A look at how public engagement is key to diversifying STEM sectors and the methods we can use to make safe spaces for wide audiences to engage with STEM.

Investigating animal senses and minds through my research has taught me how the natural world is endlessly diverse. As my career took me from India to the US and the UK, I discovered the same about humans, and all that being gay could be. I’ll talk about my work in insect cognition and my thoughts on being gay in academia.

This talk will cover my journey through growing up with homophobia, and how that impacted my education as a teenager as well as shaped my world view, mental health and my outlook on academia. I will discuss where I started and how I ended up doing a PhD in ecology.

Elizabeth is a PhD researcher in space weather, and will discuss feeling like an imposter in STEM spaces as a queer woman, and in queer spaces as a bi woman in a "straight passing" relationship.

Anuradha Damale-Day is a Policy Fellow and Programme Manager at BASIC, a think-tank focussed on addressing the existential risks facing Earth including nuclear weapons and interconnected security issues. Her expertise is in Space Policy, Science and Tech Policy and Nuclear Disarmament, and she is carrying out doctoral research on responsibility in outer space.

Erin Donovan-Sharpe is a healthcare scientist, who has worked in the NHS since 2016. They are a proud member of the LGBTQ+ community and speak from lived experience when talking about issues surrounding equality, diversity & inclusion in healthcare.

Helena is the Access & Outreach Manager for the Department of Materials at the University of Oxford. They will share their experiences that led them to a career in outreach work, from coming from a single parent family as the first to go to university, to studying Physics at Oxford, and now working full-time in university science outreach, and how important visibility can be when working with future scientists – after all, you can’t be what you can’t see, right?

Charlotte is a microbiology PhD student at Newcastle University. She will discuss her career as a microbiologist and academic journey from a working class background, as well as her coming out experience and navigating a lifetime of internalised homophobia and ableism. She will also share her observations surrounding the intersection of her queer and autistic identities, and how the acceptance of one opened the door to acceptance of the other.