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Strategies for making geoscience PhD recruitment more equitable

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Admission to doctoral study is a crucial step in the academic pipeline, but discriminatory procedures can disproportionately impact students from ethnic minority backgrounds. We show how these policies contribute to inequity in the geosciences and propose strategies for change.

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Fig. 1: Barriers, proposed interventions, and intended outcome.

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Acknowledgements

The EQUATOR project is funded under NERC grant 2021EDIE004Dowey. We are grateful for additional financial support from the British Geological Survey; and for participation of the AURA, ARIES, CENTA, PANORAMA, SENSE, and OXFORD Doctoral Organisations, the Centre for the Observation and Modelling of Earthquakes and Tectonics, and the Sheffield Hallam University Department of the Natural and Built Environment. Equator has ethical approval under Sheffield Hallam University, code ER39312553. Open access (anonymous) evaluation data is available here: https://doi.org/10.17032/shu-0000000174.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. University of Oxford, Oxford, UK

    Benjamin Fernando

  2. University of Birmingham, Birmingham, UK

    Sam Giles & Anya Lawrence

  3. Imperial College London, London, UK

    Christopher Jackson

  4. University of Plymouth, Plymouth, UK

    Munira Raji & Jacqueline Houghton

  5. Black in Geoscience http://www.blackingeoscience.org/

    Munira Raji

  6. University of Hull, Hull, UK

    Rebecca Williams

  7. University of East Anglia, Norwich, UK

    Jenni Barclay

  8. University of Liverpool, Liverpool, UK

    Louisa Brotherson

  9. Institution of Environmental Sciences, London, UK

    Ethny Childs

  10. Wessex Museums https://www.wessexmuseums.org.uk/

    Anjana Khatwa

  11. Geological Society of London, London, UK

    Alicia Newton

  12. British Geological Survey, Nottingham, UK

    Keely Mills

  13. Black Geographers https://www.blackgeographers.com

    Francisca Rockey

  14. Keele University, Keele, UK

    Steven Rogers

  15. Royal Geographical Society, London, UK

    Catherine Souch

  16. Sheffield Hallam University, Sheffield, UK

    Natasha Dowey

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  1. Benjamin Fernando
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  2. Sam Giles
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  3. Christopher Jackson
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  4. Anya Lawrence
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  5. Munira Raji
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  6. Rebecca Williams
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  7. Jenni Barclay
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  8. Louisa Brotherson
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  9. Ethny Childs
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  10. Jacqueline Houghton
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  11. Anjana Khatwa
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  12. Alicia Newton
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  13. Keely Mills
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  14. Francisca Rockey
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  15. Steven Rogers
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  16. Catherine Souch
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  17. Natasha Dowey
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Corresponding author

Correspondence to Benjamin Fernando.

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The authors declare no competing interests.

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Fernando, B., Giles, S., Jackson, C. et al. Strategies for making geoscience PhD recruitment more equitable. Nat. Geosci. 16, 658–660 (2023). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41561-023-01241-z

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