Anne Mwangi, Head of the Race Equality Charter (REC), reflects on the anniversary celebrations for the Equality Charters, held at Advance HE’s EDI Conference 2025.
Throughout 2025, we are celebrating the 20th anniversary of Athena Swan and the 10th anniversary of the Race Equality Charter. We kicked off our celebrations with a few events at this year’s EDI conference in Newcastle during April.
Recognising achievement
We began by holding an awards reception for the 232 Athena Swan and 14 Race Equality Charter institutions and departments that received their awards in 2024.
Many institutions sent their representatives who received their certificates and were congratulated by Dr Ruth Gilligan, Assistant Director for Inclusive Institutions at Advance HE.
A thought-provoking address
In the evening ahead of the awards dinner, our special guest speaker, Professor Nicola Rollock, gave an inspiring and thought-provoking speech on the geopolitical issues shaping equity issues in higher education
She began by congratulating all the Athena Swan and Race Equality Charter awardees for their dedication and great conscientiousness in doing the work to make their institutions more inclusive. In particular, for the impactful work demonstrated by those who had received Silver and Gold awards.
However, she cautioned that winning an award is not necessarily an indication that all is well. She noted that while awards are an important recognition of progress, they should not be seen as an endpoint; ongoing challenges around representation and lived experience remain across the sector, and it is essential that institutions stay focused on meaningful, sustained change rather than symbolic gestures.
Intersectionality in challenging times
In her provocation on intersectionality, Professor Rollock noted that institutions are likely to re-order their priorities around their equity work when faced with the current financial and geopolitical pressures. She cautioned against the risk that intersectionality will become a go-to shortcut and already marginalised or underserved groups will get lost in that reshuffle.
This is an important and timely point, and one that we at Advance HE are actively considering as we work to ensure our approach to intersectionality not only acknowledges complexity, but also centres and uplifts those who are most marginalised.
Sharing success: Charter case studies with impact
On the second day of the conference, we held two charters workshops. The first one, facilitated by Georgina Brown of Advance HE, showcased four impactful case studies depicting the long-term cultural change achieved through engagement with the Charters by Imperial College London’s Fellowship for academics returning from parental leave; Kingston University’s racially and culturally responsive student engagement programmes; Queen’s University Belfast’s data-informed approach to supporting female applicants; and UCL’s Academic Career Framework, which significantly increased the number of women promoted to Professor.
More than 40 participants moved from table to table in timed rounds, creating a buzz of curiosity, conversation and connection. The energy and enthusiasm within this workshop demonstrated the willingness to learn and share best practice that has been facilitated by the Charter frameworks and institutional leads. It showed just how powerful and impactful this work can be when embedded thoughtfully and led with purpose.
These case studies can be found in our Charters Good Practice Initiatives database, and we would encourage other institutions to share their impact case studies with us to enhance good practice in the sector.
Panel perspectives
The second workshop was a panel with Professor Parveen Yaqoob OBE – DVC and PVC (Research and Innovation), University of Reading; Karishma Asher, Race Equality Officer at University of Liverpool; Oyebanji Adewumi MBE, Director of EDI at University of Greenwich and Dr Ruth Gilligan, chaired by Tara Leach, Charters Advisor at Advance HE.
The panel discussed the imperative of sustaining EDI work in difficult times, the importance of using data to underpin our work and engage those opposed to it, the role of senior leaders in driving cultural change and the importance of self-care for those leading on this work due to the emotional labour which can be detrimental to their wellbeing.
Personal impact
Professor Yaqoob talked of the importance of the Charters in driving long-term cultural change and gave an account of her personal story …”I would not be sitting here today if it were not for Athena Swan. About 10 years ago my university decided it wanted to increase women in senior leadership positions, and it decided that it was going to use its institutional Athena Swan Action Plan to offer all those roles as job share.”
This led her to apply for a PVC research role as a job share, and she became the first person from an ethnic minority to serve in the executive board. A couple of years later she became the first female deputy VC in her university’s 100-year history. She later became chair of the Athena Swan Governance Committee and oversaw the Charter’s transformation.
She went on to argue that it’s never been more important to keep making the business case for EDI absolutely clear and the 10- and 20-year milestones of the Charters are a trigger for us to do that because the shift from intention to impact is going to be very important in the future.
Celebrating the remarkable progress that institutions have made by engaging with the two Charters over the past two decades was exciting and inspirational. Institutional leads and other delegates were motivated and reinvigorated by the awards event, the pre-dinner speech by Nicola Rollock, the workshops depicting impactful case studies and the testimonials of significant progress made in gender and race equity across different institutions and departments.
Looking forward
Throughout 2025, Advance HE and our member institutions will continue to celebrate the 20th anniversary of Athena Swan and 10th anniversary of the Race Equality Charter using images of the Charter timelines, interviews, case studies and blogposts, culminating with a celebratory webinar on 12 November.
