News & Events

We’re delighted to share that the Athena SWAN bronze award was awarded to BU this week.

Athena SWAN is a national scheme focused on supporting, advancing and celebrating positive employment practices for women in higher education and research. At the heart of the scheme is to promote women’s careers in science, technology, engineering, maths and medicine (STEMM) – although this opened up to other careers such as arts, humanities, social sciences, business and law in April 2015.

Professor Tiantian Zhang who led the submission for BU said:  “I am absolutely delighted and would like to thank everyone who has contributed along the journey since we joined the Athena SWAN Charter in 2012. The bronze award recognises BU’s achievement so far and, more importantly, our commitment to deliver planned actions to progress this important issue as a university.”

BU has been recognised for our commitment to enhancing women’s representation at senior academic levels, supporting a family friendly working environment and improving women representation in our Research Excellence Framework submission.

This is great news for students, who can be proud to study in an institution committed to gender equality and reap the benefits of learning alongside academics from a range of backgrounds.

The award is valid for three years, during which time BU will be making faculty and departmental award submissions and delivering an institutional action plan aiming for an institutional silver award submission.

For more information about Athena SWAN and its commitment can be found on the Equality Challenge Unit website.