Sunderland AFC have become the first Barclays Premier League club to build a designated sensory room for supporters who are affected by the noise levels of the stadium seating areas.
The Nathan Shippey Sensory Room, named after a young supporter who has helped develop the first-of-its-kind project, was constructed in the Black Cats Bar during the summer and is now available for Sunderland supporters. More
February is LGBT History Month and with this in mind we have chosen Paris Lees as our Inspirational Diversity Champion of the Month.
Paris is a British journalist, presenter and transgender rights activist. Paris was brought up as a boy, and self-identified as gay in early adulthood. At the age of 18 she committed a robbery, for which she served eight months in prison. While in prison she decided to change: “I just thought, ‘I’m this silly teenage boy in a prison cell who has made a huge mistake and I want to be this happy person’.” She moved to Brighton to study English at university, where she started to identify as female: “In the space of six weeks I went from living in Nottingham as a boy with my grandma still alive, to living in Brighton as a girl”. She was referred to Charing Cross Gender Identity Clinic where she received hormone treatment to begin gender transition.
Paris founded the first British magazine aimed at the trans community, META and was the acting assistant editor of Gay Times. She also has columns in both Gay Times and Diva and was the first trans cover girl for Diva. She has also written for many mainstream newspapers and magazines, as well as for Channel 4 News.
She has presented on both television and radio, being the first trans woman presenter on both BBC Radio 1 and Channel 4. On Radio 1, she produced a documentary entitled “The Hate Debate” which covered the attitudes people have to minority groups and covered issues related to racism, homophobia, transphobia and Islamophobia. The Hate Debate was followed up with a second documentary in the same slot, “My Transgender Punk Rock Story”, interviewing transgender rock star Laura Jane Grace and introducing the teenage audience to trans concepts of identity both within and outside of the binary. She also presented the episode “Trans” of Channel 4’s The Shooting Gallery.
On 25 October 2013 Paris took part as a panelist in the BBC’s 100 Women event and in October 2013 she became the first openly transgender panelist to appear on the BBC’s Question Time programme.
Paris has worked with Trans Media Watch which challenged Channel 4 to remove transphobic material from its broadcasts, and consulted with the channel for its documentary My Transsexual Summer.
She currently works with All About Trans, a project that tries to bring together journalists and other media professionals with transgender people.
In 2013, she topped The Independent on Sunday’s Pink List, naming her as the most influential lesbian, gay, bisexual or transgender figure in the UK; and was awarded the Positive Role Model Award for LGBT in the 2012.
The first EDI Strategy launch was held on 27 January 2016. The event was a huge success attracting nearly 90 participants throughout the day, including colleagues, not only from university faculties and directorates but also from Cambridge University, Goldsmiths and Business in the Community.
We welcomed many speakers who had come to us from Stonewall, King’s College London, Kingston University, the Students Union, and many other from the university. The speakers on the day talked on a wide range of topics including, Stonewall Workplace Equality Index, Athena SWAN, Race Equality Charter, Student Parents, Disability, religion and belief, mental health, BME.
Our participants really enjoyed the day and we thank them for attending and our speakers for taking part.
The university has been ranked as one of the UK’s most gay-friendly workplaces in Stonewall Top 100 Employers, published today.
Greenwich is placed at 80th in this list of the nation’s best-performing employers, drawn from Stonewall’s Workplace Equality Index 2016, an annual audit of workplace culture for lesbian, gay, bi and trans staff. More
Oscars head Cheryl Boone Isaacs is taking action to “alter the make-up” of their membership, after Spike Lee and Jada Pinkett Smith’s refusal to attend because of the mostly white nominees.
Boone Isaacs praised the “wonderful work” of the nominees but said she was “heartbroken” at the lack of diversity. More
More BME staff have been entering the UK academy but they remain under-represented at the top. What is being done about it? More
The gender pay gap and the impact upon women of a changing labour market will be discussed at a University of Greenwich seminar on Wednesday 20 January.
“While the gap between women’s and men’s pay has been narrowing, in the last few years there have signs that progress has slowed,” says Professor Sian Moore, Director of the university’s Work and Employment Research Unit, part of its Business School. “In particular, the gap in the public sector has increased for two years running.
“This seminar offers an ideal opportunity for anyone interested in equality issues to understand what is happening to the gender pay gap in a period of austerity, when we’re seeing changes to women’s employment and cuts in public sector jobs.”
The event is open to all and will feature talks by three experts from, respectively, the Office for National Statistics, the TUC and the Institute for Fiscal Studies. There will be the opportunity for those attending to ask questions. More
Greenwich has been named as one of the “most international” universities on the planet by Times Higher Education magazine.
It is ranked among the 200 institutions with the most global outlook, recognising that Greenwich is an international player in terms of attracting staff, students and research collaborations from around the world.
Nearly 5,500 international and EU students from 176 countries choose to study at Greenwich, which is one of the UK’s most popular destinations for students from India and Nigeria. More
Sport England says its This Girl Can campaign is “changing behaviour” a year on from its launch.
Independent research says 2.8 million women aged 14 to 40 who recognise the campaign say they have done some or more activity as a result. More
