Category: Diversity
As a woman studying in the University of Edinburgh’s School of Informatics, I’ve often felt like the odd one out. Informatics, and especially computer science, is still a field largely dominated by men, and this can sometimes feel isolating. There have been times when I’ve felt that my voice wasn’t heard as much, or that […]
I would like to take this opportunity to advertise the fantastic ED&I reading group that regularly meets in the Informatics Forum. This reading group usually discusses a research paper on a topic related to equality, diversity and inclusion. Everyone in Informatics – and beyond – is invited to attend. To give you an idea of […]
Research in AI is an increasingly exciting and fast-paced environment, with many new interesting features and applications available at a wider scale. However, it is also the topic of heavy criticism for often failing to represent and serve minority groups, which have historically been underrepresented in conversations about technology. Being PhD students in the CDT […]
Our School works best when everybody is heard, and nobody is left behind. We are always eager to find out how to improve our community, with regular official feedback opportunities. In the last two years the School Culture survey, Athena Swan focus groups, and the University’s Staff Engagement survey have been implemented. These have revealed some […]
I went to the WomEncourage conference in Trondheim, Norway in September 2023, and here are some lessons that I learnt. It’s amazing to be in a female-dominated computing environment. We are all used to spaces where people are talking about computing being very male dominated. Mostly that is ok, and mostly we can feel welcome […]
Our School undertakes a culture survey of all School members every two years. We don’t do this annually because we feel all this would result in is survey fatigue. We know that completing the survey takes some time! So why do it? We think the best incentive for completing the survey is evidence that the […]
BCSWomen organises the annual Lovelace Colloquium: a day featuring talks, a careers panel, employer stands and a student poster contest. This year, three students from the University of Edinburgh made the trip to Sheffield, and Qiuye Zhang in fact won first place with her poster “Can Artificial Neural Networks Learn like Brains?” in the second […]
There are disproportionately few women enrolling for undergraduate degrees in computing in the UK. Despite constituting 50.5% of the UK population and 57% of college graduates in the UK, only 19% of the technology workforce are women. The statistics for staff within our school align well with the national figures, with women constituting 56% of […]