kimberlé Crenshaw in 1989 while she was researching legal cases in which Black women were experiencing both racism and sexism at the same time. Ideas about intersectionality were written about before this, such as the Combahee River Collective Statement.

TED talk by Professor Crenshaw

3. Build long-term relationships and learn about communities

Public engagement activities should also be co-designed with our audiences and with mutual benefit in mind. As mentioned in the video above, it is important to take into account the history a community has with your area of research and their experiences of marginalisation historically and today. It’s key to build long-term relationships with communities to learn about them and build trust with them. As part of the relationship building process, it’s important not to make assumptions about them such as the language they prefer to use to describe themselves.

A way in which you could learn more about a community and build a relationship with them is to work with organisations who already work with the audience(s) you want to engage.

In addition, it’s important for us to consider power dynamics. Using the wheel of power/privilege (such as this example by Sylvia Duckworth) can be used to help us reflect on our positionality and where in certain contexts we have more power in comparison to the audiences we engage.

4. Take time to reflect

In general it’s important to take time to reflect on your public engagement practice and as part of this reflection, consider how you can make your practice more equitable and inclusive. It’s expected that your practice will change over time and remember it’s a marathon, not a sprint.

As part of your reflection, you can have conversations with other researchers involved in public engagement about how they’re embedding in EDI and or have a book/journal club where you learn more together or share case studies.

You can also use frameworks to help you with your reflection such as the Equity Compass and 3 key principles of inclusive science communication: intentionality, reciprocity & reflexivity.

Your activity evaluation can also help inform this reflection by identifying which audience(s) are being underserved and how effective the engagement activity was.

5. Inclusion should be considered for you too

Inclusion should not just be for our audiences: it should also be for the researchers who are doing public engagement. When running public engagement activities, it is important to consider any barriers for researchers to be involved.

It’s also important for researchers to feel like they can, if they wish to, use their lived experiences to inform their public engagement practice. This can lead to more impactful public engagement activities as they may have an insight into the experiences of different audiences as well as help with identifying audiences who are currently being underserved in public engagement.

Further Resources

About the author

Sarah Cosgriff (she/they) has worked in science communication and STEM education for over a decade. Sarah is an experienced trainer specialising in EDI in engagement, in particular working with young audiences. Alongside this she works for the Association for Science Education to support teachers with embedding inclusive practice and also works for Schools OUT, a LGBT+ education charity who foundedLGBT+ History Month in the UK.

You will also find Sarah on stage presenting science shows, consulting on projects and coordinating ‘STEM for Queer Youth’, a science engagement project based at a LGBTQ+ youth group in Swindon. Outside of their engagement work, Sarah does asexuality advocacy and activism.

Sarah’s work in EDI was recognised by the National Diversity Awards in 2022 when they were shortlisted for the Positive Role Model Award – LGBT award.