Parthive serves on the the School of Cellular and Molecular Medicine (CMM) Equality, Diversity and Inclusion (EDI) Committee, which aims to promote a welcoming and inclusive environment where everyone is treated equally, regardless of their sex, gender, sexual orientation, ethnicity, race, class, culture, religion, nationality, health status or disability, age or family situation. To foster this, Parthive has helped write the School Code of Conduct, which outlines behaviours that cultivate a positive and inclusive environment. He has also helped design posters providing examples of microaggressions that adversely affect women, BAME and LGBT+ colleagues.
Together with Kaltun Duale in Prof Adam Finn’s group, Parthive has also held a number of Wellcome Trust-style Cafe Cultures to identify challenges that Black, Asian and Minority Ethnic (BAME) students and staff face in academia and to find solutions. The aim of these Café Cultures is to bring awareness of these challenges for BAME students and staff, to provide a safe space to discuss these challenges and experiences and to help build a better research culture in Bristol and beyond. These Cafe Cultures were attended by BAME group leaders, postdoctoral fellows, postgraduate students and technicians. The group was gender balanced and included individuals from each BAME group. The discussions identified 13 challenges faced by BAME students and staff. Numerous solutions were suggested by the participants. These were then anonymously fed into our School’s EDI action plan and presented to the Faculty of Life Sciences EDI Committee. More recently, Parthive has helped the School apply for the Athena Swan Silver award for gender equality. For this, he has helped formulate an action plan to address bullying and harassment at work. |