Athena SWAN Silver Award for IoPPN

The Institute of Psychiatry, Psychology & Neuroscience (IoPPN) at King’s College London is delighted to announce that the Faculty has been awarded an Athena SWAN Silver Award following its submission in November 2014. 

The Athena SWAN charter was launched in 2005 by the Equality Challenge Unit to recognise the commitment of institutions that promote and advance careers of women in science, technology, engineering, mathematics and medicine (STEMM) in academia. 

Professor Shitij Kapur, Executive Dean and Head of Faculty at IoPPN said: 'This Athena SWAN Silver Award recognises the extraordinary hard work and commitment throughout IoPPN and our special thanks go to Professors Elizabeth Kuipers and Ann McNeill, Project Manager Sabina Khanom and our Athena SWAN Self-Assessment Team (SAT), who worked tirelessly on this outstanding piece of work.

‘The spirit of Athena SWAN is to change behaviour and culture and create a more inclusive and equitable workplace so the best science and the best education can be delivered. That is afoot here at the IoPPN:  there has been a remarkable change in awareness over the last three years and improvement made to promotion processes, visibility and achievement of women professors, an induction programme, early career grant writing workshops, a mentoring programme, to name but a few. Our colleagues across King’s have adopted many of the initiatives we have put in place here and we continue our efforts, with the same sense of purpose and direction toward an equitable workplace for all.’

Professors Kuipers and McNeill and Ms Khanom said: 'The whole SAT were very pleased to read in our award letter the IoPPN had ‘…clearly reached the required standard for a Silver.’ We recognise that there is still a lot to do to advance gender equality at the IoPPN however, we are all happy that the work so far, of those on the SAT, and of many others across the IoPPN, has been recognised.

‘Congratulations go also to our colleagues in the Dental Institute and Florence Nightingale Faculty of Nursing & Midwifery who were awarded Silver, and Cancer Studies, Health & Social Care Research, Genetics & Molecular Medicine and Randall Division of Cell & Molecular Biophysics in the Faculty of Life Sciences & Medicine who received Bronze Awards.’


The Athena SWAN Self-Assessment Team (SAT)

King's has been a member of the Athena Scientific Women’s Academic Network (SWAN) Charter since 2007 and gained its Bronze institutional award in 2008 in recognition of the steps being taken to embrace equality for women in STEMM subjects. Going through the Athena SWAN application process is also helping the College to identify best practice for working environments of ALL staff, not just women working in science disciplines.

For further information visit our Athena SWAN web pages.