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Equality, Diversity and Inclusion

We're committed to developing a fully inclusive community.

Drawing on diversity

The diversity of our students and staff is a key strength of our School. Our supportive and positive culture encourages everyone to flourish and to reach their potential. We nurture strong, positive relationships between all member of our community, grounded in dignity and respect.

All sections of the School of Modern Languages are represented on our Committee for Equality, Diversity, and Inclusion, which:

  • supports students and staff to overcome any potential barriers relating (but not limited) to gender, age, sexual orientation, ethnic heritage, religious belief, physical and/or mental disability and neurodiversity
  • promotes inclusive values throughout our community through events and projects
  • engages students and staff in joint projects to achieve our aims

We report to the Student-Staff Committees, to the School Executive Board and to the Humanities and Social Sciences (HaSS) Faculty EDI Forum.

Our Equality, Diversity and Inclusion policy can be downloaded here: SML EDI Policy 2021 (PDF: 410 KB)

Athena SWAN

The School achieved a Bronze Athena SWAN award in October 2018. This included an action plan to work towards greater gender equity in the School.

The School is now part of the HaSS Faculty Silver award application, which was submitted in March 2024. The outcome of this is expected in the summer of 2024.

More information about the Athena SWAN Charter can be found here.

Image of the Language Resource Centre, a large space with computers.

Student Opportunities and EDI

Representation

Student EDI reps at both undergraduate and postgraduate level receive training from the Students' Union and the School. They sit on the EDI committee and the Student-Staff Committee. This is an important role and a great one for your CV – Equality, Diversity, and Inclusion are all key values for most employers.

Decolonising Champion

This is a paid role that is advertised to students every year. The champion works closely with the staff decolonising lead and other colleagues and students, supporting or leading on projects or events. 

Student Internships

We regularly advertise opportunities for students to get involved in paid work on EDI-related projects. In the past, these have involved researching inclusive language in various linguistic and cultural contexts, working with colleagues and other students to map the decolonising of particular modules, organising a book festival, working on producing a digital glossary, and subtitling a film.

Four students presenting a sign introducing the Book Fair.
A group of people talking.

Current Projects

Below, you can find out more about the projects that we are currently working on within the School in support of Equality, Diversity, and Inclusion.

Language and Inclusivity

This work began in 2018, with a project led by Anne-Charlotte Husson and Pauline Henry-Tierney on Language and Gender Inclusivity. This multilingual glossary supports English native speakers as well as speakers of Arabic, Chinese, French and Spanish to think about the impact of the words we choose and gender inclusivity in the UK context. We are currently working to include translations into Portuguese, Japanese and German. 

In response to student feedback, we are now also extending this work to focus on trans and non-binary inclusion in the main languages taught in the School of Modern Languages: Chinese, French, German, Japanese, Portuguese, Spanish. A working group of colleagues and student interns are collaborating to produce some examples, guidance and resources that can be helpful for students (especially those preparing to go abroad) and for teachers.

Our longer-term goal with this project is to develop and make available inclusive language resources in relation to other protected characteristics.

Decolonising Ourselves

Have you ever asked yourself how “Modern Languages” came to be a discipline? Or how the “global” languages we study have come to be spoken all over the world? One of the primary motivations for studying languages, cultures and societies is to enable communication and intercultural understanding. But we can only really achieve this if we also understand how the languages we speak are embedded in structures of power and domination, historically and today. 

Students and colleagues in SML are engaging with decolonial debates, pedagogies and processes, in learning and teaching and research. Below are just a few of our recent activities, events and resources:

  • In response to student demand, we have created a reading list focusing on the colonial and postcolonial histories and presents of the cultures and languages that we study and work with. Current students can check it out here.
  • The 'Decolonising Modern Languages' blog features contributions from colleagues and students, as well as from others working in our disciplines.
  • The ‘Decolonising the Curricula Book Festival’, run by students in May 2023 and funded by the NU Black History Month fund, featured presentations from students on books that had marked them as well as the library on resources for further research as well as lively discussions over food and drink.
  • The SML Essay Prize for Decolonial and Inclusive writing, launched in 2024, offers £50 and a mention on the HEAR certificate for the winning student.

You can read more about our decolonising activities in our newsletters: