Challenger Society for Marine Science: Increasing Opportunity Through an Equity, Diversity, Inclusivity, and Accessibility Working Group

The Challenger Society for Marine Science (CSMS) is the learned society for marine scientists based in the United Kingdom, with a membership of over 470 people from >100 institutions, across all academic career stages. CSMS members have been interested in improving the representation of a diverse range of identities in UK marine science, largely driven by their own experiences of inequity in the discipline, such as the challenges faced by women (Hendry et al., 2020). The structural exclusion of individuals by race, sex, ethnicity, social class, disability, sexuality, and the compound sum of these factors can result in a lack of diversity during recruitment and poor retention. Since 2021, CSMS has formed the first UK-wide equity, diversity, inclusion, and accessibility (EDIA) working group for marine scientists, with the aim of coordinating action to address the causes of exclusion and to improve representation across the discipline. The group of 25 volunteers meets each month to discuss a topical agenda, and the chair of the working group sits on the council of CSMS, providing EDIA input from the working group on society-wide strategic decisions. To date, the main actions of the group have focused on: Improving CSMS processes to increase diversity in fellowship and award nominations Increasing the visibility of EDIA-related topics through introducing a dedicated EDIA plenary session at the CSMS conference Breaking down barriers to inclusivity through establishing FindAScienceBerth, a spin-off project to increase access to sea­going fieldwork Critical self-reflection of the ongoing lack of racial diversity in UK marine science through affiliation with the Unlearning Racism in Geoscience (URGE) initiative

Details