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Tag: networking

Workshop helps public contributors become “citizen experts” on equality and diversity in research

Last year, a workshop organised by Oxford Health Biomedical Research Centre (BRC) in partnership with the Horizon 2020 project ALLINTERACT: Widening and diversifying citizen engagement in science, was presented to a group of twenty-five members of the public, including members of the Oxford and Oxford Health BRCs’ Diversity in Research Group and six facilitators.

The focus of this workshop was to examine the ways in which equality, diversity and inclusion (EDI) can help improve the quality of research and to explore ways in which public contributors can help to improve it.

This session was designed and hosted by Pavel Ovseiko, alongside two BRCs’ patient and public involvement leads, Rachel Taylor and Alexandra Almeida:

“To help public contributors become ‘citizen experts’, we have developed a new format for this workshop: instead of giving conventional talks and presentations to public contributors, we facilitated active learning and sharing of knowledge by public contributors themselves.”

The workshop covered a range of topics, including unconscious bias, cultural safety, and the role of public contributors in improving the diversity of research. Participants were also given the opportunity to share their own experiences and perspectives and to discuss ways in which they could contribute to improving equality and diversity in research.

One of the contributors at the event was Susan Thwaite. A member of the patient advisory group at the Church Street Clinic in Wantage, she found the event extremely useful:

 “I would like the work that is carried out by our patient advisory group in Wantage to be more reflective of the community we represent.

Today’s event has given me a clearer understanding of what that means and how to approach the subject of inclusion in our work. Today has been a fantastic networking opportunity and important learning experience for me.”

The workshop was part of a wider effort by the Oxford Biomedical Research Centre to promote diversity and inclusion in research. The Centre has a number of initiatives in place to support underrepresented groups, including a mentoring scheme for early career researchers from ethnic minority backgrounds and a program to improve access to clinical trials for people from diverse communities.

Learn more about this workshop here, or view the short explainer video presented by Pavel Ovseiko

Further information:

In this  BMJ talk medicine podcast, Dr. Javier Rodríguez-Carrio talks to Dr. Pavel Ovseiko and Prof. Laura Coates about the recent paper on gender equity in academic rheumatology which emerged from a EULAR task force. 

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The Launch of INRB

At the end of the ResBios final conference (Brussels, 7 December 2022), the International Network for Responsible Biosciences was officially launched. Its logic is to benefit the activities that have been done by the project as a whole and give them an institutional shape.

The INRB aim to reinforce the research activity of partners and disseminate scientific culture. The Network is intended as multi-, inter- and trans-disciplinary and characterized by the interest and practice of Responsible Research and Innovation (RRI) and Open Science (OS) approaches and their evolution. The INRB will give an institutional feature to a community of practice that already exists but has not had the opportunity to connect. Furthermore, the network is promoted by the UNESCO Interdisciplinary Chair in Biotechnology and Bioethics, which is held by the ResBios Coordinator, the University of Rome – Tor Vergata.

So far, the network has had 95 individual subscriptions. The current members of the network operate, overall, in 41 universities, research centers and international organizations located in 25 different countries.

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