Power and Privilege in Academia – Cancelled

We write to inform you that we have made the difficult decision, to cancel our inaugural webinar – “Power and Privilege in Academia”. We have been overwhelmed by the number of registrations (over 100 at our last count), and we want to explain our reasons for making this decision, and the exciting alternative that we are currently planning (for you all).

Members of the University and College Union (UCU) in the UK will be participating in strike action on 21 March 2023, to defend their right to a fair pension, fair and equal pay, secure contracts, and equal and sustainable workload. Unequal pay is a particular issue for people of colour, and we have therefore decided to cancel this event to stand in full solidarity with those striking.

Given the interest in our inaugural event, and the potential issues with rescheduling activities on strike days, we have decided to take a more “bottom-up” approach in how we discuss the broad topic. We will be releasing a limited podcast series in Autumn 2023, where we will discuss subtopics within the broader theme of power and privilege in academia, with people of colour working in different sectors within bioethics. These conversations will begin to explore the power imbalances and oppressive structures that unfortunately continue to pervade academia.

Both Professor Ilina Singh (Professor of Neuroscience and Society at the University of Oxford, England, and Co-Director of the Wellcome Trust Centre for Ethics and the Humanities) and Professor Keisha S. Ray (Assistant Professor of Bioethics and Medical Humanities at McGovern Medical School in Houston, Texas) have accepted our invitation to be interviewed as part of this podcast series, and they will reflect on their experiences of navigating research culture within the US and UK respectively. Other proposed subtopics for this podcast series include: disrupting hierarchies, anti-racism within and across higher education establishments, making publishing more inclusive and accessible, and the challenges faced by postgraduate researchers.

We are particularly keen to hear from you about what questions you would like to ask experienced academics and researchers. We hope to pull together your questions into topic guides for each podcast. If you had any questions that you would have liked to ask in our first webinar, or if you have any suggestions for future activities, please submit them here: https://forms.office.com/e/fpThrKRDwF