Lessons from a UK research school for Black physicists and engineers

A group of scientists at Imperial College collaborated with The Blackett Lab Family, a collective of UK-based Black physicists, to host the UK’s first research school for Black physicists and engineers. Here they reflect on what they learnt and why we should all join in the mission to end inequality in academia.

Physics and engineering help society understand and solve complex problems and tackle global concerns. It is well known that the physics and engineering communities do not look like the wider society they serve. In the UK, Black people are the most under-represented demographic in these communities. For example, less than 1.4% of physics undergraduate students are Black1, and Black physicists make up less than 0.5% of physics faculty, with only one Black physics professor across the entire country2. These numbers are unacceptably low and do not reflect Black student participation within the undergraduate population across all subjects, or even amongst those who choose science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM) degrees (5.2%). The significant loss of talent through the academic pipeline means that diversity of thought for better, more innovative physics and engineering is much narrower than it should be. The reasons the UK has so few Black physicists and engineers is not that they are disinterested, unmotivated or incapable: it is that they are underestimated, disempowered and marginalized by the culture within our disciplines3.

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