IPPP EDI Seminar: Research Excellence in Modern Society

Tuesday 7 Mar 2023, 11:00 → 17:00 Europe/London

Mia West (IPPP), Yannick Ulrich (University of Durham)

The EDI group of IPPP invites everyone to a seminar about designing equitable environments by Dr Johan Sebastian Bonilla Castro. The talk will be open to everyone in the department, whether experienced with EDI efforts or not.

Johan is an experimental high energy physicist currently working with the CMS Collaboration, having done their PhD with the ATLAS collaboration, on beyond the Standard Model searches and muon detector development. They are the current chair of the LGBTQ@CERN group and served as an EDI convener of the Snowmass process which collects input from the particle physics community in the US and elsewhere to formulate the US's particle physics vision. As a convener, Johan co-authored the EDI Topical Group Report which summarises 12 different whitepapers and includes a list of recommendations by the community. They have further contributed two longer reports on accessibility, using Snowmass as an example, and on why the U.S. HEP program should care about high energy physics in Africa and Latin America.

During their visit to Durham, they have also agreed to host a workshop on EDI activism for anyone interested, especially in the context conference organising. This will be more hands-on and interactive than the seminar. If you are interested in attending the workshop, please let us know by registering here so we know how much tea and coffee to provide and so that we can share the Zoom link

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1 Put the Active in Activism - Driving EDI Efforts Today to Build a Vision of Tomorrow

This is not a lecture; it will be an active conversation with the explicit aim to develop actionable tasks to further EDI efforts at Durham University. As a (loose) structure to the workshop, we can critically review sections of Durham’s latest Athena SWAN application. Some example themes to discuss: by-stander effect and how it undermines EDI efforts, recognizing and addressing the continuum of micro→macro aggressions, resolving external vs internal facets of EDI progress. However, to make the most out of our time attendees should think ahead and bring specific ideas/efforts to develop. I recognize bringing up sensitive subjects may be daunting, especially for early-career folks, and thus welcome anyone feeling apprehensive about bringing up a subject themselves to reach out to me ahead of time to include their themes into the workshop anonymously.

Speaker: Johan Sebastian Bonilla Castro

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2 Research Excellence in Modern Society - Designing Equitable Environments for a Diversifying Field

It is evident that society has undergone a series of cultural revolutions, especially in the last few decades, leading to the accelerating globalization of private and public sectors – academia should be no exception. However, it is also clear that the culture of academia, and specifically that of our physics discipline, has struggled to cope with an evolving society. In this seminar, I will present a brief review of recent diversity, equity, and inclusion efforts developed and documented through the Snowmass prioritization process in the USA, as well as detail ongoing efforts at CERN and within the LHC Users communities. I will argue that by exposing ourselves to the experiences and obstacles faced by marginalized demographics, we can better understand the needs of our current and future peers. We are long overdue to redefine what research excellence means – it is up to us all to do the work and think critically about how to change the course of our field into a brighter, more equitable heading.

Speaker: Johan Sebastian Bonilla Castro

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Zoom Link