From dust to diversity... adventures in atmospheric science and equality

I have a strange job. In fact, I have two strange jobs. Having spent 20 years working on atmospheric aerosols and their role in climate and climate change, in 2015 I became the University of Reading Dean for Diversity and Inclusion (a role I job share with another academic).

Now, the majority of my working week is spent designing and implementing strategy to build a thriving, inclusive University, including leading institutional application for Athena SWAN in 2016 and an imminent submission for the Race Equality Charter in July 2018. The rest is spent supervising a research team, and doing outreach work with schools.

In this talk I will explain why and how I have ended up doing this combination of roles (sneaking some science in along the way), and describe some of the challenges, initiatives and progress we have made in Diversity and Inclusion at Reading.